Iraq WMD Lies

We Need a Special Counsel to Investigate Bush's Uranium Lies

Bob Fertik — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:58:29 -0400

by Frank Mandanici

Members of the House Judiciary Committee recently sent Attorney General Eric Holder a letter asking him to appoint an outside Special Counsel to investigate the "credible evidence of [the] torture" of detainees in the custody or control of the United States in connection with counter-terrorism operations and armed conflicts. Rep. Jan Schakowsky sent Holder a similar letter.

In addition to responding to those Congressional letters, Holder must also weigh a 155 page report that I sent him on March 31 that points to the evidence in the public record and explains why he should appoint an outside Special Counsel to investigate the Bush Administration's fraudulent claims that Iraq had sought uranium for a nuclear weapon.

As mentioned in that report, after Congress passed in October 2002 the resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq, UN weapons inspectors pursuant to a UN resolution entered Iraq in November 2002. After two months of inspections, the UN inspectors found no weapons of mass destruction.

To defuse that fact, President Bush and members of his Administration in January 2003 made the claim in several public statements that Iraq had sought uranium for a nuclear weapon – despite the fact that the CIA a few months earlier had issued specific warnings to the White House that discredited the uranium claims and the CIA repeatedly urged the White House not to make the claim that Iraq had sought uranium.

The CIA in January 2003 again warned the White House against making the claim that Iraq had sought uranium. (The CIA did however clear as factually correct the statement that the British government had said that Iraq had sought uranium.)

The Bush Administration resorted to the uranium claims in order to scare Congress and impede the Congressional movement that sought to repeal the earlier use of military force resolution and that sought to delay the start of the war until after the weapons inspectors finished their inspections.

After the Bush Administration in early February 2003 gave the UN the documents that supposedly supported the uranium claims, the UN on March 7, 2003 made public the fact that the documents were forgeries, and that after three months of inspections its weapons inspectors had found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.

After it became public knowledge that the documents were forgeries and that there were no evidence of WMDs, President Bush started the war 12 days later on March 19 rather than allow more time for the growth of the Congressional movement that sought to repeal the use of military force resolution and that sought to at least delay the start of the war.

My report explains how the Bush Administration's uranium claims violated the criminal statutes 18 U.S.C. §1001 and 18 U.S.C. §371 that prohibit making false and fraudulent statements to Congress and conspiring to obstruct its functions.

The report also explains how, under the doctrines of equitable tolling and equitable estoppel, the five year statute of limitations, 18 U.S.C. §3282(a), would be considered suspended for the above crimes for the years that President Bush and his senior political appointees had control over the Justice Department.

While it is important that Holder appoint an outside Special Counsel to investigate the interrogation and torture of detainees, it is even more important that he appoint an outside Special Counsel to investigate President Bush and the others in his Administration who lied about Iraq seeking uranium for a nuclear bomb, since those lies led to a war that has had far greater consequences.

Can the Son of Sam Law Be Used Against Condi?

Bob Fertik — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:28:38 -0500

Condi Rice signed a $2.5 million 3-book deal with Crown, a division of Random House.

Rice will combine candid narrative and acute analysis to tell the story of her time in the White House and as America's top diplomat, and her role in protecting American security and shaping foreign policy during the extraordinary period from 2001-2009.

Of course Condi was the National Security Advisor during the campaign of propaganda and lies that defrauded Congress into authorizing the invasion of Iraq. She was one of the most prolific liars, infamously warning Americans "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." At the time, Condi knew full well that Iraq had no nuclear weapons or even a nuclear weapons program.

The unprovoked invasion of Iraq, which was rejected by the United Nations Security Council, was a war crime. The invasion led to further war crimes, including torture and the murder of civilians and journalists. And the American soldiers who were killed or maimed were the victims of Condi's fraud.

In total, the victims of Condi's crimes number in the millions, counting the survivors of those killed. So here's a legal question: can Condi's victims collect damages under the Son of Sam Law, which was specifically written to prevent criminals from profiting from books about their crimes?

