matt hogan wrote:
>
>
> Doug, what about Watergate, Iran-contra, the theft of PROMIS software by the Dept. of Justice under Meese, etc. Weren't those conspiracies? Don't you think that the Watergate conspiracy was significant? If not, why not?
I've been mostly skipping this thread until I browsed through a few, including this one today. But actually, I don't think the Watergate conspiracy was very significant, with one qualification. In the various discussions in the White House that we have learned of through tapes and memoirs, we have discovered that the activities of the anti-war movement did really bug those jerks in D.C. to the extent that they over-reacted. That tidbit of information may prove useful in the future. But as far as either the actual conspiracy or its revelation having any direct importance in human affairs, Nah! The absence of either the conspiracy or its exposure would have made no real difference (outside the careers of a few reporters and the profits of a few publishers or film makers). The Kennedy assassination might have prevented nuclear war (I think jfk would have been more apt to use nukes in vietnam than lbj), but no one would have mounted a conspiracy for that purpose.
Carrol