Lessons Bush Learned from Hitler

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Bush learned how to slaughter civilians. In Iraq, US troops, commanded by Herr Bush slaughter some 10,000 Iraqi civilians per month. Bush will cite that as proof that his war crime is "winding down" but that's an absurd right wing spin.

The US slaughter rate in Iraq had been as high as 30,000 Iraqis per month, 1,000 per day. It was earlier this year that the Lancet study was made public by the British Guardian, which reported the extent to which Bush is "winning" the war against Iraqi civilians.

A monstrous war crime

With more than 650,000 civilians dead in Iraq, our government must take responsibility for its liesRichard Horton
Wednesday March 28, 2007
The Guardian

Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003.

Immediately after publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said that the Lancet's study "was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate". The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet figures were "extrapolated" and a "leap".

Not surprisingly, Bush responded: "I don't consider it a credible report". Recent updates to the report now estimate the number of civilian dead at well over one million. Bush calls that "kickin' ass". I call it mass murder, a capital crime perpetrated by George W. Bush. Meanwhile, Sydney Blumenthal says Bush knew Saddam had no WMD.

Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction

Salon exclusive: Two former CIA officers say the president squelched top-secret intelligence, and a briefing by George Tenet, months before invading Iraq.

Sept. 6, 2007 | On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

As Salon broke that exclusive, we learned elsewhere that Bush was yucking it up with another right wing seed pod --Australia's PM, John Howard.

Today the US President will visit the National Maritime Museum to view the bell. It could be construed as an act of symmetry, given if Howard loses the election, this week would be the last time he and Bush see each other in their respective roles.

This was obviously apparent to Bush, who arrived in Australia in a chipper mood.

"We're kicking ass," he told Mark Vaile on the tarmac after the Deputy Prime Minister inquired politely of the President's stopover in Iraq en route to Sydney.

--By George: now it's all the way with Howard J

Bush deliberately defrauded the troops, the nation, the Congress, the world. He calls it "kickin' ass". I call it a capital crime!

Bush is now criminally culpable, subject to prosecution for capital crimes for the deaths of his every victim on either side. Words cannot describe the venal idiocy of this cretin so at ease with his disconnect with common sense and morality, so comfortable wallowing in the misery his lies have caused and continue to cause. Psychologists use the term "lack of empathy" to describe this pathology, better known among the volk as pure "evil"!

From the Third Reich, Bush learned how to exploit "terrorism" to consolidate his dictatorship. Bush is on the Hitler end of the political spectrum opposing the very principles of our founding. What Bush knows he most surely learned by way of his Grandfather's old trading partner --Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Lesson Number he summed up himself in one sentence.

Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.

--Adolf Hitler

Bush learned how to rule ruthlessly. Hitler never got more than 37 percent of the vote in several elections called over a short period of time ending with an act of terrorism that Hitler would exploit to consolidate his dictatorship. That act was the Reichstag Fire, Hitler's 911.

It's hard to imagine that anyone would dare go back to the well given the press "Reichstag" gets. Nevertheless, the tactic, having proved successful for Nazis, would be tried again. No one ever accused Bush of being imaginative. His gang would simply repeat a tired, old Nazi tactic and expect the people to go along. And, for the most part, the people did precisely that.

On February 27, 1937, Hitler was having dinner with Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels when the phone rang to inform the future Fuhrer: "The Reichstag is on fire!" At the scene, Hitler and Goebbels, found Hermann Goring, later Hitler’s air minister, shouting "at the top of his lungs", blaming communists for an act of terrorism.

How Hitler became a dictator is recounted in many sources but William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is still among the very best.

From Goring's Reichstag President's Palace an underground passage, built to carry the central heating system, ran to the Reichstag building. Through this tunnel Karl Ernst, a former hotel bellhop who had become the Berlin S.A. leader, led a small detachment of storm troopers on the night of February 27 to the Reichstag, where they quickly scattered gasoline and self-igniting chemicals and then made their way quickly back to the palace the way they had come. At the same time a half-witted Dutch Communist with a passion for arson, Marinus van der Lubbe, had made his way into the huge, darkened and to him unfamiliar building and set some small fires of his own. This feeble-minded pyromaniac was a godsend to the Nazis. He had been picked up by the S.A. a few days before after having been overheard in a bar boasting that he had attempted to set fire to several public buildings and that he was going to try the Reichstag next.

The coincidence that the Nazis had found a demented Communist arsonist who was out to do exactly what they themselves had determined to do seems incredible but is nevertheless supported by the evidence. The idea for the fire almost certainly originated at the top with Goebbels and Goring. Hans Gisevius, an official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior at the time, testified at Nuremberg that 'it was Goebbels who first thought of setting the Reichstag on fire' and Rudolph Diels, the Gestapo chief, added in an affidavit that 'Goring knew exactly how the fire was to be started' and had ordered him 'to prepare, prior to the fire, a list of people who were to be arrested immediately after it.' General Franz Halder, Chief of the German General Staff during the early part of World War II, recalled at Nuremberg how on one occasion Goring had boasted of his deed.

At a luncheon on the birthday of the Fuehrer in 1942 the conversation turned to the topic of the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears when Goring interrupted the conversation and shouted: "The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!" With that he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand.

The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich (Touchstone Edition, 1990, p. 192-)

Hitler ordered a round up of the usual suspects, in other words, his opposition, consisting largely of communists whom the Nazis could, with but a shred of credibility, blame for an act of bloody terrorism.

Nazis knew what goppers know now --that frightened and anxious people will willingly surrender the blessings of liberty. From Hitler's experience, Bush learned how to use a "Patriot Act" to crack down on dissent.

Hitler wasted no time. The very next day, he was in President Hindenburg's office urging the aging statesman to issue a patriot act, a decree entitled, “For the Protection of the People and the State.” Justified as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,” the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to civil liberties:

Patriot Act vs, German Enabling Act:

The Decrees of 1933

(a) The February 28 Decree. One of the most repressive acts of the new Nazi government, this one allowed for the suspension of civil liberties ....The president was persuaded that the state was in danger and, hence, that the emergency measures embodied in the decree were necessary. Even though under Art. 48 of the constitution, the decree would have been withdrawn once the so-called emergency had passed, any hope of this happening was prevented by the establishment of Hitler's dictatorship following the Enabling Act (see below). It was in fact never withdrawn and remained until the end as an instrument of Nazi terror against ordinary citizens who ran foul of the regime.


ARTICLE 1. In virtue of paragraph 2, article 48,* of the German Constitution, the following is decreed as a defensive measure against communist acts of violence , endangering the state:

Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Thus, restrictions on personal liberty [114], on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press [118], on the right of assembly and the right of association [124], and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications [117], and warrants for house-searches [115], orders for confiscation as well as restrictions on property [153], are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.