The initial obstacle is that Condi has not been charged with any crimes. But that could easily be remedied by a Special Prosecutor or even a local District Attorney using the strategy developed by famed prosecutor Vince Bugliosi.

Obama and Congress Must Act to Restore the Constitution

dlindorff — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:13:08 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

The calls for a reckoning for the criminals of the Bush/Cheney
administration are growing by the day, as the final few days of the
Bush presidency tick down, and as new evidence of their crimes keep
pouring out of the deflating gas bag that was the Bush White House.

For years, the Democrats in Congress, with a few notable
exceptions, have sat on their hands, allowing the ongoing destruction
of the Constitution, of the US military, of the nation’s reputation,
and of the rule of law, as well as of the institution of Congress
itself, by a cabal of Republicans in the White House, led by Vice
President Dick Cheney, who have sought to establish an executive-led government
that answered only to itself.

Obama, running for the White House, initially talked of restoring
the constitutional order, and of prosecuting crimes where they had
occurred, much as he talked of ending the war in Iraq. But now, as he
increasingly assumes the role of President, he is backing away from
that kind of talk, with plans instead to extend the war and occupation
in Iraq for years, while actually expanding the war in Afghanistan, and
to give the outgoing administration of criminals and
Constitution-wreckers a free pass, in the name of “letting bygones be
bygones.” Ironically, he is doing this even as some in Congress,
including House Judiciary Chair John Conyers, who ducked the issue of
impeachment and sat on proposed impeachment articles against Bush and
Cheney filed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) for two critical years when
he could have ordered a formal hearing by his committee, are now
calling for a special prosecutor.

But broken promises about the war aside, Obama cannot have it both
ways. If, as he is still declaring, “no one is above the law” in
America, then it is essential that those who have committed grave
crimes must be indicted and tried for those crimes. As he takes the
oath of office on Jan. 20, Obama will swear to uphold and defend the
Constitution. That means not only defending the integrity of the
document itself, but enforcing all the laws that have been passed in
accordance with that document.

As President, Obama has no more right than did his predecessor to
pick and choose which laws to enforce. At a time when the nation’s
jails are crammed to overflowing with hundreds of thousands of people
whose crimes are as minimal as stealing CDs from a convenience store,
if President Obama and his Justice Department fail to order an
investigation into profound White House crimes like the destruction of
evidence in the Valerie Plame spy-outing case, or the investigation
into the politicalization of the appointment and firing of US
Attorneys, or of the deliberate campaign of lies to justify an
unnecessary invasion of Iraq, if they fail to investigate fully what
the president’s illegal National Security Agency wiretapping program
was really all about, if they fail to investigate the rampant fraud and
profiteering by White House-connected private contractors in the Iraq
War zone, if they fail to investigate the clear evidence of White House
efforts to undermine fair elections in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008, if
they fail to prosecute the White House, right up to the offices of Vice
President and President, for authorizing, directing and then covering
up evidence of systematic torture of captives in the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan and in the so-called “war” on terror, if they don’t
investigate what the administration really knew and what it covered up
in the days and weeks before the 9-11 attacks in 2001, it will no
longer be possible to say, with a straight face, that in America
everyone is equal under the law.

But that is only part of it.

Many of the current administration’s “crimes” are not statutory
violations. They are so called “high crimes” as defined by the
Founders. That is to say they are abuses of power that threaten the
nation’s very essense. They are not crimes in the sense that they
violate a law, but, even more seriously, they undermine our political
system and consequently threaten the very continued existence of our
free and democratic society.

