I have pondered long and hard about why, during the Bush/Cheney years, Congress was infected with "the wuss factor," to quote CNN’s Candy Crowley. We the People across the nation were begging our senators and representatives to stand up for us, but the vast majority sat on their hands, giving Bush and Cheney everything they wanted. Why? I wondered countless times over the years. And I think I finally have the answer. They were afraid to stand up.
I have come to my conclusion reluctantly and only after searching to find reliable sources and double-checking myself by looking to make sure that my conclusions fit into logical and coherent patterns. There are so many conspiracy theories floating through cyberspace these days that it takes careful scrutiny disentangle those that are credible from those that are not. Unfortunately, though, conspiracy theories don’t have to be true in order to be effective. Thus, I am not going to take the next step and claim that the underlying theory is true.
I have concluded that Democratic congress men and women feared for more than just their careers if they bucked Bush and Cheney. They feared for their very lives because of the sudden deaths of two of their most progressive members right before elections. Senator Mel Carnahan died three weeks before the 2000 national election and Paul Wellstone two weeks before the one in 2002. For all I can prove, the timings of their deaths were tragic coincidences. But the mere possibility that deaths are murders will send chills down people’s spines and make them hesitate to act.
So I am willing only to suggest that our Democratic senators and representatives feared that those two deaths might not have been coincidences and that any one of them could be next if they voted their consciences.
Of course, if you want to play the conspiracy theory game, you can come up with lots of interesting possibilities with these two deaths (especially now that we’ve learned that Cheney did organize assassination teams, although so far as we know this modern Phoenix operation was only for foreign opponents).
Carnahan died on the 28th anniversary of Representative Hale Boggs’s mysterious disappearance, October 16. Reputable people disagree over Boggs’s position regarding the Warren Commission’s report on the assassination of JFK. Some say he was one of three dissenters and that he was moving to have the investigation reopened. Boggs’s daughter, respected NPR reporter Cokie Roberts, disagrees. I haven’t dug into this disagreement, but I have long wanted the investigation reopened if for no other reason than that the "magic bullet" theory is about as wild a theory as I’ve heard from any conspiracy theorists. It warrants another look.
In any event, Kennedy’s and Boggs’s deaths have given rise to myriad conspiracy theories. For example, Richard Nixon was running for re-election and had pulled some pretty dirty tricks to secure a second term, tricks that collectively became known as Watergate and forced him to resign before he could be impeached.
And Nixon was in Dallas the day Kennedy was killed. This has been documented. He had attended a soft-drink convention and flew out of Love Field the morning Kennedy was shot. Nixon’s presence in town that day is the kind of coincidence that is bound to raise questions about whether he had an ulterior motive for being there on that particular day. It is well known that Nixon was obsessed with Kennedy. He even imitated a famous photo of JFK walking down a beach.
In 1960, three years before the assassination, then-Vice President Nixon had been President Eisenhower’s heir apparent, but Kennedy squeaked past him and won the presidency. Obsessions can lead to murder. I will not go so far as to say that Nixon’s did, although I can see the logic that permits some to think so. But whatever the truth, reopening the investigation, on top of the Watergate investigations, would not have helped Nixon. Thus, many devout theorists have come to believe that Nixon was behind the assassination. Some have gone still farther to suggest that Boggs’ plane, which was never found, was sabotaged to make it crash to prevent the reopening of the investigation. From there, it’s a tiny hop to theorize that the Bush/Cheney campaign was inspired by that crash to arrange for Carnahan’s plane crash. And then by that success, to arrange for Wellstone’s plane to crash too.
Other possible suspicions evolve the photograph rumored to be of Watergate bunglers E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis as the "two tramps" taken in Dealey Plaza after the assassination. And there are endless questions about the "magic bullet," how Kennedy’s head defied the laws of physics and flew back when hit from behind, etc., etc.
Conspiracy theories are built upon unanswered questions. There does not have to be any truth to the resulting suspicions for them to affect people’s behavior. Survival is a strong instinct. If there is the slightest possibility that our congressional representatives felt threatened by the Bush/Cheney administration to vote for war in Iraq, to let the Bushies ignore our Constitution and pending crises such as the expanding housing bubble, etc., etc, then I believe that the Obama administration and Congress have a duty to investigate in order to either put the worries to rest or confront their reality.
Yes, we all want to move forward, but unanswered questions will hold us back.