Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush
by John W. Dean

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Book Reviews of Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush

Book Review: Devastating study of creeping fascism
Summary: 5 Stars

Bush and his cronies hide stuff because there is lots to hide: Bush's hidden early career - his draft-dodging and his business frauds and failures, Vice President Dick Cheney's health secrets, his dodgy Halliburton deals, his secret Council for National Energy Policy Development Group, his shadow security and intelligence outfit (the Office of Special Plans) and his covert operation for the executive's survival.

Dean points out that Bush illegally uses executive privilege to overrule US law, as when he ordered that his, and his father's, presidential papers be sealed, breaking the 1978 Presidential Records Act. (Blair similarly used an order from the Privy Council to overturn British law and rob the Diego Garcia islanders of their right to return home.)

Dean demonstrates how Bush is destroying civil liberties by enforcing repressive laws. For example, 5000 Arab Americans have been detained, mistreated, and denied lawyers for more than two years; only five have been charged, and only one convicted. Dean shows how Bush criminalises dissent and controls the media, and how "mendacity has become policy."

Dean observes how Bush exploited 9/11, while secretly scheming to scuttle all efforts to discover why the USA was so unprepared for the anticipated terrorist attack. He manipulated intelligence about Iraq's 'WMD', transforming guesses and estimates into 'facts'. Dean documents the nineteen distinct lies that Colin Powell told the UN, a key part of Bush's effort to trick the American people into the illegal attack on Iraq - an impeachable offence. Dean shows how Bush is implementing the US ruling class's plan to dominate the world.

Dean points out how this creeping fascism threatens what little remains of American democracy and its people's rights. To a British eye, it is striking how closely Blair resembles Bush, and how closely the Labour Party resembles the Republican party - the same slavering worship of wealth, the same contempt for democracy, the same arrogance of power.

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