The appropriate remedy for these high crimes—things like Bush’s
refusal, expressed through signing statements, to enact or envorce laws
or parts of laws duly passed by the Congress, his and Vice President
Cheney’s refusals to comply with Congressional subpoenas, his lies to
Congress regarding the true situation regarding the alleged threat
posed by Iraq in 2002 and 2003, and his overall assertion of “unitary
executive” power as commander in chief—was impeachment, but with Bush
and Cheney about to leave office, that is probably a lost cause.
(Certainly the two men could still be impeached, as impeachment itself
does not require that the impeached party still be in office, and the
potential penalty for conviction of an impeachable offence, besides
removal from office, also can include a permanent ban on holding any
future public office—an important sanction for the historical record.)
But here Obama—and the Democratic Congress--could act creatively, for
example by ordering the creation of a commission of inquiry to
investigate and condemn such constitutional undermining. By compelling
the testimony of witnesses under oath, it is possible that actual
punishable crimes such as contempt or perjury could still be committed
by White House officials and even by Bush and Cheney, but more
importantly, the nature of these crimes would be publicly exposed and
condemned, so that it would be far less likely that any future
administration would again commit them.

Obama should also act unilaterally to undo as much of the damage as
possible—for example revoking all unconstitutional presidential signing
statements from the Bush/Cheney years, and canceling all
unconstitutional Executive Orders, such as those authorizing torture
and extraordinary rendition programs.

The time is right for these actions. The public is almost uniformly
angry at the outgoing administration, which is walking away from office
leaving the nation a smoking ruin. Contrary to what Obama and his
advisers and the pathetic leadership in both houses of Congress seem to
think, the American public doesn’t want them to simply “move forward.”
Sure we want action to fix the wrecked economy, and to get all the
troops safely back home, but we also way the country put back together,
and we want those who wrecked the place to pay for the damage they’ve
done.

Few Americans would be dismayed to see Bush and Cheney squirming in the dock. Most would, in fact, be cheering and jeering.

The time has come for the newly empowered Democratic government in
Washington to stand up proudly and unambiguously for the Constitution
and the rule of law, and to prove that the phrase “No one is above the
law” isn’t just, as Bush’s hack lawyer Alberto Gonzales once said of
the Geneva Conventions, a “quaint historical artifact.”
________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His most recent
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now
available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/39045';
digg_title = "Obama and Congress Must Act to Restore the Constitution";
digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n The calls for a reckoning for the criminals of the Bush/Cheney administration are growing by the day, as the final few days of the Bush presidency tick down, and as new evidence of their crimes keep pouring out of the deflating gas bag that was the Bush White House.\r\n\r\n For years, the Democrats in Congress, with a few notable exceptions, have sat on their hands, allowing the ongoing destruction of the Constitution, of the US military, of the nation’s reputation, and of the rule of law, as well as of the institution of Congress itself, by a cabal of Republicans in the White House, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, sought to establish an executive-led government that answered only to itself.\r\n\r";
digg_skin = 'standard';

Will `Tough Guy' Dick Cheney Cop Out as Usual and Take a Pardon?

dlindorff — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 18:29:33 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

Vice President Dick Cheney has cultivated the image of a serious
tough guy, with his grim, scowling vissage, his dismissive "So?"
comments when things go badly, his unrepentant defense of torture,
including waterboarding, and his brash statements confirming that he
approved the interrogation measures that clearly violated US criminal
statutes and the Geneva Conventions.

But it appears we willl in a few days get to discover whether Cheney
really is a tough guy, or whether he is in truth just the same
corpulent, self-centered hypocrite and gutless coward that he was back
in the 1960s when, despite being a vocal backer of the Vietnam War, he
ducked the draft not once but five times by arranging for student and
marriage deferments, which he later defended by saying he had "other
priorities" than serving his country.

If, as most people expect, Cheney is offered a pardon by outgoing
President George Bush for his role in approving the systematic torture
of US captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, for his role in the
outing of CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame and the subsequent
coverup of that crime, and for his role in lying about the alleged
threats posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the vice president will be
admitting that he is guilty of those crimes. He will also be taking the
coward's way out, after earlier strutting about and claiming to be in
the right.

It would be vintage Cheney--talking big but hiding from responsibility for his statements and his actions.