*Article 48 of the German Constitution of August 11, 1919: If public safety and order in Germany are materially disturbed or endangered, the President may take the necessary measures to restore public safety and order, and, if necessary, to intervene with the help of the armed forces. To this end he may temporarily suspend, in whole or in part, the fundamental rights established in Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 ...........

Patriot Act:

Section 218 which amends the "probable cause" requirement before conducting secret searches or surveillance to obtain evidence of a crime;

Sections 215, 218, 358, and 508 which permit law enforcement authorities to have broad access to sensitive mental health, library, business, financial, and educational records despite the existence of previously adopted state and federal laws which were intended to strengthen the protection of these types of records;

Sections 411 and 412 which give the Secretary of State broad powers to designate domestic groups as "terrorist organizations" and the Attorney General power to subject immigrants to indefinite detention or deportation even if no crime has been committed; and
Sections 507 and 508 which impose a mandate on state and local public universities who must collect information on students that may be of interest to the Attorney General.

Bush learned how to suspend civil liberties after a terrorist attack. It must be noted that Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio is the only candidate for President calling for a repeal of the Patriot Act. That tells me that the Democrats are not up to the challenge of restoring American democracy. The question now is one of some urgency: is it too late to save our nation? Is it too late to stop Bush? Are Americans screwed?

Just as Karl Rove spoke wistfully of a "permanent Republican majority", Hitler planned to establish a "permanent" majority of elected Nazis in the Reichstag. That body would later become Hitler's rubber stamp, passing whatever laws he desired, making all his crimes perfectly legal. Bush's lesson: make legal all the crimes you want and plan to commit; bully Congress into absolving you ex post facto for crimes already committed. Hire Alberto Gonzales to be the "enabler".

Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to temporarily delegate its powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the crisis. Hitler denounced his opposition, shouting at them "Germany will be free, but not through you!” Hitler won the vote 441 to 84. It gave him a two-thirds majority needed to suspend the constitution. On March 23, 1933, the “Enabling Act”--a patriot act -- made Hitler dictator of Germany. It is not recorded whether he said, as did Bush much later: this would be a whole lot easier if this was a dictatorship ...just as long as I'm the dictator!

Just as Hitler cut a deal with Thyssen, Krupp, I.G. Farben et al, the DUMB-umvirate of Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld carved up the map of the Middle East with big oil and Halliburton. Just as the Middle East is rich in oil, Poland was rich in coal from which synthetic fuels (to drive the Panzers) could be produced.

Bush used Hitler's play book. And, as it was then, it's all about energy. The esteemed historian John Keegan has written that Hitler might have won WWII had he kept Rommel supplied to seize the oil fields of the Middle East, rather than invading Russia. It would have all been over --save for an "insurgency" that most surely would have opposed Rommel.

Bush learned from his grandfather that there is big money -- a killing in fact --in the industrial murder business. Our own Treasury Department is the source for the following information about how US corporations, primarily US Steel, for whom Prescott Bush was banker, helped Hitler arm and wage war on the world while carrying out mass murder throughout Europe. US steel made it possible for Hitler to arm for war, producing the following percentages of war munitions for Hitler and his Nazi war lords: Pig iron 50.8%; Pipe & tubes 45.5%; Universal plate 41.4%; Galvanized sheet 38.5%; Heavy plate 36%; Explosives 35%; Wire 22.1%.

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
--
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

In effect, Prescott Bush was Hitler’s American banker.

Bush also learned how to outsource murder and atrocity in ways that benefit his right wing supporters. Called "private enterprise", it is, in fact, corporatism, Mussolini's word for farming out the work of killing to partners, robber barons, death merchants and hired murderers like Blackwater! Blackwater is a gang of paid thugs whom National Public Radio charges has strong connections with America's radical, religious, fascist right wing.

NPR: The war in Iraq has been partly outsourced to private military contractors which are performing many of the services that used to be done by the military. My guest, Jeremy Scahill, has written a book about one of those companies, Blackwater, which he describes as "the world's most mercenary army and the embodiment of the Bush administration policy of privatizing military functions." The company, which was founded in 1996, made headlines in 2004 when four of its men were ambushed and set on fire by Sunni gunmen in Fallujah. The charred remains of two of the men were hung on a bridge for public display. The families of the four men are suing Blackwater for wrongful death, raising a lot of questions about accountability and oversight when private contractors play a major role in war. Jeremy Scahill is a Polk Award-winning journalist who is a frequent contributor to The Nation and a correspondent for the radio and TV show, "Democracy Now." Jeremy Scahill -- if you wanted to write about a private military contractor, why did you focus on Blackwater?

--Blackwater: USA in Fallujah

Bush is ideologically allied with Hegel, for whom the "state" is "God". That notion opposes every "American" value, including that of truly religious folk who find the equation of "God" with the "state" a blasphemous notion. And so it is, not merely of religion but of reason.

Bushism is anathema to American ideals espoused by real patriots like Thomas Jefferson whom Bush and Dick Cheney would have derided as "pro-French". James Madison who wrote the first draft of our Constitution would have been demonized as "quaint" by idiots like Gen. Hayden and Al Gonzales.

Bush must surely hate our Declaration of Independence. In it, Thomas Jefferson sides generally with "insurgencies" against despots. Bush will, of course, have missed or dismissed obvious analogies to Iraqi civilians upon whom the US has waged not a war --but a crime punishable by death under our own federal statutes!

It was William Pitt, Earl of Chatham in England who denounced the British position in our war of independence. His words ring so very true today, words that Bush must surely hate:

If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms -- never! never! never!

--William Pitt the elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, Viscount Pitt of Burton-Pynsent , byname The Great Commoner, 1708-1778

Bush is blinded by raw, ruthless ambition. Like Dick Cheney and the robber barons of privilege, they are blind to obvious analogy. America is not fighting for freedom against terrorism in Iraq. Rather, Bush embodies monolithic corporate totalitarianism and the theft of Iraq's natural resources. Never mind that Iraq was a sovereign nation that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with 911, Bush's ex post facto lies about it notwithstanding. The record clearly proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bush's quarrel with Saddam had to do with the fact that Saddam favored lower prices for oil while Bush, OPEC, and the Saudis in particular favored higher prices.

Bush is anti-American. Bush is not fighting for Americans in Iraq. He is fighting to further enrich corporate fascist powers who would enslave you! Bush has more in common with Hitler and Stalin than with Madison or Jefferson.

The American republic at the time Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence was the latest development in a liberal trend that had begun with the English Civil War. Certainly, Oliver Cromwell dismissed Parliament in a fit of pique; certainly he arrogated unto himself the powers of an absolute dictator but stopped short of taking the title. He was, he said, a Lord Protector. Charles I was most certainly England's last absolute despot in the Hobbesian, Hegelian sense of the word.

---

Democrats Fight Heroically for the Moral Middle Ground!

