The Noose Tightens

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Newsweek: "The Noose Tightens: Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and other top Bush officials could soon face legal jeopardy." Uh, don't forget Cheney now!

They should face trial somewhere. If our system is too corrupt to hold them accountable, rendition them to the Hague. There must be justice this time. No more sweeping national scandals and crimes under the national carpet.

The first step on the long journey back to some moral authority in the global community is accountability for our own war criminals and those who committed crimes against the Constitution.

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

McCain: Only The Last Victim of Junior's Fragile Ego

With apologies to Churchill (who owed a few of his own): Never have so many been so wrong about so much.

There are few things you’d less rather be right now than a conservative/regressive, and that is why. It’s like the old Firesign Theater bit: Everything You Know Is Wrong. “Dogs flew spaceships! The Aztecs invented the vacation! Men and women are the same sex! Our forefathers took drugs! Yes! That's right! Everything you know is wrong!”

And, what’s worse, everybody knows it except you. America is turning decisively away from its tragic thirty-year experiment with Reaganism-Bushism, and for very good reason. Regressives have ruled the country more or less unabated (Democrats, the supposed carriers of the liberal torch, were during these last three decades either frightened, centrist or irrelevent – and usually all three at once). Moreover, during the last years especially – the Cringe Decade – the right was particularly forceful, particularly unfettered, particularly successful at having its way, and particularly arrogant in the self-righteous belief in its authority on all things.

Once small problem, though. If you sat down with a pen and paper and tried to invent a more thorough litany of failure on the right’s watch, you’d be hard pressed to top what they’ve actually done. I suppose inadvertently nuking all the major cities of the United States would be worse, but I can’t think of much else. The simple truth is that the regressive movement took a great and proud and prosperous country and ran it into the ditch at 130 miles an hour. Worse yet, for them – and unlike the bad old years of Willie Horton, or invading Panama, or Clinton’s faux scandals – the public isn’t fooled anymore. They had already caught on to the game, in large part, a few years back, which is why Bush has been moribund in the absolute cellar of job approval ratings for almost the entirety of his second term. Things were already tough for the black hats, but then this economic crisis came and walloped people severely, right in the wallet. One thing about Americans – they’re seriously selfish. You take away their reputation and their liberties and their democracy and they might – might! – vote against you. You take away their money, they’ll rip your fucking lungs out, Bro.

And if John McCain seems particularly short on breath of late, that’s why. There’s nothing quite like the total absence of breathing organs to put a crimp in your respiratory function.

But this crackup is way, way bigger than the righteously deserved toilet training of one John Sidney McCain the Third. This is the end of an era, and not a moment too soon. It now looks like Democrats will win a 1932-style, landslide, realigning election (as I predicted one year ago), smashing McCain in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, picking up double-digit seats in the House, and possibly even gaining a filibuster-proof majority of 60 in the Senate. Even Mitch McConnell, a smug horror story of a minority leader for his decrepit party, looks like he’ll be losing his seat, along with such smarmy dreaded incumbents such as Elizabeth Dole and Norm Coleman. This has all the makings of a serious and even perhaps lethal spanking for the hated GOP.

That would leave wishy-washy sometime-conservative Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy as the sole remaining bulwark of regressivism in the American government. Which is to say none at all. It used to be said that ‘justices read election results too’, and never was that more true of anyone than of Kennedy, well before this year, but especially now. Even as we speak (and as I also predicted), we’re seeing many on the right scrambling now to reinvent themselves as progressives (for some, like David Brooks or Coleman, who had been lefties back when that was trendy, this represents a reconversion conversion). Anthony Kennedy will surely be on that list. In the 1930s, this same scenario developed, and a troglodyte majority on the Supreme Court started striking down New Deal legislation in a time of massive duress, only to have an angry public, Congress, and highly popular president turn on them. Kennedy won’t make that mistake. He ain’t gonna sacrifice his personal legacy to keep Clarence Thomas pure, that much we can guarantee. Can you imagine, for example, a Democratic Congress vigorously moving national health care, or jobs, legislation, and a Democratic president ceremoniously signing it into law, only for Kennedy to provide the swing vote on the Court striking it down as unconstitutional? Fat chance. The guy’s not suicidal, and he doesn’t want 300 million angry Americans trying to Google his address.

The trajectory of the regressive movement over the last thirty years has led us to this horrid place. At least you could say that their little mini-revolution began with some ideas, however disastrous those were, and however much they always masked the true kleptocratic purpose of the movement. Reagan had his Cold Warrior shtick, along with some notions of political economy he was peddling. Greedy and stupid Americans, their post-war prosperity already perceptibly beginning to slip away in the late 1970s, foolishly bought the whole package – anything to keep the wallet stuffed and the bloated car out of the hands of the repo man. Reagan surely did not win the Cold War, but he surely did exacerbate the steady unraveling of the middle class. The national debt was tripled, while the burden of taxes was shifted from the rich to the non-rich, and organized labor was undermined at every turn. Surprise, surprise – the rich got a lot richer, the poor got poorer, and the middle class stood still.

By the time we got to 2004, the bogus ideas were no longer even bothered with, as the regressive electoral appeal was reduced down to pure lies and a patent appeal to fear. The marketing genius Karl Rove managed to fool all of the people some of the time, and turned war hero John Kerry into someone to be feared and doubted, while war avoider George Bush became GI Joe. That’s a hell of a lot of political detergent to move off of supermarket shelves, but – along with some old-fashioned electoral fraud in Ohio, of course – it worked one last time. Bush bragged about winning political capital to spend in his second term, but you’d have to be as stupid and disingenuous as the little toad himself (the same guy who declared the Iraq war over before it actually began, and who said “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie”) to have believed that nonsense. The truth was that 2004 was the last gasp of the old black magic, and it just barely worked. Use lies, racism, homophobia, xenophobia and national security bogeymen to scare pathetically ill-informed Americans, and in non-recessionary times you could win another election. Back then, at least.

