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.