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is wrong about Bush when she says he is not worth impeaching. He is not worth not impeaching and neither is the rest of his junta. At a time when the only scientific study of Iraqi deaths now estimates almost a million Iraqi civilians are dead as a direct result of the evil, criminal conspiracy of a handful of administration miscreants, it is unthinkable that Democrats should try to triangulate a moral middle ground.

The legal standard to begin criminal charges is probable cause. Probable cause will normally empanel a Grand Jury with sweeping subpoena powers. In the case of Dick Cheney, there is often an open and shut case in the public record. Specifically, his participation with George W. Bush in a fraud perpetrated upon the America people. Not a mere felony under RICO statutes, this fraud amounts to high treason. The conspirators have been named: Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld.

Representative Dennis Kucinich has most certainly learned by now how lonely it must be to have courage. Kucinich has moved to impeach Dick Cheney.

Throw these liars out of office. Demand that they be impeached. Demand that the Congress act now!

Nancy Pelosi is playing cynical politics with this issue. Bush is not worth impeaching, she says. If he's not worth impeaching, then he is most certainly not worth the deaths of some one million innocent Iraqi civilians [See: Iraqi Deaths Due to Invasion]. He is most certainly not worth the lives of US service personnel sacrificed for Bush's psychotic delusions of vainglorious conquest. He is most certainly not worth the harms done the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the rule of law. He is most certainly not worth the betrayal we have suffered, the lies we have endured, the threats we must survive. Bush is not worth another hour, another minute in the White House.

It is clear to the world that a prima facie case --for which the penalty is death --can be made against the lot of them: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld! To play politics at this tragic, crucial moment in our history is cynical, cruel, unforgivable. If Pelosi will not move, then she risks being considered an accessory to Bushco's perpetual betrayal of the American people.

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The Existentialist Cowboy

Conservative Lies
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Why Conservatives Hate America
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Bush

Spread the word:

How Bush Sold Out America

Bush is an ideological hit man for a radical, extremist cabal that hates America and the Constitution. Bush was put into office to pull off a job: execute a contract on the very source of our freedom, the Bill of Rights. Bush's mission: do a job on American freedom, rollback the achievements of the Supreme Court, secure a dictatorship for the blessings --not of liberty --but of big, fat, juicy defense contracts.

So far, Bush has done a splendid job for an unholy alliance of corporatist fascists, radical fundies, and simple crooks like Jack Abramoff who were just in it for quick bucks. Pat Robertson took it all seriously, thinking Bush to be on a mission from God to murder Hugo Chavez and to allow black people to die of criminal neglect in times of natural disaster.

Bush hates what America stood for. In several acts of high treason, Bush has deliberately subverted the principles upon which our late republic was founded! He made his preferences known very early on.

This would be a whole lot easier if this was a dictatorship...heh heh heh ...just so long as I'm the dictator!

At the time Bush said that, America was holding on by a thread. Just one more vote on SCOTUS would give conservatives the dictatorship Bush dreamed of. Too much could go wrong for Democracy and did. It was called Bush v Gore, a political and disingenuous decision that did not even address the issues cited as compelling the case.

When the court was finally forced to conjure a point of law in its desperate search for a reason for the stay to save the Bush presidency, the justices (probably Scalia) hit upon the argument that the Florida Supreme Court violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protecion clause — that Florida's voters were being treated unequally by the lack of a standard in counting ballots. The bitter irony of this decision, as Bugliosi points out, is that "the equal protection clause ... was tailor-made for blacks" after the Civil War, intended to ensure the civil rights of former slaves. In the present case, the black vote was the most likely to be negated by the court's decision to end the recount.

--Howard Garcia, In Bush v. Gore, Supreme Court Conservatives Brought Disgrace on Their Institution

That SCOTUS' citation of the 14th was just a ruse is proven by the fact that the court's decision offers up a "remedy" that doesn't even address the 14th. How bloody cynical can you get?

...leading professors of constitutional law such as Ackerman and New York University's Ronald Dworkin, [believed that ] naked political self-interest drove the Court's five conservatives to halt the recount ordered by the Florida supreme court. It was not, as the majority opinion stated, that in violation of well-settled Equal Protection jurisprudence the Florida recount in a variety of ways debased or diluted the weight of citizens' votes. Nor was it as the majority held that under Florida law as interpreted by the Florida supreme court (in response to a question posed to it by the U.S. Supreme Court) no time was left to conduct a constitutionally proper recount because December 12 was the outside deadline for Florida to choose its presidential electors. All that was window dressing.

--The continuing controversy over Bush v. Gore

In Bush v Gore, the conservatives sold out America, the Constitution, and stuck us with a would be dictator of no talent, no intellect, no humanity! Bush is not redeemed by his megalomaniacal ambitions, his vainglorious dreams of world conquest for Jesus and Jews of a neocon persuasion. Not elected, Bush DOES NOT represent the people of America.

I know how we came to this. The American people must bear awesome responsibility. The American people had not been vigilant. Ignorance of the Constitution is widespread throughout every demographic segment. Our history, the very principles of our founding, was and continues to be all but ignored in far too many school districts. A brief civics lesson may be in order.

PBS "The Supreme Court" Episode One

I wish the excerpt had been longer. The end observation is witty but not historically accurate and, I am sure, it was not intended to be. The significance of Marbury v Madison is that it established the principle of Judicial Review, the right and the power of the Supreme Court to rule on the Constitutionality of laws passed by the Legislative. The Constitution does not expressly authorize judicial review although the founders had thought about it. Justice Marshall settled the issue with Marbury v Madison.

The government of the United States is of the latter description. The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing; if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts pro- [5 U.S. 137, 177] hibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act.

--Justice John Marshall, Marbury v Madison

The right wing must hate the principle of "popular sovereignty" because they have been attacking it since the founders wrote "We the people..." European style monarchies were often epitomized by Louis XIV who summed up his position succinctly: L'Etat! C'est Moi! Bush has assumed as much power with considerably less style. He is content to role up absolute rule in just two words, unitary executive, a euphemism for dictatorship.

How Bush Packed the Court

Mention the term popular sovereignty in America and you get funny looks. Are you talking about 'soverignty's" new video?. The idea that the people themselves are sovereign seems as abstract as relativity, string theory, or curved space-time. The idea that a Bill of Rights is a check on the unbridled power of government over individual liberties seems, to use Alberto Gonzales' term, quaint.

"Just One More Vote Needed"

I cannot imagine Alito, often called "Scalito", defending the rights of mere people against a Moloch of Bushco's devising. The following video had been unavailable but is apparently back on line. It is a must see. I suggest that you follow to YouTube, utilize keepvid.com to download and keep it.

The idiocy and the absurdities never seem to stop. This just in...

Iraq like historic US war, says Bush

Jim Gerstenzang in Martinsburg, West Virginia
July 6, 2007

THE US President, George Bush, has compared the war in Iraq with the US war for independence in his Fourth of July speech.