That game is over now, exhausted for a generation or more, though a shamefully and embarrassingly desperate John McCain is still trying to play it. And why wouldn’t he? If he doesn’t care about his honor and integrity and reputation – and he evidently doesn’t, at least compared to how much he cares about winning the presidency – what else is there for him to do? He can’t run on issues, he can’t run on solutions, he can’t run on his wonderful VP choice, and he can’t run on the peace and prosperity his party has delivered. Indeed, he has to run from all those things. That leaves only one other option, which is for McCain and his team of Rove proteges to do to Obama what Rove himself did to Kerry – that is, sow enough doubt about his trustworthiness in the minds of voters to make them hold their noses and default to the seemingly (but not really) safe choice of the seemingly (but not really) known quantity.

But it’s just not working anymore. In fact, so much is it not working anymore, that nowadays you have regressive politicians and pundits renouncing their own team for trying it. Where were these folks back in 1998 when a group of serious and serial philanderers impeached a president for lying about a blow job? Where were they when Rove and Bush told South Carolinians that McCain had fathered a child with a black mistress, or ridiculed Al Gore for supposedly having claimed to have invented the Internet? Where were they in 2002, when Saxby Chambliss, another Vietnam war avoider, ran ads morphing the face of triple-amputee Vietnam vet Max Cleland into those of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein? And where were they when Rove and Bush were swift-boating Kerry in 2004? I’ll tell you where. They were cheering it all on.

Not so much now. Dylan once said you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, but in 2008 you’d have to be an inter-galactic astronaut or the doorkeeper for Cheney’s underground bunker to not know. And so the regressive right blovitoriate is splitting before our very eyes, into two camps. One is the unreconstructed Neanderthal set, like William Kristol and Victor Davis Hanson, who can’t quite believe what they’re seeing (“But this can’t be right – we own the presidency!”), who thought the Sarah Palin pick was just plain inspired, and who are encouraging McCain to stop pussyfooting around already. Kristol, for example, watching it all just melt away, has been furiously trying to find a gambit to keep the regressive dream alive. First he advised McCain to go all Rove on Obama, which McCain did, sending Palin out to describe That One as having ‘palled around with terrorists’. Unreal. You know you’re in deep shit when Sarah Palin is your voice of moral authority (her best line yet has been her claim this week to be relieved that she has been fully exonerated by the Alaska legislature’s corruption probe, which in fact flat-out accused her of breaking the law by abusing power for personal gain).

Anyhow, having realized that Ayers accusations are actually diminishing McCain’s popularity rather than enhancing it, Kristol is now calling for McCain to fire everyone on the staff and for the “competent” McCain and Palin to just do constant press conferences until election day. Nevermind that allowing Palin to talk to the press or public in any unstructured environment would put McCain in danger of being on the ugly side of a fifty-state sweep right now. (You think I’m kidding? McCain is up a whopping six percent in Georgia at the moment, eight percent in Mississippi, and one percent in North Carolina, home of Jesse Helms. He’s currently losing by two points in that bastion of leftist fomentation, that revolutionary hotbed, the People’s Republic of North Dakota.) Perhaps the most amusing line of this entire election cycle came from the McCain campaign staff, (perhaps slightly miffed by the suggestion that they all lose their jobs), who claimed that Kristol, of all people, has now drunk from the cup of Obamania. Wow. Who needs a dictionary definition for paranoia when you’ve got that to work with?

The other great line that Kristol floated as a rationale for voters to choose McCain, and a theme of late among the drowning right-wing punditocracy, is that McCain should argue for votes by saying that he will be there to block what is sure to be a Democratic and – wait for it now – liberal (oooooooh!!) Congress. Let’s leave aside the obvious and traditional solution to such a quandary, which is that McCain could instead simply encourage voters to choose Republicans all up and down the ticket (could there be something toxic about the R-word in 2008?). But even apart from that rather obvious bit of logical lunacy, what sort of frighteningly vapid bonehead do you have to be to think that divided government is a winning notion in 2008? I mean, raise your hand if you think that what Americans want right now, in the middle of multiple crises, including one which is destroying their retirement savings and threatening their jobs, is a gridlocked government in which Congress passes legislation shot down by the president’s veto pen, and the president proposes solutions ignored by a Congress controlled by the other party. Do they really pay these guys big bucks to pen this sort of drivel? These morons are the pundicratic equivalents of Wall Street’s equally brilliant masters of the universe, only in six figures instead of nine.

Take, for example, Victor Davis Hanson, who says that, since the campaigns of previous GOP nominees – ranging from the racism of the Willie Horton project to the swiftboating of war heroes – were worse than the present transgressions, therefore “McCain as a vicious campaigner is a complete fabrication, but, again, a brilliant subterfuge on the part of Team Obama that, in fact, has run, via appendages, the far more vicious race”. Yeah, Cindy McCain said that too, arguing that Obama has run “the dirtiest campaign in American history”. I suppose if you find trouncing her husband to be dirty politics, she’s right. But the notion that a campaign which is trying to win by tying the other guy to an unknown former radical who blew stuff up when the candidate was eight years old is somehow not running a vicious campaign is so big a stretch that not even a lot of regressives will make it anymore. Nevermind that the education commission that both Obama and Ayers served on was a project of the Annenberg family, huge supporters of Reagan and, yes, one John McCain. And nevermind that that means that the Annenbergs, and McCain, and all the conservative members of the commission have, by the same logic, palled around with terrorists at least as much Obama. Oops.

But, for my personal favorite, there’s that famous political philosopher, Ted Nugent (better known to some as a horrid screaming shred-metal rock singer, or an enthusiastic murderer of animals), who advises McCain to go all Reagan and tell the people once again that government is the problem, not the solution. Yep, just as every American is scrambling for a lifeboat in an economic Category 5, and even the Bush administration is doing its very best impression of V. I. Lenin by plunging the government deep into economic interventions, he literally advises McCain to “Tell us the federal government has no business in the home loan industry and that you will take our economy away from the Treasury Department bureaucrats and give it back to the bankers, stockbrokers and company leaders that have made our economy thrive since Alexander Hamilton served at Treasury.” Hey, Ted, you forgot pedophiles and serial murderers on your list of popular people right now! Stockbrokers? Yes! CEOs? Yes! Oh please, John McCain, please. Please sing their praises in the closing weeks of the campaign. Just because Ted Nugent seems like the very antithesis of a thoughtful political theorist, just because he seems like a metal-headed rocker who has turned it up to eleven once too many times, I guarantee you, John, that he is not. Your can win the presidency if you’ll just follow his advice and talk incessantly about all the heroic stockbrokers and CEOs you’ll put in your cabinet! This will really resonate with American voters right now!! Maybe you could even pardon some of those Enron guys and put them to work running the country. (Again.)