If Cheney were for real, he would tell Bush he doesn't want no
stinkin' pardon. He'd say he backed a policy of torture of captives
because they deserved it, because it would save American lives, and
because he had no respect for international law. He would dare the US
government, and other governments around the world that have a policy
of universal jurisdiction, to indict him and put him on trial for his
actions.

But that's not Dick Cheney's way. His way is to duck responsibility and to let lesser people take the heat for him.

We've seen his MO already. This is a guy who would furtively destroy
the career of a dedicated undercover agent, putting not just her, but
all of her in-country contacts in places like Iran at risk for their
lives, and then let a subordinate, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, take the
fall for him. Libby, recall, was convicted of lying about his role in
exposing Plame's identity in a federal trial that included considerable
evidence that it was his boss, Cheney, who was actually behind the
effort. He ended up being convicted and sentenced to prison, though he
was spared being locked up by a presidential clemency order. Cheney
didn't lift a finger to protect Libby, who remains a convicted felon,
unable to return to his practice of law.

If Bush pardons Cheney, and if Cheney accepts that pardon, he will
be admitting that he is a war criminal, willing to let a few
low-ranking soldiers who simply did what he says he wanted them to do
take the heat for him and his criminal actions.

While we're at it, it will also be interesting to see whether Bush,
whose media handlers have also spent the last eight years constucting
an image of him as a swaggering, tough-talkin' Texas cowboy, will grant
himself a broad pardon for his many crimes in office.

My guess is he will do both, confirming that this has been an
administration not of tough guys, but of cowards, hypocrites and
professional buckpassers.

_______________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/38536';
digg_title = "Will `Tough Guy\' Dick Cheney Cop Out as Usual and Take a Pardon?";
digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n\r\nVice President Dick Cheney has cultivated the image of a serious tough guy, with his grim, scowling vissage, his dismissive \"So?\" comments when things go badly, his unrepentant defense of torture, including waterboarding, and his brash statements confirming that he approved the interrogation measures that clearly violated US criminal statutes and the Geneva Conventions.\r\n\r\nBut it appears we willl in a few days get to discover whether Cheney really is a tough guy, or whether he is in truth just the same corpulent, self-centered hypocrite and gutless coward that he was back in the 1960s when, despite being a vocal backer of the Vietnam War, he ducked the draft not once but five times by arranging for student and marriage deferments, which he later defended by saying he had \"other priorities\" than serving his country.\r\n\r";
digg_skin = 'standard';

Muntadar al-Zaidi Did What We Journalists Should Have Done Long Ago

dlindorff — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:14:46 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

When Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi heaved his two shoes at the
head of President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad,
he did something that the White House press corps should have done
years ago.

Al-Zaidi listened to Bush blather that the half-decade of war he
had initiated with the illegal invasion of Iraq had been “necessary for
US security, Iraqi stability (sic) and world peace” and something just
snapped. The television correspondent, who had been kidnapped and held
for a while last year by Shiite militants, pulled off a shoe and threw
it at Bush—a serious insult in Iraqi culture—and shouted “This is a
farewell kiss, you dog!” When the first shoe missed its target, he
grabbed a second shoe and heaved it too, causing the president to duck
a second time as al-Zaidi shouted, “This is from the widows, the
orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq!”

I’ll admit, listening to Bush lie his way through eight years of
press conferences, while pre-selected reporters played along and
pretended to get his attention so they could ask questions which had
been submitted and vetted in advance, I have felt like throwing my
shoes at the television set.

Al-Zaidi, who paid for his courageous act of protest by being
brutally beaten by security guards, is a hero of the profession. He
stopped taking the president’s BS and called him what he is: a murderer
and a criminal, with the blood of perhaps upwards of a million Iraqis
on his hands. Al-Zaidi used what was supposed to be a staged photo-op
for the president as an opportunity to speak up for those whose lives
have been ruined by this president—the ones our suck-up journalists
routinely ignore.