Like the revolutionaries who "dropped their pitchforks and picked up their muskets to fight for liberty", Mr Bush said American soldiers were fighting "a new and unprecedented war" to protect US freedom.

What an idiot! The following is the best analogy to the American war of independence. It is from William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham, on the floor of the Parliament, urging the British government to get out of America.

My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we cannot act with success, nor suffer with honour, calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of Majesty from the delusions which surround it. You cannot, I venture to say, you cannot conquer America.

" What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. - You may swell every expense, and strain every effort, still more extravagantly; accumulate every assistance you can beg or borrow; traffic and barter with every pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country.

Your efforts are forever vain and impotent-doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms-never-never-never.

--William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-7, On Affairs in America 1777.

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And something completely different. This might have been one of my hang outs somewhere between downtown Houston and Gilley's.

I'll have a Dos Equis! Yeeeeee hawwwww!

The Existentialist Cowboy

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Bush

Spread the word:

The Indictment of Bush and Cheney

People of the United States, on this, the day we celebrate our independence and our freedom, bring down this lawless administration! We shall bring down this tyrant by affirming the very principles of our founding, the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

--Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, July, 1176

We had the guts to take on and defeat a King. We now have the resolve and the legal power to oust a usurper, a would-be dictator. Do it! We have that power. It is time to exercise it. It is time to effect a revolution. It is time to bring to an end this illegitimate occupation of the White House, this perpetual war crime against the people of Iraq.

It is time to indict Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell for having defrauded the people of the United States.

If Bush ever had a right to "rule", he has of his own actions, lost it. His administration daily and deliberately flouts the will of the people, the law, and the Constitution. Bush works overtly to subvert the rule of law. Bush thumbs his nose at Congress, the people, the courts. He recognizes no moral or legal restraints upon his reckless, lawless, and subversive behavior.

He asserts, upon no basis whatsoever, an evil and false theory: a unitary executive, a right wing cult code word for a dictatorship never envisioned by the our founders at any time! It is a concept so pernicious Mussolini might have blushed. Our founding fathers, intelligent, articulate, responsible, worked mightly to prevent anything of the sort ever taking root like an evil weed on this soil.

It's time for this blighted Bush to leave and leave now while there are still shreds of law with which a new republic, a rebirth of freedom might be stitched in the wake this national horror.

Olberman has spoken the truth about Bush's incompetent yet tyrannical reign of terror and faux terrorism.

It's time for Bush to go and it is time for the people to act.

An indictment against George W. Bush has been prepared by a former Federal Prosecutor of some 20 years experience in that role. All that is needed now is a courageous Federal Judge to empanel a Grand Jury. If such a judge should read this blog, please consider this post and the following "indictment" a people's appeal that you empanel a Grand Jury to consider these charges. Readers of this blog, please forward this article to every judge you know and to everyone you know who may know such a judge.

If the indictment needs an update or other revisions, its author Elizabeth de la Vega is an experienced Federal Prosecutor. I would be hopeful that she would step up to that task at this critical time in our nation's history.

Here is the indictment authored by former Federal Prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega via Tomdispatch:

The Indictment

United States v. George W. Bush et al.

By Elizabeth de la Vega

Assistant United States Attorney: Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen. We're here today in the case of United States v. George W. Bush et al. In addition to President Bush, the defendants are Vice President Richard B. Cheney, former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice -- who's now the Secretary of State, of course -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

It's a one-count proposed indictment: Conspiracy to Defraud the United States in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371. I'll explain the law that applies to the case this afternoon, but I'm going to hand out the indictment now, so you'll have some context for that explanation. Take as long as you need to read it, and then feel free to take your lunch break, but please leave your copy of the indictment with the foreperson. We'll meet back at one o'clock.

***

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, )  Criminal No.
Plaintiff,         )
)  Conspiracy to Defraud
v.  )    the United States
)
GEORGE W. BUSH,   )  18 U.S.C. Section 371
RICHARD B. CHENEY,  )
CONDOLEEZZA RICE,  )
DONALD M. RUMSFELD, and         )
COLIN POWELL,   )
Defendants )

INDICTMENT

THE GRAND JURY CHARGES:

Introductory Allegations
At times relevant to this Indictment:

1. The primary law of the United States Federal Government was set forth in the U.S. Constitution ("Constitution"), which provides that the first branch of government is the Legislative Branch ("Congress"). Pursuant to Article I, Section 8, Congress has certain powers and obligations regarding oversight of foreign affairs, including the powers to: (1) declare war; (2) raise and support the armed forces; and (3) tax and spend for the common good.

2. Article II of the Constitution establishes the Executive Branch. The Executive Power of the United States is vested in the President, who is also the Commander in Chief of the Armed Services.

3. Defendant GEORGE W. BUSH ("BUSH") has been employed as President of the United States since January 20, 2001. On that day, BUSH took a constitutionally mandated oath to faithfully execute the Office of President and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. BUSH is also constitutionally obligated to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.


4. As Chief Executive, BUSH exercised authority, direction, and control over the entire Executive Branch, which includes the White House, the Office of the Vice President, the Departments of State, Defense, and others, and the National Security Council.

5. Defendant RICHARD B. CHENEY ("CHENEY") has been employed as Vice President of the United States since January 20, 2001.

6. Defendant CONDOLEEZZA RICE ("RICE") was employed as the National Security Adviser from January 2001 to January 2005, when she became Secretary of State, a position she holds as of the date of this indictment. As National Security Adviser, RICE exercised direction, control, and authority over the National Security Council, which coordinates various national security and foreign policy agencies, including the Departments of Defense and State.


7. Defendant DONALD M. RUMSFELD ("RUMSFELD") has been employed as Secretary of Defense since January 2001.

8. Defendant COLIN M. POWELL ("POWELL") was employed as Secretary of State from January 2001 through January of 2005.

9. Before assuming their offices, CHENEY, RICE, RUMSFELD and POWELL took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.

10. As employees of the Executive Branch, BUSH, CHENEY, RICE, RUMSFELD, and POWELL were governed by Executive Orders 12674 and 12731. These Orders provide that Executive Branch employees hold their positions as a public trust and that the American people have a right to expect that they will fulfill that trust in accordance with certain ethical standards and principles. These include abiding by the Constitution and laws of the United States, as well as not using their offices to further private goals and interests.

11. Pursuant to the Constitution, their oaths of office, their status as Executive Branch employees, and their presence in the United States, BUSH, CHENEY, RICE, RUMSFELD, and POWELL, and their subordinates and employees, are required to obey Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, which prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States.

12. As used in Section 371, the term "to defraud the United States" means "to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful government functions by deceit, craft, trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest." The term also means to "impair, obstruct, or defeat the lawful function of any department of government" by the use of "false or fraudulent pretenses or representations."