Meanwhile, the other faction of the wrong-wingers are leaving the sinking ship as quick as they can and hoping nobody notices. Like David Brooks, for example, who called Palin “a fatal cancer to the Republican Party” and is otherwise similarly leaving behind his old comrades on the right in article after article he authors. Or Frank Schaeffer, who describes himself as a “lifelong Republican, [who] worked to get [McCain] elected instead of George W. Bush” in 2000, but who now writes: “John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as “not one of us”, I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.” Ouch. Or, Christopher (son of William F.) Buckley, who has endorsed Obama, only to be driven out of the National Review, the conservative journal famously launched by his father back (to the future) at a time when no one was listening to such gibberish. According to Young Buck, he’s “been effectively fatwahed by the conservative movement” ever since his act of great apostasy. That’s a great line, as was the entirety of Buckley’s hilariously accurate and embarrassingly realistic script for “Thank You For Smoking”. Memo to regressives: It’s not a real good idea to piss off people with such sharp skewering knives. Meanwhile, welcome to the sanity club, Chris. We hope you’ll stay a while. You’ll always be welcome among the fast-exploding ranks of the reality-based community.

So grim has the McCain campaign become, and so diminished are the fortunes of the regressive right, that people are jumping ship now as if they owned stock in General Motors. And why wouldn’t they? This last week in particular has been one of the most horrible ever in American politics. You could start with the fact that a grossly under-qualified nominee for Vice President is already nearly being indicted for abuse of power, and she hasn’t even hit Washington yet. So far, that’s just a reflection on the grossly under-honorable man who selected her, purely to benefit his own career aspirations. But when you add in the fierce devotion that Palin engenders among the legions of the scary right, you can really get depressed.

All of this was on such full display this week that even John ‘Say Anything’ McCain seemed taken aback at one or two events. I think he realized just who it is that his campaign is attracting nowadays. I think he realized his complicity in fomenting such visceral hatred that we now see people attending rallies of one of the two mainstream parties in America screaming out “terrorist” and “kill him” with respect to the man they’re introducing as Barack Hussein Obama. I think he was a little shell-shocked that not only members of his own party were publicly rebuking him, but civil rights hero John Lewis compared him to the racist monster George Wallace. This would be especially devastating if it had occurred in an America where people paid attention to politics, since McCain had just recently named Lewis as one of a few people whose advice he would seek out were he president. That comment, uttered just last August, was already an odd remark, since Lewis is a liberal Democrat, and McCain once opposed making Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday, and because Lewis let on directly afterwards as to how McCain had never sought him out even for small talk during the two decades they’ve both served in Congress. But now, of course, it’s even more absurd, because the first bit of advice Lewis offered caused the McCain camp to go insane and demand that Obama rebuke Lewis, even though the two have nothing particularly to do with one another.

The truth is that a guy who once possessed a broad reputation for decency and integrity, deserved or not, came to grips this week with the realization that he is not only losing his last bid ever for the presidency, but that he is losing his honor as well. McCain knows that he will not only go down in history as a two-time presidential loser, but also as yet another hate-mongering, horror-show, thug graduate from the McCarthy/Nixon/Atwater/Rove/Schmidt school for the criminally insane. The once proud John McCain, filled up with generations of military values extolling the crucial importance of gentlemanly honor, has become just another ill-smelling hack. Worse yet, he’s a loser hack, who will never have the chance to rehabilitate himself. At least when George H.W. Bush pissed all over his country he won the race, and got to join that most exclusive club, and then he had four years to make people mostly forget about Willie Horton. McCain, on the other hand, has bungled his way into the full-on nightmare vision of a lost election coupled with lost integrity.

But McCain owns this Shakespearean tragedy in full. Part of me is a bit sad to say that, remembering the John McCain who once had the honesty to note that “America has the best Congress money can buy”, or who called the freaks of the religious right “agents of intolerance”. But most of me is no longer sad. George W. Bush and the regressive movement have devastated the country and planet where I live, and their motive for doing so was ultimately just simple greed. McCain has spent the past eight years facilitating that monstrous and monstrously lethal mass rape. It is therefore fitting that a man who was once highly respected should experience ruin not once, but twice, at the hands of a moral dwarf like George W. Bush. In 2000, Bush used the scummiest of scummy techniques to emasculate John McCain, a man who was infinitely his better in every respect. Now again today, the Chimpster-in-Chief sits in his Oval Office, smirking as ever, sociopathically oblivious as the legacy of his two terms – both of which McCain actively helped him win – sealing the senator’s fate for a second time.

The number of sacrificial victims to the fragile ego of one George Walker Bush is astonishing to contemplate. It’s staggering to imagine that one individual’s personal childhood inadequacies could wreak so much havoc on an entire planet, but indeed they have.

From Tony Blair’s career to the lives of a million Iraqis. From Americans’ wallets to their country’s very honor. From environmental destruction to the Republican Party itself. All relegated to the ash heap of history.

John McCain is only the latest to be added to that list.

David Michael Green

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

A Call For The Arrest of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney

Now here's a movement we can get behind.

09/23/2008 @ 4:51 pm

Filed by Mike Sheehan and David Edwards

Anti-war protesters hung a banner today at the National Archives calling for the arrest of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.


The 22-foot-long banner in red, white and black reads, "Defend Our Constitution - Arrest Bush / Cheney! - War Criminals!"


The protesters, perched on a ledge at the historic building in Washington, D.C., additionally claim to be on a hunger strike.


According to a press release, the five are military combat veterans from the anti-war group Veterans For Peace who intend to stay on the ledge and fast for a full day "in remembrance of those who have perished and those still suffering from the crimes of the Bush administration."


An Archives spokesperson had no comment when asked if authorities were planning to take action to stop the peaceful protest.



(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

So, the President May Kill Anybody He Pleases, Right?

By Robert Higgs

16/09/08 "Lew Rockwell" -- - Among the many cock-and-bull stories set afoot by the Bush administration during the lead-up to its attack on Iraq was the one about the now-infamous drones of death. Later, it became sufficiently clear that this alleged threat had no more substance than the others the administration and the lapdog mainstream media had served up to a credulous public.