I’m not suggesting that journalists should routinely leave
presidential press conferences in their stocking feet. We have
different ways of expressing our sentiments to people we feel have
insulted our intelligence than throwing shoes at them, but it would be
nice to see a journalist or two flip the president the bird when he
lies so blatantly to them. Or they could all get up and just walk out,
leaving him standing alone at the presidential lectern.

It’s time for the press corps to stop treating presidents like
royalty. If he accomplished anything at all in eight years in office,
President Bush has demonstrated that, to the contrary, the president is
a very ordinary—and in his case a rather less than ordinary—man. The
office of president deserves no more respect than that of the mayor of
Detroit, or of Wasilla.

My suggestion is that the press corps use the remaining five weeks
of the Bush administration to develop a new relationship with the
presidency—one in which they drop all the phony propriety and tradition
and start acting like boisterous newshounds of old, barking questions,
laughing cruelly at inane answers, demanding follow-ups when they are
given the run-around, and, where necessary, walking out, or perhaps
tossing the occasional shoe.

The journalism profession was a full-blown disaster and an utter
disgrace during the Bush administration, and with all the crises facing
the country and the world, in part because of that failure on their
part, we cannot afford to have them continue that failure into the
Obama administration.

With the Bush administration reduced to a running joke at this
point, it gives the journalism profession a chance to redeem itself by
using these few remaining weeks to establish a new tradition for
presidential press conferences and photo-ops—one that can continue on
into the new presidency.

Meanwhile, I’m suggesting that my alma mater, the Columbia
University Graduate School of Journalism, hire al=Zaidi to teach a
class in press conference journalism techniques. They should make it a
multi-year appointment, because if he left after just one year, his
would be difficult shoes to fill.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOTE: Speaking of shoes and the White House, Skip Mendler of
Honesdale, PA has a great idea. He suggests that everyone who is
disgusted with the outgoing Bush/Cheney administration send a shoe to
the White House. Just imagine a pile up of a million smelly old running
shoes in the White House mailroom! I think he's got something. Spread
the word!
_________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

dlindorff — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:34:51 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

Before the odor of burned gunpowder has left the air of the Taj
Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, the US is lecturing India not to go off
half-cocked and attack Pakistan, simply because all of the attackers in
the terrorist assaults in that city arrived by boat, apparently from
neighboring Pakistan. US officials, including Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, are calling on India to engage in a “transparent” and
“thorough” investigation into the attacks to establish who was
responsible.

How different this is from the American government’s response to the 9-11 attacks in the US!

`Instead of a “transparent” investigation, we got secret sessions
of the Congressional intelligence committees, closed-door interviews of
key officials, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney by
the 9-11 Commission, and of course the secret round of thousands of
mostly Islamic people living in the US, many of whom were held of
months incommunicado and without charge, some of whom were subjected to
torture, and many other of whom were deported to likely arrest, torture
and even death.

Instead of a calm assessment of what had happened and who was
responsible, the Bush Administration rounded up Saudi members of the
Bin Laden family, and others connected to the regime in Saudi Arabia,
whence came most of the people reportedly involved in the hijacking of
the four planes used in the attacks, and, with no attempt at
interrogation, flew them home to Saudi Arabia. Then, again with only
minimal evidence, the US launched an all-out war within days upon
Afghanistan, with the goal of ousting and destroying the Taliban
government of that country. Shortly after that aggressive move, the
Bush/Cheney administration shifted its focus and launched an even
larger all-out war against Iraq, a nation that had no connection
whatsoever with the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

So much for transparency and measured responses.

Here again, we have an example of the US expecting one mode of behavior for the rest of the world, and another for itself.

We Americans, it would appear, are not required to operate in a
logical manner, are not required to think through the consequences of
our actions, are not required to obey international laws, and are not
required to listen to the counsel of others. If the United Nations will
not support our plan to attack and topple the government of another
sovereign nation, we will just do it ourselves. But other countries may
not behave in this manner.