13. A "false" or "fraudulent" representation is one that is: (a) made with knowledge that it is untrue; (b) a half-truth; (c) made without a reasonable basis or with reckless indifference as to whether it is, in fact, true or false; or (d) literally true, but intentionally presented in a manner reasonably calculated to deceive a person of ordinary prudence and intelligence. The knowing concealment or omission of information that a reasonable person would consider important in deciding an issue also constitutes fraud.

14. Congress is a "department of the United States" within the meaning of Section 371. In addition, hearings regarding funding for military action and authorization to use military force are "lawful functions" of Congress.

15. Accordingly, the presentation of information to Congress and the general public through deceit, craft, trickery, dishonest means, and fraudulent representations, including lies, half-truths, material omissions, and statements made with reckless indifference to their truth or falsity, while knowing and intending that such fraudulent representations would influence Congress' decisions regarding authorization to use military force and funding for military action, constitutes interfering with, obstructing, impairing, and defeating a lawful government function of a department of the United States within the meaning of Section 371.

The Conspiracy to Defraud the United States

16. Beginning on or about a date unknown, but no later than August of 2002, and continuing to the present, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the defendants,

GEORGE W. BUSH,

RICHARD B. CHENEY,

CONDOLEEZZA RICE,

DONALD M. RUMSFELD, and

COLIN M. POWELL,

and others known and unknown, did knowingly and intentionally conspire to defraud the United States by using deceit, craft, trickery, dishonest means, false and fraudulent representations, including ones made without a reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to their truth or falsity, and omitting to state material facts necessary to make their representations truthful, fair and accurate, while knowing and intending that their false and fraudulent representations would influence the public and the deliberations of Congress with regard to authorization of a preventive war against Iraq, thereby defeating, obstructing, impairing, and interfering with Congress' lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs and making appropriations.

17. The Early Months of the Bush-Cheney Administration: Prior to January of 2001, BUSH, CHENEY, and RUMSFELD each demonstrated a predisposition to employ U.S. military force to invade the Middle East, including, specifically, to forcibly remove Saddam Hussein.

18. Since 1992, CHENEY has endorsed a "bold foreign policy" that includes using military force to "punish" or "threaten to punish" possible aggressors in order to protect the United States's access to Persian Gulf oil and to halt proliferation of weapons of mass destruction ("WMD"), a term that is customarily used to describe chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

19. On or about January 26, 1998, RUMSFELD and seven other future BUSH-CHENEY administration appointees signed a letter sent by a conservative policy institute named "Project for a New American Century" ("PNAC") to then President William Clinton, which called for U.S. military action to forcibly remove Saddam Hussein from power.

20. In January 1999, BUSH named RICE and her future Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley ("Hadley"), as his presidential-campaign foreign-policy advisers, along with future Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz ("Wolfowitz") and four others who had publicly advocated forcibly removing Saddam Hussein.

21. On or before September 2000, 12 future BUSH-CHENEY administration appointees, including Wolfowitz, former Assistant to Vice President CHENEY, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Rumsfeld's long-term aide Stephen Cambone, participated in drafting "Rebuilding America's Defenses," a PNAC policy statement which asserted that the "need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." PNAC acknowledged that its goals would take a long time to achieve "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor."

22. Once BUSH became the Republican candidate in the 2000 presidential election campaign, he and CHENEY informed the general public that they would be reluctant to use military force and did not believe that the United States should engage in "nation-building."

23. On and after January 20, 2001, BUSH and CHENEY caused to be appointed as senior foreign policy advisors and consultants, at least thirty-four persons who had publicly endorsed the PNAC principles of United States global preeminence and use of force to "punish" or "threaten to punish" emerging threats from weapons of mass destruction ("WMD") or impediments to United States access to oil in the Middle East. Of those appointees, eighteen had also publicly advocated forcibly removing Saddam Hussein.

24. In late December 2000, BUSH and CHENEY advised outgoing President William J. Clinton and others that, among potential foreign policy issues, BUSH's primary concern was Iraq.

25. On February 11, 2001, BUSH ordered the first airstrikes since 1998 to be conducted outside of the United Nations ("UN") agreed-upon No-Fly zones, to get Saddam Hussein's "attention."

26. The Attacks of September 11, 2001. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four commercial airplanes. They crashed two planes into the World Trade Towers in New York City and another into the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. In total, nearly 3,000 people died as a result of the September 11, 2001, attacks ("9/11").

27. Shortly afterward, United States intelligence agencies determined that 9/11 was the work of the terrorist organization al Qaeda, spearheaded by Osama Bin Laden. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from Yemen, and two from Lebanon. This information, along with the conclusion that no evidence linked Saddam Hussein to the attacks or al Qaeda, was immediately communicated to BUSH, CHENEY, RICE, RUMSFELD, POWELL, and others.

28. BUSH-CHENEY administration members began discussing an invasion of Iraq immediately after 9/11. BUSH, RUMSFELD and others also assigned various subordinates, including former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, CIA Director George Tenet, and General Richard Meyers to look for intelligence that could justify attacking Saddam Hussein's regime.

29. On September 17, 2001, BUSH secretly ordered the formulation of preliminary plans for an invasion of Iraq, while admitting to his aides that no evidence existed to justify an attack.

30. On or about September 18, 2001, in response to BUSH's request, Clarke sent RICE a memo that stated: (a) the case for linking Hussein to 9/11 was weak; (b) only anecdotal evidence linked Hussein to al Qaeda; (c) Osama Bin Laden resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein; and (d) there was no confirmed reporting of Saddam cooperating with Bin Laden on unconventional weapons.

31. On September 20, 2001, BUSH informed British Prime Minister Tony Blair that after Afghanistan, the United States and Britain should return to the issue of invading Iraq.

32. U.S. Intelligence Community Assessments of Risk from Iraq in Effect on November 2001. On occasion, Executive Branch officials request assessments of current intelligence on risks posed by WMD in a given country. Although such assessments are coordinated by the Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA"), the final product incorporates the analyses, including dissenting opinions, of the intelligence branches of the Departments of State, Energy, Defense, the National Security Agency, and others, which are collectively called the Intelligence Community ("IC").

33. As of November 2001, the most recent assessment on Iraq was a December 2000 classified Intelligence Community Assessment ("ICA") called "Iraq: Steadily Pursuing WMD Capabilities." This ICA was a comprehensive update on possible Iraqi efforts to rebuild WMD and weapons delivery systems after the 1998 departure of International Atomic Energy Agency ("IAEA") representatives and UN weapons inspectors, who are collectively referred to as the United Nations Special Commission ("UNSCOM").

34. Regarding Iraq's possible nuclear program, the December 2000 NIE unanimously concluded that:

(a) The IAEA and UNSCOM had destroyed or neutralized Iraq's nuclear infrastructure, but Iraq still had a foundation for future nuclear reconstitution;

(b) Iraq was continuing low-level theoretical research and training, and attempting to obtain dual-use items that cold be used to reconstitute its nuclear program;

(c) if Iraq acquired a significant quantity of fissile material through foreign assistance, it could have a crude nuclear weapon within a year; if Iraq received foreign assistance, it would take five to seven years to produce enough weapons-grade fissile material for a nuclear weapon; and
(d) Iraq did not appear to have reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.