Although the ludicrously primitive Iraqi drones had no capacity whatsoever to harm the American public, the lethality of U.S. drones is another matter. Predator drones equipped with Hellfire missiles now provide the U.S. government with a means of flying over territory that U.S. ground troops dare not penetrate, observing activities on the ground, and killing people there with, shall we say, a minimum of due process.

In November 2002, for example, BBC News reported: "America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) carried out an attack in Yemen that killed six suspected members of Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, according to US officials. The men died when the jeep they were traveling in was hit by a missile fired from an unmanned CIA plane – believed to be a Predator drone, the US sources said."

U.S. forces have also used the Predator actively in Afghanistan and, most recently, in the Waziristan region of Pakistan. Today, I read an account of a drone attack near the town of Miramshah in North Waziristan that is reported to have "killed at least 14 people and injured 12 others," including "at least six women and children."

In Afghanistan, such aerial attacks, not always by drones, of course, have created a ticklish dilemma for the Karzai government as it pretends to be a real government, rather than the U.S. puppet it actually is. Official protests have become increasingly vociferous, though I have seen no evidence that the U.S. forces intend to change their operations in response.

What an awesome power the president and, with his authorization, his subordinate officers possess: they can kill people at will, including those persons’ wives and children, with no risk whatever of receiving return fire or other retribution. Surely this is the long-sought culmination of the Republican’s quest to establish "law and order."

What leads me to remark on this matter, however, is not its technological nuts and bolts or its connection with master-puppet relations in southwest Asia, but rather the complete insouciance with which the American public greets reports of deaths by drone. I do not exaggerate if I say that the general reaction is "ho-hum." Well, the average American says, that disposes nicely of another "bad guy." The gratuitous murder of the bad guy’s family members, neighbors, and other innocent persons in the vicinity appears to create no blip on the average American’s moral radar screen. Perhaps Americans do not consider Yemenis, Afghanis, and Pakistanis to be real human beings whose right to life we are obliged to respect?

Is death by drone simply another occasion when the president, having labeled a set of actions as a "war," believes and acts as though he has carte blanche to dish out death and destruction willy nilly?

Of course, reports of drone attacks usually refer to militants, Taliban forces, or al Qaeda members. To this information, we might well respond: yeah, who says? If we are content to assume that U.S. intelligence agents, who nearly always get their information from collaborators in the target territories, really know whom they are targeting, then we are certainly easily satisfied. One does not have to make an extensive survey of U.S. government claims about Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other places in southwest Asia over the past seven years to see that for the most part the U.S. commanders, from the Commander in Chief on down to the sweatiest noncom on patrol, are either more or less clueless or the biggest liars on the planet. I do not rule out that they are both.

The upshot is that the people who cooperate in getting to the point at which someone pushes the button to send the Hellfire toward its selected target may in fact not know for sure whom they are about the kill, or how many others will be killed along with this ostensible "enemy" or who those others are.

Without launching into a massive, geopolitical inquiry, we might well pause from time to time to ask, What are U.S. forces doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan anyhow? Surely they are not there to capture or kill the persons responsible for the crimes of 9/11, because they have already proved beyond all doubt that they are incapable of doing so (as Osama bin Laden’s videos periodically remind us). They are, however, all too capable of diverting their energies from that objective toward unrelated goals, such as attacking and occupying Iraq.

We Americans find ourselves, then, observing with extreme moral disengagement as the president and his subordinates murder persons whose identities remain uncertain along with assorted others whose only crime is being in the same area as the targeted individuals – after all, the Hellfire, which makes a very big blast, can scarcely be described as a surgically precise killing instrument.

Moreover, the president’s use of this remote-control-execution device apparently has no geographical limits, because, as he assures us, the "war on terror" has none. Today, a dirt road in Waziristan; tomorrow, the Santa Monica Freeway. It will be interesting to see, when drone attacks are carried out in this country, whether the American public gives a damn.

Robert Higgs [send him mail] is senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute and editor of The Independent Review. He is also a columnist for LewRockwell.com. His most recent book is Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government. He is also the author of Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy, Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11 and Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society.

Copyright © 2008 Robert Higgs

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

The Focused Decider Isn't either.

Bob Woodward’s latest book, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, has just hit the shelves and as usual, contains some incredible new facts about President Bush’s style of “leadership” and decision-making. On 60 Minutes Sunday, Woodward sat down with Scott Pelley and dropped the bombshell that the idea of the surge came from the White House and was vehemently opposed by the top military brass.

“What does General Casey, sitting in Baghdad, think of having additional troops?” Pelley asked.

“He thinks that Baghdad is a troop sump-a place you can put endless numbers of troops in. And he does not want to add force,” Woodward said.

“The president, who has said in public, endless times, that he relies on his generals to tell him what they need, is actually going his own way here,” Pelley remarked.

“That’s right,” Woodward agreed. “The records of the joint chiefs show that the idea of five brigades came from the White House, not from anybody except the White House.”

So much for listening to the Generals on the ground.

And then there’s this from the Washington Post:

In response to a question about how the White House settled on a troop surge of five brigades after the military leadership in Washington had reluctantly said it could provide two, Bush said: “Okay, I don’t know this. I’m not in these meetings, you’ll be happy to hear, because I got other things to do.”

There’s Bush presidential leadership in a nutshell for you: In perhaps the most important decision of his entire presidency - the decision to double down on a failed war, putting the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and Iraqis at risk — Bush, by his own admission, has “other things to do.”

I wonder if Cheney is gonna call Woodward and curse him out again.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Obama Could Pursue Criminal Charges Against The Bush Administration

If there is a chance in hell that criminal charges against the war criminals and Constitution-haters in the Bush administration will be filed, Joe needs to be quiet about it. 

Junior will just pardon everyone, including himself. Of course, anyone who accepts a blanket pardon, is admitting guilt to any charge that could be brought against them. 

A presidential pardon doesn't mean jack at the Hague. 

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said yesterday that he and running mate Barack Obama could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.

Biden's comments, first reported by ABC news, attracted little notice on a day dominated by the drama surrounding his Republican counterpart, Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

But his statements represent the Democrats' strongest vow so far this year to investigate alleged misdeeds committed during the Bush years.

"If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued," Biden said during a campaign event in Deerfield Beach, Florida, according to ABC.

