World War III
By David Swanson
The administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is set on a course that leads directly to a third world war. And a third world war leads almost inevitably to most of us dying horrible deaths. And we're not talking about it.
The White House has made clear it is seriously considering attacking Iran with massive bombing aimed at destroying the nation's military and changing its government. Iran will certainly retaliate. If attacked, and possibly even if not attacked, Israel will join in the fighting. The resistance in Iraq will intensify dramatically. Controlling the oil of Iran and Iraq will be out of the question short of thorough genocide. Anti-American furor will sweep the Muslim world. The nuclear nation of Pakistan will be a prime target for an Islamic revolution.
If we don't have a world war on our hands immediately, one will be very hard to avoid. We will have taught every nation, again, that the only path to safety is acquisition of nuclear weapons. We will have isolated the United States from most of the world, including many of our traditional allies. Terrorist attacks against American targets will come, and the United States will retaliate, again, not with law enforcement but with additional aggressive warfare.
If the United States attacks Iran, we will be openly at war with the world in a nuclear age. If the thought isn't terrifying, something's wrong with our ability to fear. Our politics is almost always driven in the wrong direction by fear of the wrong things. I'd love for once to see fear knock some sense into us.
The founders of the United States feared these moments for us. To protect us, they gave Congress the sole power to declare war. The current Congress, building on the misdeeds of others in recent decades, has given up its power. In fact, we've reached the point where Congress cannot easily take it back. Were Congress to declare with a veto-proof majority that Bush must not bomb Iran, is anyone sure Bush would listen?
Back at the start of this Congress, eight months ago, some of the new committee chairs from the progressive caucus spoke on a panel organized by the Institute for Policy Studies. Congressman John Conyers, the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on this occasion that he would take up the impeachment of Bush and Cheney if they attacked Iran. Congressman Dennis Kucinich at the time was saying the same thing. He has since introduced articles of impeachment against Cheney (H Res 333) that include the charge of threatening aggressive war against Iran (which happens to be a crime). Currently 20 Congress Members support H Res 333, but none of them with any sense of urgency. None of them are lobbying their colleagues to sign on or to introduce their own articles of impeachment. Nobody in Congress, and certainly not the leadership, is pushing hard for impeachment as the means to prevent an attack on Iran.
But impeachment is the only leverage the Congress has over an outlaw executive branch. Conyers recently said that he opposes impeachment because he carries the Constitution in one hand and a calculator in the other, and he uses the calculator to tell himself he doesn't "have the votes" to pass impeachment. Of course, by that argument, he should take his name off his bill for single-payer health care, his bill for slavery reparations, etc. But, more importantly, an impeachment effort can serve a purpose short of successfully impeaching anyone. A serious movement to impeach Gonzales helped show him the door. A serious movement to impeach Bush and Cheney is the only way Congress can deter an attack on Iran or end the prolonged attack on Iraq. If articles of impeachment had 100 cosponsors, Bush and Cheney would understand that attacking Iran would move that number to 218.
Has Bush even told the Congressional leadership of his plans to attack Iran? If he has not, will they have the decency to feel indignation? And will they do so BEFORE the bombing? If he has told them, then Congressional leaders have a duty to the citizens of this nation to immediately expose and oppose such plans. Congress exists to determine our nation's course of action, not to be informed of it. Any member of Congress who has been informed of new plans for illegal war and not spoken out should be tried as an accomplice in war crimes.
As the White House continues to leak news of its likely attack on Iran, our demand must be for impeachment now, not after the slaughter when we have all been made less safe than ever. And we must not get caught up in the nonsense questions in the media over exactly who lied about exactly how many nuclear facilities in Iran. If possessing some particular number of nuclear reactors, or for that matter nuclear bombs, justified other nations in launching aggressive war, then any nation would be justified in attacking the United States. Nothing, in fact, can justify a war of aggression, legally or morally, because such a war is certain to be worse than whatever might be found to try to justify it.
We cannot, of course, be certain at this point that Bush and Cheney will attack Iran. Whether they do or not, the task of Congress remains the same: impeach these dictators and end the occupation of Iraq. But if our nation continues on this path of unchecked executive power and military aggression, the path of Afghanistan and Guantanamo and Iraq, then expanded war is inevitable, and that means war that eventually hits the United States. The clearest I can possibly frame our situation is as a choice between one word and another. We are unlikely to get neither or both. We are likely to get one or the other. Impeach or die.
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The past is prologue....Stop Bush Now!
Subject: Envoy's Letter Counters Bush on Dismantling of Iraq Army
September 4, 2007Envoy’s Letter Counters Bush on Dismantling of Iraq Army By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 — A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army.
Mr. Bremer provided the letters to The New York Times on Monday after reading that Mr. Bush was quoted in a new book as saying that American policy had been “to keep the army intact” but that it “didn’t happen.”
The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers and made it more difficult to reduce sectarian bloodshed and attacks by insurgents. In releasing the letters, Mr. Bremer said he wanted to refute the suggestion in Mr. Bush’s comment that Mr. Bremer had acted to disband the army without the knowledge and concurrence of the White House.
“We must make it clear to everyone that we mean business: that Saddam and the Baathists are finished,” Mr. Bremer wrote in a letter that was drafted on May 20, 2003, and sent to the president on May 22 through Donald H. Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense.
