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Editor's Note: Below are readers' comments about recent stories that we've posted about the Bush Family's secret history of dealing with international terrorists and then concealing the facts:

I have but one simple sentence to make: Is the USA a monarchy with a king who can make decisions single handedly, or do we have a government that makes momentous decisions with the approval of Congress, based on facts not Presidential biased fiction?

Alan Oppenheimer

Re. Robert Parry's Sept. 21, 2006 article on the history of Bush-Iran relations, it's wonderful to see this relevant piece of history mentioned at last in the context of recent Mideast events. However, shouldn't someone at least bring up the possibility that the neocons might simply be playing the same trick once again? A pre-arranged "solution" to the present "crisis" with the Iranians, arising at the last moment and "preventing war" by giving Bush most of what he's demanded from the Iranians, would grant him a devastating October Surprise in the area of Mideast crisis-diplomacy, precisely the kind of thing which would help the GOP the most in the November elections. Such an Iranian "capitulation" at the very "brink of war" would negate Democratic criticism of Iraq and the rest of the Bushies' heretofore failed Mideast policy, and would cast Bush in the role of "Comeback Kid" just in time to regenerate his entire agenda for the last two years of his term, with his GOP congress safely reelected and his own popularity soaring once again on the wings of "national security". Then, in a year or so when the dust has settled, the Iranians would quietly receive whatever payment the Bushies agreed to make in return for their timely cooperation. Or perhaps that payment has already been made by Bush, in the form of US-led wars against both the anti-Iranian Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as well as the ongoing reshaping of Iraq into what will likely emerge as a Shia-dominated theocracy closely allied to Iran.

Highlander

Thanks for your excellent piece on Bush and the Letelier assassination. I have in the back of my mind a detail that you didnt mention that may be pertinent. Years ago I read some document, but can no longer recall where perhaps at the National Security Archives indicating that U.S. military intelligence in Panama had assisted in setting up a secret Operation Condor communications network, and maintained a listening post in the Canal Zone through which it could monitor Condor communications traffic. If this is true, it means that U.S. military intelligence records may contain evidence of what the U.S. government knew about the Letelier assassination plot, and when it knew it. Maybe someone at the National Security Archives could point you in the right direction.

On another matter, I see that the main headline in todays N.Y. Times reads, Top Republicans Reach an Accord on Detainee Bill; Bush Drops Key Demand; United States Will Honor Geneva Conventions on Interrogations. Of course, this is exactly the opposite of what has actually happened, with the President succeeding in narrowing the scope of Common Article III as it applies to interrogation of CIA detainees, and in absolving CIA personnel of criminal liability under the War Crimes Act which creates criminal penalties under US law for Geneva violations by US personnel all the back to 1997. How and why does a major paper like the New York Times so often wind up getting the story wrong when it comes to the Bush Administration and its spin tactics. Keller and his team often seem as though they WANT to be mislead. Either that, or theyre just plain incompetent and stupid.

cpaine