Top dogs protect other top dogs
by digby
It's not just a business and Wall Street thing. Here's an example of a president protecting a former president --- one whose record he ran against with a scathing indictment of lies and mismanagement:
If the U.S. gets its way, the world will never know the details of top-level discussions between George W. Bush and Tony Blair that paved the way for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
An exclusive report released Thursday by The Independent reveals that the White House and U.S. State Department have launched a fierce battle against the release of a four-year government-ordered investigation into the lead-up and aftermath of British participation in a war now widely viewed in the UK as a catastrophe.
The inquiry, led by Sir John Chilcot, is believed to take aim at the official version of events, including misrepresentation of Iraq intelligence, as well as questions about whether former British Prime Minister Tony Blair engaged in secret negotiations with the Bush administration while lying to the British people.
Yet, the U.S. government is forbidding the release of communications between Blair and Bush in the lead-up to the war, declaring it classified information and pressuring British Prime Minister David Cameron to wipe this information from the report.
The Independent reports that the hidden documents "are said to provide crucial evidence for already-written passages that are highly critical of the covert way in which Mr Blair committed British troops to the US-led invasion."
The paper goes on to quote a top-level diplomat, who declared, “The US are highly possessive when documents relate to the presence of the President or anyone close to him... this is not Tony Blair’s or the UK Government’s property to disclose.”
There are signs that the British government is poised to cave to U.S. pressure, in a bid to protect the 'special' relationship between the two countries.
This really is ridiculous. If President Obama thinks that doing this will protect him from similar revelations when a Republican president takes over he's delusional. They don't play by the same rules as anyone who observed the Ken Starr Circus should understand.
Of course it's always possible that President Obama is actually helping out his fellow austerian David Cameron who would like nothing more than to deep-six the whole report. After all, we do have a very cozy, special relationship with the UK. At least the two secret security states do.
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