"[N]ot out of vengeance, not out of retribution," he added, "out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president -- no one is above the law."

Obama sounded a similar note in April, vowing that if elected, he would ask his attorney general to initiate a prompt review of Bush-era actions to distinguish between possible "genuine crimes" and "really bad policies".

"[I]f crimes have been committed, they should be investigated," Obama told the Philadelphia Daily News. "You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve."

Congressional Democrats have issued a flurry of subpoenas this year to senior Bush administration aides as part of a broad inquiry into the authorisation of torturous interrogation tactics used at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Three veterans of the Bush White House have been held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to respond to subpoenas: former counsel Harriet Miers, former political adviser Karl Rove, and current chief of staff Josh Bolten. The contempt battle is currently before a federal court.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

GOP Spooked By Ghosts Of Katrina

If this isn't the ironies of all ironies!


Three years after hurricane Katrina drowned a very special American city, while George W. Bush and John McCain celebrated the latter's birthday in Sedona, Karina's brother, Gustav, threatens the GOP's biggest party of all. Then, the president seemed oblivious to what the rest of us were seeing on our TeeVee screens. Now, he is so "busy" at emergency command stations, he may not have time to visit McCain's nominating convention.


Gee. Too bad, eh John?


There is little doubt in my mind that McCain is praying for a disaster. Out of pure selflessness and leadership, he can turn the GOP convention into a telethon for the Gulf Coast and save himself and his party from looking like losers, compared to what just took place in Denver.


Yep, that's just what people want right now, to be asked for more money at a time when everyone is suffering from disaster fatigue and everything neccessary for life in America costs much more than it did only a year ago.


He can make a couple of trips to the disaster zone, looking presidential, before he is even officially nominated.


Nevertheless, no matter what he does, this is a storm that will remind the nation of the horror of Katrina. The almost comedic (had people not been killed in massive nmbers and lost everything they had) very late response by the Bush administration will be remembered as well. The fact that little has been done in New Orleans till this day by the federal government, and New Orleans is a major port city shoud not go unnoticed. Its suvival is of very high importance to the nation and its security.


So, where is Cheney? With Junior so engaged, Cheney doesn't have much to do. He could come to the convention.


Maybe he's busy trying to tie Gustav to Iran.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Officials with the McCain campaign and the Republican National convention are considering changing the event's agenda as Hurricane Gustav bears down on the Gulf Coast.

The Republican National Convention is set to kick off Monday in Minneapolis-St.Paul, Minnesota.

Sen. John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, plans to meet with officials in charge of the party's convention planning in Minneapolis-St. Paul on Sunday to review the latest news on Hurricane Gustav and what their options might be and then consult with the presumptive presidential nominee to determine what changes may need to be made.

"I wouldn't call it a nightmare, but it is a very perplexing challenge," said a GOP official planning the event.

A senior McCain source said Saturday that officials are considering turning the convention into a service event, a massive telethon to raise money for the Red Cross and other agencies to help with the hurricane.

"He wants to do something service-oriented if and when the storm hits and it's as bad as its expected to be now," the McCain source said.

They are also hoping to get McCain himself to a storm-affected area as soon as possible.

McCain had suggested to a Fox News interviewer that the convention could be suspended if it seemed that a festive gathering was inappropriate in light of the destruction the storm may bring. Watch as the Gulf Coast prepares for Gustav »

President Bush, who is scheduled to address the convention Monday night, is making contingency plans in case the storm keeps him in Washington.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said there are "no schedule changes yet, but we're making contingency plans" because of the hurricane. She said it is a "serious and scary situation," so the White House is "closely monitoring" the storm.

A Republican official involved in convention planning said that various options are being explored, including having the president speak to Republican delegates via satellite and updating them on the storm rather than traveling to Minnesota.

Perino said she expects to have more details by Sunday morning.

Republican Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Charlie Crist of Florida, Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Rick Perry of Texas -- whose states that lie in the path of Gustav, named a Category 4 hurricane Saturday afternoon -- will skip the GOP convention because of the storm.

The storm has forced last-minute changes in the convention's announced schedule: If the convention -- originally scheduled to start Monday -- commences by Tuesday, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's speech will probably move to that night from Wednesday.

Other changes were being contemplated Saturday afternoon.

The hardest decisions, like whether to cancel a day or two of the four-day gathering or to or condense days, will be made at the last second, GOP officials said. But the logistics of those decisions are being discussed.

There are two scenarios under consideration for Bush's speech, slated for Monday night. If the president is on hand to speak, his wife, Laura, will give a short speech. If he is not, the first lady will give a longer speech, and the president will speak via satellite.

That decision will probably not be made until Sunday evening or Monday.

Officials won't discuss in detail how McCain's plans might change. They won't talk about McCain in any detail, but he is likely to go Monday or Tuesday to an aid station in an area hit by the hurricane, if it continues on as expected.

Earlier Saturday, President Bush declared a state of emergency in Mississippi, following similar declarations in Louisiana and Texas.

The president ordered federal aid to supplement state and local efforts in the areas in the forecast path of Hurricane Gustav.

Bush checked in with the four governors whose states are in Gustav's potential route.

The president pledged the full support of the federal government to those states, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

Bush and his administration were heavily criticized in 2005 for not moving fast enough to send federal help to the Gulf Coast when Hurricane Katrina hit.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Kristol: Bush May Bomb Iran In Face Of Obama Win.

Neocon from hell, stirring the pot.

Kristol: Bush Might Bomb Iran If He ‘Thinks Senator Obama’s Going To Win’»

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said that President Bush is more likely to attack Iran if he believes Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is going to be elected.

However, “if the president thought John McCain was going to be the next president, he would think it more appropriate to let the next president make that decision than do it on his way out,” Kristol said, reinforcing the fact that McCain is offering a third Bush term on Iran.

“I do wonder with Senator Obama, if President Bush thinks Senator Obama’s going to win, does he somehow think — does he worry that Obama won’t follow through on that policy,” Kristol added. Host Chris Wallace then asked if Kristol was suggesting that Bush might “launch a military strike” before or after the election:

WALLACE: So, you’re suggesting that he might in fact, if Obama’s going to win the election, either before or after the election, launch a military strike?