There is another way that India and the US are different which has
come to light in this latest atrocity. Following the Mumbai attacks,
India’s minister of security resigned, in an admission that his
department had failed to discover an attack that was clearly at least
six months in planning, and had failed to prevent the massive loss of
life because of inadequate preparation of police and troops for such an
eventuality (police and soldiers were not equipped even with sniper
rifles and scopes that might have enabled them to shoot and kill some
of the 10 terrorists with minimal threat to their hostages).

Nobody resigned for the manifold failings that led up to and allowed
for the 9-11 attacks. Nobody resigned for intelligence failures, nobody
resigned for air defense failures, nobody resigned for investigative
failures, nobody resigned for the lies that were the basis for the
attack on Afghanistan and the war against Iraq. There has indeed been
zero accountability in the US for the biggest national security
disaster since Pearl Harbor. But in India, it took only days for the
chief person responsible for security in the Indian government to
resign his post in disgrace.

Let us hope that saner heads prevail in India when it comes to Pakistan, as the story of this latest terror action is exposed.

And let us hope that Americans finally demand an honest accounting
of what happened on 9/11/2001 and that those who are guilty of allowing
it to happen, and of sending the country off on a pointless, bloody and
seemingly endless jihad in the Middle East as a result are exposed and
forced to pay for their ineptness and their crimes.
__________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Iraq All Over Again: Bush, Paulson and Bernanke are Just Crying Wolf

dlindorff — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:09:57 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Hold everything!

Talk about déjà vu. Remember when Bush and his cabinet officers were
running all over in late 2002 crying wolf about Iraq’s supposed nukes,
and threatening that inaction on a war resolution by the Congress would
leave them to blame when the “mushroom cloud” appeared over some
American city?

Well, now they’re doing it again, this time claiming that economic
Armageddon faces the US and even the global economy if Congress doesn’t
hand over all power over the economy to the Secretary of the Treasury
in absolute contravention of the most fundamental principle of the
Constitution, which establishes that the budget be in the control of
Congress. These guys are saying if Congress doesn’t vote to hand over
$700 billion or more of taxpayer money to the Treasury to dole out to
fat cat bankers, the resulting economic collapse will be on their heads.

But here’s the thing. Just as nobody else in the world was freaking
out about Saddam Hussein’s alleged nuclear threat, nobody is
particularly panicked about the US or the global economy. If investors,
who are supposed to be all wise about things economic, were worried
that the roof was about to cave in, they’d be selling stocks as fast as
they could dial their brokers. And the institutional investors—those
with the real inside information—not to mention the managements of
companies, who really know the true state of affairs of their own
firms—would be unloading shares at fire sale prices. The stock market
would be falling like it fell in 1987, or, if what these administration
con artists are claiming were really the case, even farther. That is to
say, we’d be seeing a 3000-4000 point drop in the Dow.

But we’re not seeing that. The Dow Jones average this week fell a
modest 8 percent and then recovered by 4 percent, and yesterday, the
broader S&P index actually rose. Some panic!

We’re told that there is a credit crisis, but people are still
getting mortgages. I know a retired woman of modest means who just went
in and refinanced her mortgage at a lower rate. Businesses are still
receiving loans, too, and while they might want a lower rate, they’re
still meeting payroll. Banks haven’t jacked up interest rates to absurd
levels.

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told
a select group of Congressional leaders earlier this week that if they
didn’t rush through their three-page proposal giving them draconian
power to shovel public money into banker’s coffers, the country would
be instantly plunged into a major recession.

But when Congress balked at this power-grabbing rip-off, it caused
barely a ripple in the stock markets, which are down less than 10
percent from their level when the crisis first struck with the bailout
of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Let’s be honest: this is an artificial panic, or worse, an effort
to create one. It’s not a real panic. When you have the president and
the treasury secretary and the Fed chairman going around warning of a
steep recession or a depression, you have to ask yourself why these
guys are yelling “Fire!” in the theater. In a real crisis, President
Franklin Roosevelt preached calm (“We have nothing to fear but fear
itself.”). This president says, “Be afraid. Real afraid!”

