Look, the reason most countries don’t have nukes or bioweapons is that they can’t afford the resources, not that the technology is kept secret from them. It steam-engines when it comes steam-engine time. Stalin would have had the atomic bomb almost as soon without the help of the Rosenbergs.
In hindsight, I can’t see how it would have done the Allied nations or the world any harm for Churchill to have included all of those things in his book.
There’s this deliberative body that’s supposed to have oversight over the Executive in certain respects … what’s it called? Oh, yeah, Congress! I’d forgotten during their complete lack of oversight during the Bush/Cheney years. Do ya supposed it MIGHT be possible to have a bipartisan Congressional committee pass on everything to be kept secret? That way, the slimey stuff and the butt covering wouldn’t pass muster, in either a Dem or Pubbie Presidential administration.
Slight hijack:
We’ve been cozying up to dictators like them long before the Cold War-especially the Somoza dynasty-we’re the ones who put them in power-remember it was FDR who said, “Somoza may be a son of a bitch-but he’s our son of a bitch*.” And that was in 1939-long before the Cold War started. Ditto-Pinochet. We pretty much caused the overthrow of the Allende government, and installed Pinochet in his place.
Okay, end of hijack.
As far as Reagan goes, I don’t think he was dirty-just stupid. It was his cabinet running the show. (Remember, he was also in the early stages of Alzheimers)
I don’t think he was nearly intelligent enough to come up with Iran-Contra on his own.
nvm
Given this expresident has proven to be nothing but a lying incompetent fool, and a war criminal, that can’t be trusted; where’s the oversight? How do know where’s he’s abusing his power and where there’s legitimate concern?
Don’t we the voters deserve to know the full calamity of the actions of the Bush voters?
I’ll never forgive republicans for Bush. It was truly a hateful thing they did to America by running him and his fear based lies and bullying. Republicans did more damaged to American then Al Qaeda ever could. They’re worse for America then terrorists in over all damage impact.
Plausible conjecture. Only reason I hesitate is that it isn’t heavy enough to warrant this sort of effort. The scheduled release of the Reagan Papers was a matter of law, the work that went into keeping the lid on was substantial. They could have easily explained away Reagan’s disengagement as some sort of management style crap, a “hands off” leader blah blah blah. Not worth it to arouse so much suspicion.
But, who knows? Maybe the dumbfucks spent all this energy covering up some two bit triviality about St. Ronnie of Bakersfield. It’s not like they have any sense of proportion. I don’t think we’re talking totally huge, like Bush the Dad was a Communist mole run by Alger Hiss and John Kerry. Something semi-huge.
This, in principle, is the way things operate in the UK - overseen by an independent FOI Commissioner. The current scope and rules have been in place since 2005, and it’s interesting how this has worked. Some issues are resolved quickly and efficiently (there is an initial 20 working day turnaround rule), others run on for months or years as they are disputed. My sense (as a Private Eye reader) is that ministers and senior civil servants are becoming better at establishing reasons for non-disclosure (damage to commercial interests is the key one given) and case-law is still being developed. However, the tendency seems to be that the longer people stay in office, the more they decide should be protected - often on dubious grounds (transparency of government expense claims, for instance, was disputed for a long time, even though it utilises taxpayer’s money and the public must have a right to know how that is spent). I hope Obama and his administration don’t go the same way.
Has term limits ever been a political issue in the UK?
Not really. We don’t elect Prime Ministers. The PM is generally whoever is head of the majority party. Elections are not held at fixed intervals either so there are no ‘terms’ per se.
I just read the EO. Thank you, Barack Obama. You are reinforcing that this country and I have made the right choice.
So you accept the principal and now we discuss to what degree. I favor more open governments than most. I believe many get into government for looting and power grabbing. I do not trust most pols. Turn on the lights ans show me what they are doing.
I think we’ve touched upon some interesting points here re: national security exceptions. I’d like to tease that out a bit more.
For example, I think it’s important that we NOT release information on things like weapons development, positioning of forces, identity and location of intelligence operatives, etc. Revealing these sorts of things could give our foes an advantage, and harm our security in a tangible way.
But many would like to lump in things that would merely harm our country’s IMAGE, or damage our foreign policy capabilities. For example, the feds have still never released that Abu Ghraib video that made Seymour Hersh cringe. Would this damage our public image abroad? Probably (although, now, we can just blame it on the previous administration). Would it affect our national security? Not tangibly. Yes, it might incite more people to join foreign extremists vs. the USA. But so could the entire Abu Ghraib scandal, period, as well as My Lai, or any of our mistaken bombings of Afghani wedding celebrations over the last few years. Should we have just clammed up entirely about all of those, and said, “Sorry, can neither confirm nor deny. Move along.” ?