Book Reviews*

Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq
by Robert Parry
America lives in a historical vacuum, empty of context and devoid of truthful reporting, especially when it comes to contemporary events. The corporate media cares little about actions taken or words spoken in the past. As a result, Americans are left with a disjointed and disconnected view of reality.


Explaining Ourselves
By Robert Parry
November 10, 2004

The legitimacy of the vote count was never resolved honestly and openly; instead, it was swept under the rug.

Well before the election, citizens were complaining about the security of their ballots, especially when using paperless voting machines. The fact that election officials around the country failed to act, or put off fixes until 2006, is troubling.

Exporting Democracy
For a nation that has invaded a country halfway around the world supposedly to plant the seeds of democracy, questions about the legitimacy of a presidential election should be taken very seriously, not just laughed off. That’s especially true after the Election 2000 debacle when the popular-vote loser, George W. Bush, took the White House under highly questionable circumstances.

“To screw up one exit poll is unheard of,” wrote Dick Morris. “To miss six of them is incredible. It boggles the imagination how pollsters could be that incompetent and invites speculation that more than honest error was at play here.”

Republican Morris then spins off a bizarre conspiracy theory speculating that the exit pollsters were trying to influence the vote outcome for Kerry. But Morris’s fundamental point is well taken: around the world, when exit polls vary from official results, that’s a warning flag of ballot manipulation.

As I report in Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, the Republicans have a history of playing the bully in elections – 1968, 1972, 1980, 1992 and 2000 – while Democrats often tend to hide the bruises and make excuses for fear of undermining public confidence in the democratic process.

But the time has come for the American people to get the truth, however ugly it may be. Too much is at stake for this Washington version of an abusive political relationship to continue.

Our initial review of the voting in Florida – following on the work of some other investigators – suggests, too, that there may be a way to check the accuracy of computerized voting despite the widespread use of paperless electronic ballots. That’s because some of the suspicious patterns have fallen in counties using optical-scanned ballots.

That means that there should be a paper record to check against the tabulations. Those records should be available under government-sunshine laws.

*Reviews by Linaelin
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