The truth is, this is a very normal economic downturn, with the
exception that a lot of banks are holding an unusual amount of really
rotten debt—the result of their own greed and fraud.

The answer is not to bail these rotten institutions out. It’s to let them fail.

I realized what was happening when the Bush Administration spent
$85 billion assuming all the bad debt of AIG in return for warrants
giving it the right to up to 80 percent ownership of the insurance
giant, when, at that day’s share value, the Treasury could have bought
the whole company outright for just $7 billion.

If we’re concerned about the homeowners who hold subprime
mortgages, the government can step in and order the banks to
renegotiate the terms of those loans to make them fixed 30-year
mortgages that people can actually afford to pay, and it can step in
and guarantee them. In return for covering the bankers’ asses on those
loans, the government can take over the worst banks, and take ownership
positions in others as it sees fit.

If the economy slows down because of all of this, the answer is for
the government to start spending on programs that will create new
jobs—R&D funding for new non-carbon energy sources, public funded
power generation projects using wind, waves and solar energy,
infrastructure repair, public transit expansion, more teachers for our
schools. Every dollar spent on these kinds of things will circulate
back into the economy immediately, helping to bring the economy back.
Funneling money to banks won’t help, because the odds are, much of it
will flow overseas where there’s a better return.

In short, Congress needs to call the president’s bluff.

The public knows it’s being had here. We’ve seen the deceitful
nature of this administration, and we know now that everything it says
is a lie.

Bush and his treasury secretary, however, are right about one
thing: Congress is going to be blamed if they do the wrong thing. But
the wrong thing isn’t failing to approve a $700-billion Wall Street
bailout. The wrong thing would be approving it.
________________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Condi Lies About Suskind Forgery Charge

Bob Fertik — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:28:54 -0400

Ron Suskind's explosive new book has the Busheviks so terrified that they deployed their designated liar, Condi Rice, to lie through her teeth to Karl Rove's personal stenographer, Politico's Mike Allen.

Here's the video link, at least until they scrub it because Condi's lies (in bold) are so obvious:
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=9160921

Mike: Madame Secretary, as you know there's a new book by Ron Suskind which says the White House ordered the CIA to falsify intelligence about Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda. Is it possible the United States government forged a letter from Iraq's intelligence chief to Saddam Hussein?
Condi: the United States government didn't forge a letter. The White House in which I was working and I think...
Mike: they didn't direct...
Condi: the people as I understand it - the people that he quotes as being sources for that have denied it.
Mike: So you think it's impossible...
Condi: The United States, the White House was not going to ask someone to ask someone to forge a letter on something of this importance.
Mike: You believe it did not occur...
Condi: It did not occur. The intelligence might have been wrong, that's now clear, not because people weren't working very hard. But when you have an opaque regime like Saddam Hussein's regime that had used WMD before that had them before, one can understand how the judgment may have been wrong. But the decision to go to war was based on the strategic threat of Saddam Hussein, the fact that we'd been to war against him before, the fact that he still threatened his neighbors, and the fact that we were told that he was reconstituting his weapons of mass destruction.

To prove that Condi is lying, we'll pay $1,000 to anyone who runs this video through lie detector software and gets a reliable result.

It's long past time for Congress to ask Condi these questions under oath and threat of perjury.

Videos from June 13 Iraq Forum, "Reframing the Iraq War Discussion," in Cherry Hill, NJ

dlindorff — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:16:21 -0400

Adam Kokesh of Iraq Veterans Against the War (Part 1)

Kokesh Reams Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) for Backing the War (Part 2)

Dave Lindorff on the Bush/Cheney Push for War with Iran (Part 1)

Dave Lindorff on the Bush/Cheney Push for War with Iran (Part 2)

Time for Congress to Stand Up in Its Own Defense: Impeach Bush and Cheney N

dlindorff — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:24:50 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The last couple of weeks have brought confirmation—as if it were needed—even in the corporate media, that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the gang of thugs and sycophants around them in the White House, engaged in a massive conspiracy to lie the country into a war in Iraq.