KRISTOL: I don’t know. I mean, I think he would worry about it. On the other hand, you can’t — it’s hard to make foreign policy based on guesses of election results. I think Israel is worried though. I mean, what is, what signal goes to Ahmadinejad if Obama wins on a platform of unconditional negotiations and with an obvious reluctance to even talk about using military force.

Kristol also suggested that Obama’s election would tempt Saudi Arabia and Egypt to think, “maybe we can use nuclear weapons.” Watch it:

Kristol’s belief that Bush might attack Iran before leaving office is not new. In April, he told Bill Bennett that it wasn’t “out of the question” that Bush would consider such a strike because “people are overdoing how much of a lame duck the president is.”

The claim that Obama’s potential election could force Bush’s hand also isn’t new. Earlier this month, far-right pseudo scholar Daniel Pipes told National Review Online that “President Bush will do something” if the Democratic nominee won. “Should it be Mr. McCain that wins, he’ll punt,” said Pipes.

Both Kristol and Pipes apparently agree with President Bush’s claim in March that McCain’s “not going to change” his foreign policy.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Vincent Bugliosi: There Is No Statute Of Limitations On Murder

So true. Who, pray tell, is going to arrest him?

There Is No Statute of Limitations on Murder

www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/022151.html

Vincent Bugliosi on the prosecution of GW Bush for Murder

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Bush Ties To Corrupt Hunt Oil Contract in Iraq

Panel Questions State Dept. Role in Iraq Oil Deal

By JAMES GLANZ and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

Bush administration officials knew that a Texas oil company with close ties to President Bush was planning to sign an oil deal with the regional Kurdistan government that ran counter to American policy and undercut Iraq’s central government, a Congressional committee has concluded.

The conclusions were based on e-mail messages and other documents that the committee released Wednesday.

United States policy is to warn companies that they incur risks in signing contracts until Iraq passes an oil law and to strengthen Iraq’s central government. The Kurdistan deal, by ceding responsibility for writing contracts directly to a regional government, infuriated Iraqi officials. But State Department officials did nothing to discourage the deal and in some cases appeared to welcome it, the documents show.

The company, Hunt Oil of Dallas, signed the deal with Kurdistan’s semiautonomous government last September. Its chief executive, Ray L. Hunt, a close political ally of President Bush, briefed an advisory board to Mr. Bush on his contacts with Kurdish officials before the deal was signed.

In an e-mail message released by the Congressional committee, a State Department official in Washington, briefed by a colleague about the impending deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government, wrote: “Many thanks for the heads up; getting an American company to sign a deal with the K.R.G. will make big news back here. Please keep us posted.”

The release of the documents comes as the administration is defending help that United States officials provided in drawing up a separate set of no-bid contracts, still pending, between Iraq’s Oil Ministry in Baghdad and five major Western oil companies to provide services at other Iraqi oil fields.

In the no-bid contracts, the administration said it had provided what it called purely technical help writing the contracts. The United States played no role in choosing the companies, the administration has said.

Disclosure of those contracts has provided substantial fuel to critics of the Iraq war, both in the United States and abroad, who contend that the enormous Iraqi oil reserves were a motivation for the American-led invasion — an assertion the administration has repeatedly denied.

Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, has condemned the Kurdistan deal as illegal because it was not approved by Iraq’s central government and was struck without an oil law, which has still not been passed.

After the deal was signed last year, a senior State Department official in Baghdad criticized it, saying, “We believe these contracts have needlessly elevated tensions between the K.R.G. and the national government of Iraq.”

The State Department said Wednesday that it had discouraged the deal. Hunt officials declined to comment, and Kurdish government officials said there was no impropriety.

In a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose chairman is Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, a State Department official wrote that the department had strongly discouraged Hunt from signing the deal until an oil law had been passed.

The State Department told Hunt that “we continue to advise all companies that they incur significant political and legal risk by signing contracts” before then, wrote Jeffrey T. Bergner, an assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the department, in one of the documents made public on Wednesday.

But in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Waxman wrote that the documents his committee had collected “tell a different story about the role of administration officials.” In letters obtained by the committee, Mr. Hunt informed the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, of which he was a member, last July and August that he was pursuing serious business interests in Kurdistan.

“We were approached a month ago by representatives of a private group in Kurdistan as to the possibility of our becoming interested in that region,” Mr. Hunt wrote to the board last July 12.:

“We had one team of geoscientists travel to Kurdistan several weeks ago and we were encouraged by what we saw.”

In August 2007, Mr. Hunt informed State Department officials directly of his intentions in Kurdistan, and on Sept. 5, three days before the deal was signed, a flurry of e-mail messages among Hunt and State Department officials make clear that the department was aware of what was in the works.

In a message to a colleague with the subject line “Hunt Oil to Sign Contract With K.R.G.,” one State Department official gives a highly detailed summary of the agreement. Mr. Hunt, the official wrote, “is expecting to sign an exploration contract with the K.R.G. for a field located in the Shakkan district, an area under K.R.G. control (inside the Green Line) but technically in Nineveh Governorate.”

“Hunt would be the first U.S. company to sign such a deal,” the official wrote, suggesting that the news should be rushed onto the State Department’s internal distribution network as quickly as possible.

Despite those exchanges, a State Department official said Wednesday that the company had in fact been discouraged from completing its deal.

“All companies, including Hunt Oil, which have spoken with the United States government about investing in Iraq’s oil sector, have and will continue to be given the same advice,” John Fleming, an Iraq press officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, wrote Wednesday in an e-mailed response to questions. “We advise companies that they incur significant political and legal risk by signing any contracts with any party before a national law is passed by the Iraqi Parliament.”

Another State Department official, who asked to remain anonymous, expressed frustration, saying that a local State Department official in Erbil, the Kurdish provincial capital, who was the head of a so-called Regional Reconstruction Team, tried to dissuade Hunt officials from making the deal.

But no notes were taken at that meeting, the official said, and Hunt representatives later gave a conflicting account of what had been said.

“I have talked to the R.R.T. team leader personally, and he sticks by his story and they stick by theirs,” the State Department official said.

Jeanne L. Phillips, a senior vice president for corporate affairs and international relations at Hunt Oil whose correspondence appears at certain points in the documents released Wednesday, said that because Mr. Waxman’s letter was not addressed directly to the company, she could not comment on it.

“As a matter of company policy, Hunt Oil Company does not comment on correspondence between third parties,” Ms. Phillips wrote in an e-mail message.

