COLUMN LEFT/ ALEXANDER COCKBURN : George Bush Stays Loyal to the Lies : The pardons neutralize the chance that the President’s own role might be revealed.

So why no pardon for Gen. Manuel A. Noriega? If George Bush is going to behave like a Latin American dictator on the way to the airport, signing pardons for his secret police and kindred underlings and accomplices, how can he forget the Panamanian who aided and abetted his secret war and is the only one of the gang who ended up in prison?

In the bitter words of Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, reacting to the pardons, “The Iran-Contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed.”

Remember what crimes we are actually talking about here.

The men Bush pardoned on Christmas Eve--former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, CIA men Dewey Claridge, Clair George, Alan Fiers--were mostly accused of deceiving Congress.

Deception of a Congress that was agreeable to being deceived was but a minor facet of a secret terrorist war in which tens of thousands died. The men who are now breathing easier were involved in plans and operations aimed at destroying a country, Nicaragua. They hired torturers from Argentina, drew up an assassination manual, ordered the mining of harbors, the destruction of health clinics, the killing of peasants and social workers, all in defiance of U.S. and international laws.

Perhaps it’s only fair that the underlings get off. Why should the major conspirators in these crimes be spared? The secret war against Nicaragua, the lying to Congress, the diversions of arms and money were all ordered and overseen by two men, President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush.

These two were the commanders who issued the executive orders and recruited other countries--Saudi Arabia, Israel, Brunei--in their vast terrorist operations, mounted against Nicaragua even as they piously declared a war against terrorism.

The outrageous climax to Watergate was Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon, which lost him the presidency. George Bush has no presidency to lose, but he presumably hopes for the indulgence of historians. Many assumed that the Somalian mercy mission was intended as a fragrant coda to his public life.

There was much at stake for Bush to trash his reputation and make a mockery of the law.

What had he to fear? Well, every one of those men with pardons in their pockets had clear memories, and until those pardons were issued, the incentive was there to lay out clearly in their memoirs the chain of command in the Iran-Contra conspiracies.

Already, there’s a tumult of rage at the pardons. But as they clamber up on their high horses, Americans should remember that the terrorist war against Nicaragua was a bipartisan affair in which senior Democrats connived at the illegalities by ignoring the trails of evidence pointing to the illegal covert operations.

At least the pardons will finally put to rest the theory that, deep down, there was a “good George Bush” yearning to be free. These pardons are entirely in character, are in fact the appropriate bottom line on his resume. He always believed in covert operations and hence in the lying, lawbreaking and deceptions of Congress that accompany secret government. If he believed in the operations, then he logically believed that the executives and subordinates carrying them out must, in the larger sense, be innocent of crimes. As he said when he issued the pardons, the men he was forgiving were patriots all.

Thus George Bush is no doubt at peace with himself as he instructs the nation in utter contempt for the law. What a signal to the new government and for the permanent bureaucracies! Who needs now to fear special prosecutors or even zealous congressional committees when the new operating principle, as enunciated by Bush, is that crimes committed by governments are not crimes at all. For the last time, read his lips: “In recent years, the use of criminal processes in policy disputes has become all too common. The proper forum is the voting booth, not the courtroom.”

How meek that phrase “policy disputes” sounds! It was mere “policy,” not a crime, to funnel covert assistance both to Iraq and Iran in a war that saw hundreds of thousands die in conflicts carefully prolonged by the Reagan-Bush government. The arms/money diversions at the heart of Iran-Contra were “policy,” not a crime. It was a “policy,” not a crime, to inflict criminal terror on Nicaragua and to lie to Congress about it. These are the operating principles of a banana republic, Bush’s December surprise as he gets out of Dodge.