35. Escalation of Military Activity and Planning for Invasion of Iraq. On November 21, 2001, BUSH secretly ordered preparation of a formal war plan for invading Iraq. Thereafter, for sixteen months, the BUSH-CHENEY administration expended substantial U.S. government funds in military activity and planning for invasion of Iraq, all without notice to, or approval by, the U.S. Congress.

36. BUSH did not receive an extensive briefing about possible WMD in Iraq before ordering a war plan, nor did he discuss the legitimacy of grounds for war with anyone. BUSH received no such briefing until December 21, 2002.

37. On or about November 27, 2001, RUMSFELD asked General "Tommy" Franks, head of Central Command, which supervises Middle East operations, to immediately prepare an Iraq war plan in response to BUSH's order.

38. Thereafter, Franks discussed numerous revised Iraq war plans with RUMSFELD. Between December 2001 and August 2002, BUSH, CHENEY, RICE, RUMSFELD, POWELL, and others held at least five lengthy meetings about Franks' plans. In August, BUSH ordered Franks to prepare to invade Iraq using the "Hybrid Plan," a combination of the "Running Start" and "Generated Start" plans developed previously.

39. During 2002, the United States and Great Britain increased air strikes in order to degrade Iraqi air defenses and began deploying troops to areas around Iraq.

40. On or about July 30, 2002, without approval by, or notice to, Congress, BUSH caused the diversion of $700 million from Afghanistan war funds into Iraq invasion preparations.

41. On September 5, 2002, without approval by, or notice to, Congress, BUSH caused approximately 100 United States and British aircraft to launch ballistic missiles at Iraq's major western air-defense facility.

42. By September 12, 2002, without approval by, or notice to, Congress, BUSH had caused the movement of 40,000 military personnel and over 350,000 tons of equipment to areas around Iraq. Franks also ordered Central Command to be moved to Al Udeid Air Base near Doha, Qatar.

43. Behind-the-Scenes Strategizing with British Officials: On or before March 2002, BUSH, RICE, Wolfowitz, and others secretly began discussing ways to persuade the public and foreign allies to accept Bush's goal of invading Iraq, with British Prime Minister Tony Blair ("Blair") and his advisers.

44. On March 12, 2002, in Washington, DC, RICE met with Blair's Foreign Policy Adviser Sir David Manning and informed him of BUSH's problems with persuading "international opinion that military action against Iraq was necessary and justified."

45. On March 17, 2002, in Washington, DC, British Ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer advised Wolfowitz that the two countries should "wrongfoot" Saddam Hussein by seeking a UN resolution that would require the readmission of weapons inspectors with the expectation that Saddam would create a justification for war by obstructing the inspections.

46. On April 6, 2002, in Crawford, Texas, BUSH and Blair discussed strategies to sway public opinion regarding military action in Iraq. Blair agreed to support a United States invasion if the two countries obtained a UN resolution first.

47. In mid-July, 2002, in Washington, DC, White House officials discussed Iraq with visiting British officials. Upon their return to London, these officials reported the talks to Blair in a meeting at 10 Downing St. on July 23, 2002. Among other things, Blair's advisers suggested that he urge BUSH to devise a more realistic political strategy for attacking Iraq, because a desire for "regime change" would not justify military action under international law.

48. In mid-July, 2002, in Washington, DC, CIA Director Tenet and others talked about the Bush administration's intentions regarding Iraq with Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of British Intelligence.

49. On July 23, 2002, during the Downing St. meeting described above, Dearlove informed Blair that in the United States "Military action was now seen as inevitable. BUSH wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

50. On July 23, 2002, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also noted that BUSH had "made up his mind to take military action." Straw said he would urge POWELL to persuade BUSH to seek a UN resolution requiring Saddam Hussein to readmit weapons inspectors, in effect, suggesting the "wrongfooting" strategy that Meyer had described to Wolfowitz.

51. Behind-the-Scenes Efforts to Fix Intelligence Around the Policy. Within weeks after learning from Clarke, Tenet, and others that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had no involvement with either 9/11 or al Qaeda, RUMSFELD caused Deputy Undersecretary for Defense Douglas Feith ("Feith") to secretly create the Counter Terrorism Group ("CTEG"), a small unit of political appointees whose mission was to find links between Iraq and al Qaeda by reviewing raw intelligence that previously had been discarded as unreliable. CTEG reported weekly to RUMSFELD's long-term associate Stephen Cambone, and occasionally presented information directly to Wolfowitz, thereby circumventing standard IC procedures.

52. At some time in 2002, Feith also designated political appointees to work under his supervision in the newly-created Office of Special Plans, whose purpose was to develop and package information for use in marketing the President's plan for an invasion of Iraq. In the fall of 2002, this group presented information directly to RUMSFELD, to RICE's office, and to CHENEY's office, thereby circumventing standard IC procedures.

53. In the spring of 2002, CHENEY and his former aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, began visiting CIA headquarters to question CIA agents' assessments about Iraq. RUMSFELD and Deputy National Security Adviser Hadley also repeatedly pressed CIA Director Tenet and his subordinates to present a stronger case against Iraq.

54. Bush's Creation of the White House Iraq Group. By the summer of 2002, domestic and international support for BUSH's plan to invade Iraq was lukewarm. At the same time, Bush's chief political strategist and Senior Adviser Karl Rove and Kenneth Mehlman, head of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, were beginning to coordinate the President's involvement in the November 7, 2002, congressional election. Their overall goal was to gain Republican majorities in both houses of Congress so that the President would have the greatest possible support for his policies. Rove had specifically recommended that Republicans "focus on war" as a way to win elections. Consequently, in the summer of 2002, BUSH's efforts to win support for an invasion of Iraq and his efforts to assist Republican congressional candidates became inextricably intertwined.

55. In the summer of 2002, BUSH caused the creation of the White House Iraq Group, which was cochaired by BUSH's long-term political operatives Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, who remained BUSH's close associate even though she had resigned her position as Counselor to the President. This team, also called WHIG, was largely a political and public-relations entity that included RICE, Hadley, President's Chief of Staff Andrew Card, President's legislative liaison Nicholas Calio, CHENEY's key aide and veteran Republican political strategist Mary Matalin, CHENEY's senior adviser Libby, and James Wilkinson, another Republican campaign consultant.

56. On or about September 6, 2002, Rove and Card publicly announced that: (a) the BUSH-CHENEY administration was beginning to "roll out" its case for an invasion of Iraq; (b) its public-relations campaign was specifically directed at forcing Congress to pass a resolution authorizing the President to use military force in Iraq; (c) BUSH wanted the resolution passed in about five weeks, before the 2002 election; and (d) in the end, it would be difficult for any legislator to vote against it.