An official in the Kurdistan Regional Government reached late Wednesday who asked not to be named said that the government had written some 22 contracts to date.

“Anyone can have a contract with the K.R.G., but it must be accepted and suitable according to assessment by our experts,” the official said. “Hunt is a good company and never had its contracts with us illegally or improperly.”

The documents released by Mr. Waxman also lay bare what has become a serious dispute between the company and the State Department over what was said between them before the deal last year.

For example, a senior Hunt official said he was told by State Department officials during a meeting on June 15, 2007, that the United States government did not object to deals with the Kurdish regional government.

“I specifically asked if the U.S.G. had a policy toward companies entering contracts with the K.R.G.,” the Hunt official, David McDonald, wrote in an e-mail message to a colleague last Sept. 28. The State Department officials, Mr. McDonald wrote, replied that there was no policy, neither for nor against.

His message concluded: “There was no communication to me or in my presence made by the nine State Department officials with whom I met prior to 8 September that Hunt should not pursue our course of action leading to a contract. In fact, there was ample opportunity to do so, but it did not happen.”

The encouragement by State Department officials did not end with the signing of the contract on Sept. 8, the documents suggest. Five days later, a State Department official in the southern city of Basra wrote to Ms. Phillips, “I read and heard about with interest your deal with the regional Kurdish government.”

“I don’t know if you are aware of another opportunity,” the official wrote, mentioning an enormous port project and a natural gas project in the south. After a few more lines, the official concluded, “This seems like it would be a good opportunity for Hunt.”

James Glanz reported from New York, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Baghdad. Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow, Mudhafer al-Husaini from Baghdad and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Kurdistan.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Bush Wrecked The Dollar.......

....and a whole lot more, but that is for a different post.

Bloomberg:

The dollar's 41 percent drop against the euro during Bush's term writes the economic epitaph of an administration that set out to restore American preeminence. Instead, Bush heads to Japan next week for his final international summit with diminished leverage as Russian and Chinese influence grows." The ultimate disgrace for a Republican: Bush wrecked the dollar. 7/4


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Impeachment For 9/11: Three Articles

Home

Blaming Bush for His Greatest Achievement

Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2008-06-10 21:57.

• Impeachment

By David Swanson

For those who stayed riveted through the end of Congressman Dennis Kucinich's five-hour reading of his 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush on Monday night, the three articles at the very end of the list must have come as something of a jarring surprise. As everyone knows, managing to get the World Trade Center blown up, or at least just BEING president when it happened, is George W. Bush's greatest all-time achievement, the only action (or nonaction) that has ever made him truly popular with the American public, the one thing he will brag about until the day he dies. How, then, could Kucinich propose to impeach Bush for such stupendous success? Here's how:

Article XXXIII
REPEATEDLY IGNORED AND FAILED TO RESPOND TO HIGH LEVEL INTELLIGENCE WARNINGS OF PLANNED TERRORIST ATTACKS IN THE US, PRIOR TO 911

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, failed in his Constitutional duties to take proper steps to protect the nation prior to September 11, 2001.

The White House's top counter-terrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, has testified that from the beginning of George W. Bush's presidency until September 11, 2001, Clarke attempted unsuccessfully to persuade President Bush to take steps to protect the nation against terrorism. Clarke sent a memorandum to then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on January 24, 2001, "urgently" but unsuccessfully requesting "a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack."

In April 2001, Clarke was finally granted a meeting, but only with second-in-command department representatives, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who made light of Clarke's concerns.

Clarke confirms that in June, July, and August, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned the president in daily briefings of unprecedented indications that a major al Qaeda attack was going to happen against the United States somewhere in the world in the weeks and months ahead. Yet, Clarke was still unable to convene a cabinet-level meeting to address the issue.

Condoleezza Rice has testified that George Tenet met with the president 40 times to warn him that a major al-Qaeda attack was going to take place, and that in response the president did not convene any meetings of top officials. At such meetings, the FBI could have shared information on possible terrorists enrolled at flight schools. Among the many preventive steps that could have been taken, the Federal Aviation Administration, airlines, and airports might have been put on full alert.

According to Condoleezza Rice, the first and only cabinet-level meeting prior to 9/11 to discuss the threat of terrorist attacks took place on September 4, 2001, one week before the attacks in New York and Washington.

On August 6, 2001, President Bush was presented a President's Daily Brief (PDB) article titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." The lead sentence of that PDB article indicated that Bin Laden and his followers wanted to "follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and 'bring the fighting to America.'" The article warned: "Al-Qa'ida members—including some who are US citizens— have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks."

The article cited a "more sensational threat reporting that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft," but indicated that the CIA had not been able to corroborate such reporting. The PDB item included information from the FBI indicating "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." The article also noted that the CIA and FBI were investigating "a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."

The president spent the rest of August 6, and almost all the rest of August 2001 on vacation. There is no evidence that he called any meetings of his advisers to discuss this alarming report. When the title and substance of this PDB article were later reported in the press, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice began a sustained campaign to play down its significance, until the actual text was eventually released by the White House.

New York Times writer Douglas Jehl, put it this way: "In a single 17-sentence document, the intelligence briefing delivered to President Bush in August 2001 spells out the who, hints at the what and points towards the where of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that followed 36 days later."

Eleanor Hill, Executive Director of the joint congressional committee investigating the performance of the US intelligence community before September 11, 2001, reported in mid-September 2002 that intelligence reports a year earlier "reiterated a consistent and constant theme: Osama bin Laden's intent to launch terrorist attacks inside the United States."

That joint inquiry revealed that just two months before September 11, an intelligence briefing for "senior government officials" predicted a terrorist attack with these words: "The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."

Given the White House's insistence on secrecy with regard to what intelligence was given to President Bush, the joint-inquiry report does not divulge whether he took part in that briefing. Even if he did not, it strains credulity to suppose that those "senior government officials" would have kept its alarming substance from the president.

Again, there is no evidence that the president held any meetings or took any action to deal with the threats of such attacks.

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

Article XXXIV

OBSTRUCTION OF INVESTIGATION INTO THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, obstructed investigations into the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Following September 11, 2001, President Bush and Vice President Cheney took strong steps to thwart any and all proposals that the circumstances of the attack be addressed. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was forced to renege on his public promise on September 23 that a "White Paper" would be issued to explain the circumstances. Less than two weeks after that promise, Powell apologized for his "unfortunate choice of words," and explained that Americans would have to rely on "information coming out in the press and in other ways."

