New Book Says Bush Committed Impeachable Offense
An explosive new book by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist alleges President George W. Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to create a forged document showing a link between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda to create a “false pretense” for war.
“The White House had concocted a fake letter from [the director of the Iraqi intelligence service] to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” reporter Ron Suskind writes in his new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.”
Furthermore, Suskind alleges that the Bush administration knew Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction nor was the country an imminent threat, which is what the March 2003 invasion was predicated on.
The director of the Iraqi intelligence service informed the White House “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”“They secretly resettled [the intelligence official] in Jordan, paid him $5 million – which one could argue was hush money – and then used his captive status to help deceive the world about one of the era’s most crushing truths: that America had gone to war under false pretenses,” Suskind writes says.
Suskind, who won Pulitzer Prize during his tenure as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, writes in his new book that the plan to use the CIA to create a bogus link between Iraq and al-Qaeda appears to be in direct violation of a statute that prohibits the CIA from conducting cover operations “intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies or media.”
“It is not the sort of offense, such as assault or burglary, that carries specific penalties, for example, a fine or jail time,” Suskind writes. “It is much broader than that. It pertains to the White House’s knowingly misusing an arm of government, the sort of thing generally taken up in impeachment proceedings.”
Yes Mr. Suskind that one act alone would certainly be an impeachable offense. The Right would never confess outright that Bush fabricated every major reason for injecting the American military into Iraq. What they have done and will continue to do despite revelations about planning to provoke Saddam into war combined with lies about WMD and terrorist connections, is that Bush lies for our own good. The four thousand plus Americans that have been sent to their deaths in Iraq died for the ever so noble lies of the right-wing Chicken-Littles.
The news of the letter that the Whitehouse requested that the CIA forged to make it look like it was from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein isn’t completely new. At one point the letter was reported on, but as though it was real, Book says White House ordered forgery
The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’”
The Telegraph story by Con Coughlin (which, coincidentally, ran the day Hussein was captured in his “spider hole”) was touted in the U.S. media by supporters of the war, and he was interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“Over the next few days, the Habbush letter continued to be featured prominently in the United States and across the globe,” Suskind writes. “Fox’s Bill O’Reilly trumpeted the story Sunday night on ‘The O’Reilly Factor,’ talking breathlessly about details of the story and exhorting, ‘Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda—Saddam.'”
Impeachment of NBC, Fox and Bill O’Reilly are off the table. Though Fox and Bill have taken up for torture so maybe they’d voluntarily undergo some water boarding as Penance. Unfortunately that will not bring back those that died for Bush’s lies. About the only justification that Bush and John McCain have left for justifying the invasion of Iraq is they supposedly freed the Iraqi people. There are several repressive regimes left in the world including China, Saudi Arabia and Burma. Have you noticed how we haven’t heard of the populations in those countries pleading to get the Bush/McCain “shock and awe” treatment so that they too can be another success in the neocon’s spread of democracy.
Drilling Reversal Paid Off For McCain
Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling, according to Federal Election Commission reports.
Nine of these contributions, seven from Hess executives and two from members of the Hess family, came on the same day, June 24th, the records show. The total collected in the wake of McCain’s reversal for the fund, called McCain Victory 2008, from Hess execs and family is $285,000.
The Right, picking around the edges like starving chickens has found that Senator Obama has said that McCain received $2 million dollars from “big oil”, but supposedly as far as anyone officially knows McCain received $1.3 million. The problem as we can see with the way money from the Hess Corporation has been bundled and not all of it actually from the source, we can only guesstimate how much big oil money McCain is getting.
Jonah Goldberg royaly screwed up on the history of fascism, but he’s not letting that failure stand in the way of mangling the meaning of capitalism. As we all know the priveleged rich kids like Goldberg who have no discernible skills and have achieved anything based on merit or hard work are the best experts on capitalism, The Joys Of Extra Rentals
Jonah Goldberg takes it into his hands to defend capitalism from its detractors using an argument never made before with such detail or care. Now, a warning: given that this is Jonah Goldberg discussing a large-scale social, political and economic concept, he could very well be talking about photosynthesis. Or Netflix. Nobody ever really knows.
Capitalism is the greatest system ever created for alleviating general human misery, and yet it breeds ingratitude.
People ask, “Why is there poverty in the world?” It’s a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition. It is the factory preset of this mortal coil. As individuals and as a species, we are born naked and penniless, bereft of skills or possessions. Likewise, in his civilizational infancy man was poor, in every sense. He lived in ignorance, filth, hunger, and pain, and he died very young, either by violence or disease.
Actually, we’re generally born to parents who have some level of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls “shit”. Said “shit” is used to care and feed us until such point as we are legally and biologically capable of supporting ourselves, or, in the case of some, given the means by our parents who happen to be big shots in conservative circles.
You have to love the straw man set up. Capitalism is some entity, one part beleaguered rag merchant, one part diety that none of us truly appreciate the way the wealthy kool-kids like Goldberg does. As is consistant with the Goldbergian worshippers of capitalism, labor is the missing step child. Labor, you know the thing, the people that work and make wealth possible is left unacknowledged. Capitalism in Konservative World is all about the tireless labors of the corporate elite. The people that make the products, delivery the services are mere nuts and bolts, a nusance to the mighty captains of industry that one has to put up with until they invent something that doesn’t need wages or health-care.
The Long Goodbye 