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Read other letters about this article
the constant harping on it and carping about it.
The Iran-Contra pardons are most definitely far more consequential as many of the people involved have gone on to do immense damage to the United States and its government. Whereas Marc Rich has not.
Gee, what's more important?
Hysteria over Marc Rich's pardon was and is the product of anti-Clintonism. Period.
To try to use it against Eric Holder ought to be absurd. There are more important things he has said and done than grease the wheels for Rich's pardon. But those other things he's said and done -- re: Guantanamo, and the whole lawless regime it represents -- have a constituency and the Marc Rich pardon does not. The focus in opposing Holder, therefore, is on the constitutency-free Rich affair, not on the substantive issues of lawless government.
On the other hand, apart from its Pavlovian trigger effect among the anti-Clintonists, Marc Rich is utterly meaningless to most Americans.
Oppose or support Holder, for any reason or no reason, by all means.
But there have been far, far more consequential uses of the pardon power (not "abuses") in recent history than this one.