On Sept. 26, 2001, President Bush drove to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Langley, Virginia, stood with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and said: "My report to the nation is, we've got the best intelligence we can possibly have thanks to the men and women of the C.I.A." George Tenet subsequently and falsely claimed not to have visited the president personally between the start of Bush's long Crawford vacation and September 11, 2001.

Testifying before the 9/11 Commission on April 14, 2004, Tenet answered a question from Commission member Timothy Roemer by referring to the president's vacation (July 29-August 30) in Crawford and insisting that he did not see the president at all in August 2001. "You never talked with him?" Roemer asked. "No," Tenet replied, explaining that for much of August he too was "on leave." An Agency spokesman called reporters that same evening to say Tenet had misspoken, and that Tenet had briefed Bush on August 17 and 31. The spokesman explained that the second briefing took place after the president had returned to Washington, and played down the first one, in Crawford, as uneventful.

In his book, At the Center of the Storm, (2007) Tenet, refers to what is almost certainly his August 17 visit to Crawford as a follow-up to the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" article in the CIA-prepared President's Daily Brief of August 6. That briefing was immortalized in a Time Magazine photo capturing Harriet Myers holding the PDB open for the president, as two CIA officers sit by. It is the same briefing to which the president reportedly reacted by telling the CIA briefer, "All right, you've covered your ass now." (Ron Suskind, The One-Percent Doctrine, p. 2, 2006). In At the Center of the Storm, Tenet writes: "A few weeks after the August 6 PDB was delivered, I followed it to Crawford to make sure that the president stayed current on events."

A White House press release suggests Tenet was also there a week later, on August 24. According to the August 25, 2001, release, President Bush, addressing a group of visitors to Crawford on August 25, told them: "George Tenet and I, yesterday, we piled in the new nominees for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Vice Chairman and their wives and went right up the canyon."

In early February, 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney warned then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle that if Congress went ahead with an investigation, administration officials might not show up to testify. As pressure grew for an investigation, the president and vice president agreed to the establishment of a congressional joint committee to conduct a "Joint Inquiry." Eleanor Hill, Executive Director of the Inquiry, opened the Joint Inquiry's final public hearing in mid-September 2002 with the following disclaimer: "I need to report that, according to the White House and the Director of Central Intelligence, the president's knowledge of intelligence information relevant to this inquiry remains classified, even when the substance of the intelligence information has been declassified."

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was created on November 27, 2002, following the passage of congressional legislation signed into law by President Bush. The President was asked to testify before the Commission. He refused to testify except for one hour in private with only two Commission members, with no oath administered, with no recording or note taking, and with the Vice President at his side. Commission Co-Chair Lee Hamilton has written that he believes the commission was set up to fail, was underfunded, was rushed, and did not receive proper cooperation and access to information.

A December 2007 review of classified documents by former members of the Commission found that the commission had made repeated and detailed requests to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and had been told falsely by a top C.I.A. official that the agency had "produced or made available for review" everything that had been requested.

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

Article XXXV

ENDANGERING THE HEALTH OF 911 FIRST RESPONDERS

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, recklessly endangered the health of first responders, residents, and workers at and near the former location of the World Trade Center in New York City.

The Inspector General of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) August 21, 2003, report numbered 2003-P-00012 and entitled "EPA's Response to the World Trade Center Collapse: Challenges, Successes, and Areas for Improvement," includes the following findings:

"[W]hen EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analysis to make such a blanket statement. At that time, air monitoring data was lacking for several pollutants of concern, including particulate matter and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Furthermore, The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."

"As a result of the White House CEQ's influence, guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and information about the potential health effects from WTC debris were not included in EPA- issued press releases. In addition, based on CEQ's influence, reassuring information was added to at least one press release and cautionary information was deleted from EPA's draft version of that press release. . . . The White House's role in EPA's public communications about WTC environmental conditions was described in a September 12, 2001, e-mail from the EPA Deputy Administrator's Chief of Staff to senior EPA officials:

"'All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC [National Security Council] before they are released.'

"According to the EPA Chief of Staff, one particular CEQ official was designated to work with EPA to ensure that clearance was obtained through NSC. The Associate Administrator for the EPA Office of Communications, Education, and Media Relations (OCEMR) said that no press release could be issued for a 3- to 4-week period after September 11 without approval from the CEQ contact."

Acting EPA Administrator Marianne Horinko, who sat in on EPA meetings with the White House has said in an interview that the White House played a coordinating role. The National Security Council played the key role, filtering incoming data on ground zero air and water, Horinko said: "I think that the thinking was, these are experts in WMD (weapons of mass destruction), so they should have the coordinating role."

In the cleanup of the Pentagon following September 11, 2001, Occupational Safety and Health Administration laws were enforced, and no workers became ill. At the World Trade Center site, the same laws were not enforced.

In the years since the release of the EPA Inspector General's above-cited report, the Bush Administration has still not effected a clean-up of the indoor air in apartments and workspaces near the site.

Screenings conducted at the Mount Sinai Medical Center and released in the September 10, 2004, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) of the federal Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), produced the following results:

"Both upper and lower respiratory problems and mental health difficulties are widespread among rescue and recovery workers who dug through the ruins of the World Trade Center in the days following its destruction in the attack of September 11, 2001.

"An analysis of the screenings of 1,138 workers and volunteers who responded to the World Trade Center disaster found that nearly three-quarters of them experienced new or worsened upper respiratory problems at some point while working at Ground Zero. And half of those examined had upper and/or lower respiratory symptoms that persisted up to the time of their examinations, an average of eight months after their WTC efforts ended."

A larger study released in 2006 found that roughly 70 percent of nearly 10,000 workers tested at Mount Sinai from 2002 to 2004 reported that they had new or substantially worsened respiratory problems while or after working at ground zero. This study showed that many of the respiratory ailments, including sinusitis and asthma, and gastrointestinal problems related to them, initially reported by ground zero workers persisted or grew worse over time. Most of the ground zero workers in the study who reported trouble breathing while working there were still having those problems two and a half years later, an indication of chronic illness unlikely to improve over time.

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.