57. The Defendants' Massive Fraud to "Market" an invasion of Iraq. On or about September 4, 2002, BUSH staged a photo opportunity with a bipartisan group of congressional leaders, after which he falsely and fraudulently announced that Iraq posed a serious threat to the safety of the United States and the world, while concealing from Congress and the American people the material facts that: (a) he had no reasonable basis whatsoever for his assertion; (b) he had never discussed the legitimacy of the grounds for an attack against Iraq with anyone; (c) he had never extensively reviewed existing intelligence regarding any possible threat from Iraq; (d) he had not requested an updated intelligence assessment on Iraq; (e) the United States intelligence assessment then in effect stated that Iraq had neither nuclear weapons nor a nuclear weapons program; and (f) the IC had consistently reported that Iraq had no involvement in 9/11 and no relationship with al Qaeda.

58. On September 4, 2002, BUSH also falsely and fraudulently claimed he was beginning an "open dialogue" with the American public, with Congress, and with United States allies to decide how to respond to Iraq, while concealing the material facts that he: (a) had requested a formal plan to invade Iraq nearly a year before; (b) had been conducting significant military and nonmilitary planning and attacks against Iraq for a year; (c) had directed significant military deployment to areas around Iraq; (d) was planning a massive air assault against Iraq's air defense facility for the next day; and (e) intended to work with the UN only to create a justification to use military force against Iraq.

59. Thereafter, the defendants and WHIG executed a calculated and wide-ranging strategy to deceive Congress and the American people by making hundreds of false and fraudulent representations that were only half-true, or literally true but misleading; by concealing material facts; and by making statements without a reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to their truth, regarding, among other things:

(a) their true intent to invade Iraq;

(b) the extent of military buildup and force used against Iraq without notice to or approval by Congress;

(c) their true purpose in seeking a Congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq;

(d) their true intent to use their involvement in seeking a UN resolution requiring Iraq to cooperate with weapons inspectors as a sham; and

(e) their claimed justifications for invading Iraq, including but not limited to:

* The alleged connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11, 2001;

* The alleged connection between Iraq and al Qaeda;

* The alleged connection between Saddam Hussein and any terrorists whose primary animus was directed towards the United States;

* Saddam Hussein's alleged intent to attack the United States in any way;

• Saddam Hussein's possession of nuclear weapons and the status of any alleged ongoing nuclear weapons programs;

* The lack of any reasonable basis for asserting with certainty that Saddam Hussein was actively manufacturing chemical and biological weapons; and

*The alleged urgency of any threat posed to the United States by Saddam Hussein.

60. Congressional Joint Resolution to Authorize Use of Force Against Iraq. As a result of the defendants' false and fraudulent "marketing" of the President's plan to invade Iraq, on October 11, 2002, the U.S Congress, acting pursuant to its Article I constitutional authority to oversee and authorize use of military force, passed a Congressional Joint Resolution to Authorize Use of Force Against Iraq ["the Resolution"] which stated:

The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to--

(a) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and

(b) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.

61. The Resolution required the President to, either before or within 48 hours after exercising the authority to use force, make available to the Senate and the House of Representatives his determination that:

(a) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (1) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (2) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and

(b) acting pursuant to this resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

62. The Resolution also required the President to, at least every 60 days, present Congress a report on "matters relevant to this joint resolution."

63. In furtherance of the above-described conspiracy, the defendants and their coconspirators committed and caused to be committed the following overt acts:

Overt Acts

A. On December 9, 2001, CHENEY announced on NBC's Meet the Press that "it was pretty well confirmed" that lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had met the head of Iraqi intelligence in Prague in April 2001, which statement was, as CHENEY well knew, made without reasonable basis and with reckless disregard for the truth, because it was based on a single witness's uncorroborated allegation that had not been fully investigated by U.S. intelligence agencies.

B. On July 15, 2002, POWELL stated on Ted Koppel's Nightline: "What we have consistently said is that the President has no plan on his desk to invade Iraq at the moment, nor has one been presented to him, nor have his advisors come together to put a plan to him," which statement was deliberately false and misleading in that it deceitfully implied the President was not planning an invasion of Iraq when, as POWELL well knew, the President was close to finalizing detailed military plans for such an invasion that he had ordered months previously.

C. On August 26, 2002, CHENEY made numerous false and fraudulent statements including: "Simply stated there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us," when, as CHENEY well knew, this statement was made without reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to the truth in that the IC's then prevailing assessment was that Iraq had neither nuclear weapons nor a reconstituted nuclear weapons program.

D. On September 7, 2002, appearing publicly with Blair, BUSH claimed a recent IAEA report stated that Iraq was "six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon" and "I don't know what more evidence we need," which statements were made without basis and with reckless indifference to the truth in that: (1) the IAEA had not even been present in Iraq since 1998; and (2) the report the IAEA did write in 1998 had concluded there was no indication that Iraq had the physical capacity to produce weapons-usable nuclear material or that it had attempted to obtain such material.

E. On September 8, 2002, on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, RICE asserted that Saddam Hussein was acquiring aluminum tubes that were "only suited" for nuclear centrifuge use, which statement was deliberately false and fraudulent, and made with reckless indifference to the truth in that it omitted to state the following material facts: (1) the U.S. intelligence community was deeply divided about the likely use of the tubes; (2) there were at least fifteen intelligence reports written since April 2001 that cast doubt on the tubes' possible nuclear-related use; and (3) the U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons experts had concluded, after analyzing the tubes's specifications and the circumstances of the Iraqis' attempts to procure them, that the aluminum tubes were not well suited for nuclear centrifuge use and were more likely intended for artillery rocket production.

F. On September 8, 2002, RUMSFELD stated on Face the Nation: "Imagine a September 11th, with weapons of mass destruction. It's not three thousand, it's tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children," which statement was deliberately fraudulent and misleading in that it implied without reasonable basis and in direct contradiction to then prevailing intelligence that Saddam Hussein had no operational relationship with al Qaeda and was unlikely to provide weapons to terrorists.

G. On September 19, 2002, RUMSFELD told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein," which statement was, as Rumsfeld well knew, made without reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to the truth in that: (1) Hussein had not acted aggressively toward the United States since his alleged attempt to assassinate President George H. W. Bush in 1993; (2) Iraq's military forces and equipment were severely debilitated because of UN sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War; (3) the IC's opinion was that Iraq's sponsorship of terrorists was limited to ones whose hostility was directed toward Israel; and (4) Iran, not Iraq, was the most active state sponsor of terrorism.

H. On October 1, 2002, the defendants caused the IC's updated classified National Intelligence Estimate to be delivered to Congress just hours before the beginning of debate on the Authorization to Use Military Force. At the same time, the defendants caused an unclassified "White Paper" to be published which was false and misleading in many respects in that it failed to include qualifying language and dissents that substantially weakened their argument that Iraq posed a serious threat to the United States.