The release of a confessional book by former White House press spokesman Scott McClellan and the subsequent release of a long blocked report by the Senate Intelligence Committee make it clear that Bush, Cheney & Company deliberately lied to Congress and the American public back in 2002 and early 2003 about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein (there was none). McClellan also states that Bush and Cheney conspired to “out” CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame Wilson, as part of a compaign to prevent her husband from exposing a major part of that campaign of lies: the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.

It would be hard to overstate the extent of or the damage caused by these crimes that are now exposed to the light of day.

Beginning in 2001, making the most cynical use of the tragic killing of nearly 3000 Americans in the 9-11 attacks, Bush and Cheney moved to aggrandize as much power as possible in the executive, and then, to consolidate that power grab, engineered a full-scale war against Iraq, enabling them to claim that any opponent of their dictatorial usurpation of power was a traitor to the nation.

It was all a lie.

Saddam Hussein had no links to Al Qaeda, and he had no nuclear program. He had no weapons of mass destruction. His country was broken, thanks to years of international sanctions and war.

As a result of these lies, we have a country that no longer even remotely resembles what the Founders had intended. The Congress has been shorn of its once exclusive authority to legislate, and even its Constitutional power to investigate the executive branch has been successfully defied. It is now an atrophied relic. The federal judiciary, right up to the Supreme Court, has been packed with administration sycophants and Federalist Society advocates of unfettered executive power.

We also have been saddled with an unwinnable war in the Middle East that has claimed the lives of 4500 Americans, destroyed the lives of another 30,000—or perhaps several hundred thousand, if we add in all those suffering psychological damage, or genetic damage from exposure to depleted uranium weapons. That war has also killed over 1 million innocent Iraqis, including countless chiildren, destroyed their country, bankrupted this nation, and made the US a pariah and a rogue state in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Most Americans long since came to the conclusion that the Bush administration was a gang of idiots. Just watching their handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster unfold was enough to make that clear. But the new reports from McClellan and from the Senate Intelligence Committee should make it clear that this was not just stupidity. The disasters that have befallen this nation, or that it has brought on the rest of the world, over the past eight years have been the result of deliberate lying and deceit and of the conspiratorial policies of a cabal of leaders whose goal from day one was undoing the Constitution and establishing the presidency as a kind of dictatorship.

Most of the corporate media have been unable to bring themselves to state this clearly. They edge around the issue by talking about the White House having been “misleading” or “untruthful.” And little is said about the lasting damage that has been done to the Republic and the Constitution, or about what is to be done about a still bloody war that never should have been fought in the first place.

The answer is clear. Impeachment proceedings should be initiated against both Bush and Cheney. These two arch criminals must not be permitted to leave office with their titles intact. They need to be tossed out in disgrace, and then indicted for war crimes and for crimes like perjury, conspiracy and perhaps treason.

We are already seeing the long-term damage that has been wrought. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee for president, is saying that the president’s use of the National Security Agency to spy, without any court order, on tens or hundreds of thousants, or perhaps millions of Americans, is legal, and would continue under a McCain administration. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has said that he would continue Bush’s use of “signing statements” to ignore Congressional legislation that he felt impaired his Constitutional powers as president.

The nation is at a dangerous crossroad. Either Congress reasserts its authority now, via impeachment, drawing a Constitutional line in the stand in defense of Article I of the Constitution—the article that defines the power of Congress as absolute in terms of passing legisation—or it forever surrenders that role, leaving us with what can only be called a dictatorship.

We clearly cannot count on the next president, whoever that may be, to surrender powers usurped by the current one. What leader in history has willingly and voluntarily surrendered authority, after all?

Such power must be wrested back by Congress, and the only way for that to happen is impeachment—a course laid out clearly by the authors of the Constitution for just such a crisis.
____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net