After recounting American efforts to remove members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein from civilian agencies, Mr. Bremer told Mr. Bush that he would “parallel this step with an even more robust measure” to dismantle the Iraq military.
One day later, Mr. Bush wrote back a short thank you letter. “Your leadership is apparent,” the president wrote. “You have quickly made a positive and significant impact. You have my full support and confidence.”
On the same day, Mr. Bremer, in Baghdad, had issued the order disbanding the Iraqi military. Mr. Bush did not mention the order to abolish the military, and the letters do not show that he approved the order or even knew much about it. Mr. Bremer referred only fleetingly to his plan midway through his three-page letter and offered no details.
In an interview with Robert Draper, author of the new book, “Dead Certain,” Mr. Bush sounded as if he had been taken aback by the decision, or at least by the need to abandon the original plan to keep the army together.
“The policy had been to keep the army intact; didn’t happen,” Mr. Bush told the interviewer. When Mr. Draper asked the president how he had reacted when he learned that the policy was being reversed, Mr. Bush replied, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, “This is the policy, what happened?’ ”
Mr. Bremer indicated that he had been smoldering for months as other administration officials had distanced themselves from his order. “This didn’t just pop out of my head,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday, adding that he had sent a draft of the order to top Pentagon officials and discussed it “several times” with Mr. Rumsfeld.
A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is not commenting on Mr. Draper’s book, said Mr. Bush indeed understood the order and was acknowledging in the interview with Mr. Draper that the original plan had proved unworkable.
“The plan was to keep the Iraqi Army intact, and that’s accurate,” the official said. “But by the time Jerry Bremer announced the order, it was fairly clear that the Iraqi Army could not be reconstituted, and the president understood that. He was acknowledging that that was something that did not go as planned.”
But the letters, combined with Mr. Bush’s comments, suggest confusion within the administration about what quickly proved to be a decision with explosive repercussions.
Indeed, Mr. Bremer’s letter to Mr. Bush is striking in its almost nonchalant reference to a major decision that a number of American military officials in Iraq strongly opposed. Some senior administration officials, including the secretary of state at the time, Colin L. Powell, have reportedly said subsequently that they did not know about the decision ahead of time.
Gen. Peter Pace, then the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in February 2004 that the decision to disband the Iraqi Army was made without the input of the joint chiefs. “We were not asked for a recommendation or for advice,” he said.
The reference from Mr. Bremer’s note to Mr. Bush is limited to one sentence at the end of a lengthy paragraph in a three-page letter. The letter devoted much more space to recounting what Mr. Bremer described as “an almost universal expression of thanks” from the Iraqi people “to the U.S. and to you in particular for freeing Iraq from Saddam’s tyranny.” It went on to recall how Mr. Bremer had been kissed by an old Iraqi man who was under the impression that Mr. Bremer was Mr. Bush. In his 2006 memoir, Mr. Bremer said he had briefed senior officials in Washington on the plan, but he did not mention the exchange of letters with Mr. Bush.
On Monday, Mr. Bremer made it clear that he was unhappy about being portrayed as a renegade of sorts by a variety of former administration officials.
Mr. Bremer said he sent a draft of the proposed order on May 9, shortly before he departed for his new post in Baghdad, to Mr. Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon officials.
Among others who received the draft order, he said, were Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense; Douglas J. Feith, then under secretary of defense for policy; Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, then head of the American-led coalition forces in Iraq; and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Mr. Bremer said that he had briefed Mr. Rumsfeld on the plan “several times,” and that his top security adviser in Baghdad, Walter B. Slocombe, had discussed it in detail with senior Pentagon officials as well as with senior British military officials. He said he received detailed comments back from the joint chiefs, leaving no doubt in his mind that they understood the plan.
“I might add that it was not a controversial decision,” Mr. Bremer said. “The Iraqi Army had disappeared and the only question was whether you were going to recall the army. Recalling the army would have had very practical difficulties, and it would have political consequences. The army had been the main instrument of repression under Saddam Hussein. I would go on to argue that it was the right decision. I’m not second-guessing it.”
General McKiernan reportedly felt unhappy with Mr. Bremer’s plan to slowly build a new Iraqi Army from scratch, as were other American officers. In his farewell meeting with Mr. Bremer in June 2003, he urged him to “go bigger and faster” in fielding a new military.
Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting.
World War III
Albert Einstein said he didn't know what advanced weapons WWIII would be fought with but he was sure WWIV would be with sticks and stones.
I was appalled when Bush annouced he was the leader who would be in charge of the first war of the twenty first century. Like war and death were a fun game. He's never served or been in one so how would he know? He's certainly no President Roosevelt or Churchill. War does make one a historic popular President....especially ones you lied the country into.
He should have been impeached then. Look at all the harm he has done since then?
World War III
In the Auschwitz lawsuit at the Federal Court in Washington DC George W. Bush
says, that "the President's Sovereign Immunity applies even in Holocaust
cases. Federal Courts have no jurisdiction".
The President has broken the Martial Law "Commander's Responsibility for
Crimes against Humanity", which establishes the Jurisdiction of Federal Courts.
The President asserts extraordinary constitutional authorities for the Genocide
on innocent civilians.
He shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of
high Crimes and Misdemeanors, Art. I, Sec. 2, 3, Art. II, Sec. 1, 3, 4
of the US Constitution.
Peter Wolz Attorney of the Auschwitz victims