I. On October 7, 2002, in Cincinnati, Ohio, BUSH made numerous deliberately misleading statements to the nation, including stating that in comparison to Iran and North Korea, Iraq posed a uniquely serious threat, which statement BUSH well knew was false and fraudulent in that it omitted to state the material fact that a State Department representative had been informed just three days previously that North Korea had actually already produced nuclear weapons. The defendants continued to conceal this information until after Congress passed the Authorization to Use Military Force against Iraq.

J. Between September 1, 2002, and November 2, 2002, BUSH traveled the country making in excess of thirty congressional-campaign speeches in which he falsely and fraudulently asserted that Iraq was a "serious threat" which required immediate action, when as he well knew, this assertion was made without reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to the truth.

K. In his January 28, 2003 State of the Union address, BUSH announced that the "British have recently learned that Iraq was seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa" which statement was fraudulent and misleading and made with reckless disregard for the truth, in that it falsely implied that the information was true, when the CIA had advised the administration more than once that the allegation was unsupported by available intelligence.

L. In a February 5, 2003, speech to the UN, POWELL falsely implied, without reasonable basis and with reckless disregard for the truth, that, among other things: (1) those who maintained that Iraq was purchasing aluminum tubes for rockets were allied with Saddam Hussein, even though POWELL well knew that both Department of Energy nuclear weapons experts and State Department intelligence analysts had concluded that the tubes were not suited for nuclear centrifuge use; and (2) Iraq had an ongoing cooperative relationship with al Qaeda, when he well knew that no intelligence agency had reached that conclusion.

M. On March 18, 2003, BUSH sent a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate which asserted that further reliance on diplomatic and peaceful means alone would not either: (1) adequately protect United States national security against the "continuing threat posed by Iraq" or (2) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant UN Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, which statement was made without reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to the truth in that, as BUSH well knew, the U.S. intelligence community had never reported that Iraq posed an urgent threat to the United States and there was no evidence whatsoever to prove that Iraq had either the means or intent to attack the U.S. directly or indirectly. The statement was also false because, as BUSH well knew, the UN weapons inspectors had not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and wanted to continue the inspection process because it was working well.

N. In the same March 18, 2003 letter, BUSH also represented that taking action pursuant to the Resolution was "consistent with continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001," which statement was entirely false and without reasonable basis in that, as BUSH well knew, Iraq had no involvement with al Qaeda or the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371.

A TRUE BILL

[Note: This is not an actual indictment] My comment: but it might become one!

Please keep in mind that the above indictment deals with only one count. There are, in fact, many cases that may be made against this outlaw. They will include but are not limited to the following future installments. Each heading is an impeachable offense.

• Lied about Iraq to Congress, the Public, and the United Nations.
• 9-11 Cover-Up and Obstruction of Justice.
• Violated Rights of Citizens including Habeas Corpus.
  
• NSA Program to spy on Citizens without Warrant.
• Violated International Treaties Including Geneva Convention.
  
• Actively Encouraged, as a Policy, Use of Torture.
• Gross Negligence on Hurricane Katrina.
• Iraq Contract Corruption--Bremer "Lost" $8 billion in cash, sole source awards, and gross negligence in managing the peace.
• Stole Ohio election in 2004.

Additional Resources:

• United States V. George W. Bush et al. (Paperback)by Elizabeth De La Vega
• American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
• Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush And Cheney
• Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
• Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War
• Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild

And for everyone who is "tired of being fucked around by imbeciles..."

---

The Bush Legacy: One Nation Destroyed; Another Betrayed

A war that many thought would last but a few weeks is now in its fifth year. In that time two nations have been laid waste to. Iraq from without. The US from within. The people of the US, meanwhile, are under attack by their own "President", an ambitious mediocrity obsessed with "religio-psychotic" visions of vainglorious conquest for Jesus and Exxon-Mobil.

When the war began, Iraq was a dictatorship and because of the US occupation it has since descended into Chaos. The US, meanwhile, had been a free republic but now falls victim to tyranny. This is a tale of two cities --Baghdad and Washington. It is a tale of two guilty dictators. One hanged by a Kangaroo court, the other suspended between our disbelief of his every lie and hell itself. It is a tale of two nations: a small nation rich with oil. The other -a super power in danger of becoming a failed state.

A quick victory on the ground might have kept the architects of Bush's crimes against humanity off the gallows. There is now no hope of victory, only a rising chorus threatening official villains with justice and truth.

There is no single article or documentary capable of putting all these pieces together. Among many excellent efforts, PBS Frontline: The Lost Year in Iraq must be commended. It is an exhaustive history of a single, pivotal year in which bunglers of Bush became the butchers of Baghdad.

The Lost Year in Iraq

The following videos are best viewed in order. Three videos made up what was originally broadcast on PBS Frontline in the US. However, since posting this article, someone complained and DailyMotion "pulled" an episode. I wonder which part of Bush's nefarious administration had been offended by the truth? Since that time, I have found a good selection of excerpts of the entire documentary with which to lead. I really don't know if these excerpts replace the offending portion of episode number one.

The videos are best viewed in order.

PBS FRONTLINE: THE LOST YEAR IN IRAQ 2 OF 3
Uploaded by Top-Notch112

PBS FRONTLINE: THE LOST YEAR IN IRAQ 3 OF 3
Uploaded by Top-Notch112

Of course, the Bush administration manipulated the media. But the degree to which mainstream media fell for the catnip is a disgusting story of complicity and lies.

Any search for accurate war reporting, however, must include Bill Moyers who typifies the clear thinking required of a professional journalist.

Dick Cheney's office, meanwhile, proved itself capable of committing treason to protect the cover story.

Once again, George W. Bush gives the rule of law a poke in the eye, commuting I. Scooter Libby's "sentence" in connection with the "outing" of Valerie Plame, a patriotic agent betrayed by this lawless administration for having done her job. In the 19th century traitors were hanged. Today, under Bush, they walk!

For some time now, Europeans have regarded the US as the single biggest threat to world peace. A new poll by Harris Research for the Financial Times reports that 32 per cent in five European countries consider the US a bigger threat than any other country.

In the US itself, only the youngest respondents share the European view of the danger posed by the US under Bush's incompetent and belligerent leadership. European concern about the US has remained level over the last year. We have this very worst regime in American history to thank for that sorry outcome.

The US failed in Iraq because the Bush administration is ideological, not pragmatic. They went to war upon a pack of lies, conclusions in search of premises. When things didn't work according to preconceived notions, Bush vowed to stay a course already failed. Vainly hoping for success but never capable of defining it, Bush fell victim to his own inflexibility, right-wing ideology and visions of vainglorious conquest.

The Existentialist Cowboy

Iraq Failure
War Crimes
Why Conservatives Hate America
GOP Crime Syndicate
Bush

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