The Greg Palast Report
IMPEACHMENT TIME:
"FACTS WERE FIXED."
By Greg Palast
Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it.
The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...."
For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, viewers inevitably ask me, "Isn't this grounds for impeachment?" -- vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a "high crime or misdemeanor."
And if this ain't it, nothing is.
The memo, uncovered this week by the Times, goes on to describe an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony.
A conspiracy to commit serial fraud is, under federal law, racketeering. However, the Mob's schemes never cost so many lives.
Here's more. "Bush had made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."
Really? But Mr. Bush told us, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
A month ago, the Silberman-Robb Commission issued its report on WMD intelligence before the war, dismissing claims that Bush fixed the facts with this snooty, condescending conclusion written directly to the President, "After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons."
We now know the report was a bogus 618 pages of thick whitewash aimed to let Bush off the hook for his murderous mendacity.
Read on: The invasion build-up was then set, says the memo, "beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections." Mission accomplished.
You should parse the entire memo -- posted on my website -- www.GregPalast.com -- and see if you can make it through its three pages without losing your lunch.
Now sharp readers may note they didn't see this memo, in fact, printed in the New York Times. It wasn't. Rather, it was splashed across the front pages of the Times of LONDON.
It has effectively finished the last, sorry remnants of Tony Blair's political career. (While his Labor Party won the elections, Prime Minister Blair is expected, possibly within months, to be shoved overboard in favor of his Chancellor of the Exchequer, a political execution which requires only a vote of the Labour party's members in Parliament.)
But in the US, barely a word. The New York Times covers this hard evidence of Bush's fabrication of a casus belli as some "British" elections story. Apparently, our President's fraud isn't "news fit to print."
My colleagues in the UK press have skewered Blair, digging out more incriminating memos, challenging the official government factoids and fibs. But in the US press nada, bubkes, zilch. Bush fixed the facts and somehow that's a story for "over there."
The Republicans impeached Bill Clinton over his cigar and Monica's affections. And the US media could print nothing else.
Now, we have the stone, cold evidence of bending intelligence to sell us on death by the thousands, and neither a Republican Congress nor what is laughably called US journalism thought it worth a second look.
My friend Daniel Ellsberg once said that what's good about the American people is that you have to lie to them. What's bad about Americans is that it's so easy to do.
Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller,
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
The arrogance of undiluted power in the hands of elected officials who are not bound to respect the law is manifesting its deadly consequences every day as Bush's Iraq invasion unravels into non-stop bloodshed and carnage. The human toll is staggering and there is no let up in sight.
New revelations of Bushs fabrications in his campaign to wage illegal war have led to a sharp drop in his approval rating. With each day the disgust of the people is mounting not only with the endless bloodshed in Iraq but with the Administrations trashing of the Constitution.
Bush lied to the people. He lied to Congress. He waged an unprovoked war of aggression based on a neo-conservative fantasy that might makes right. More than 100,000 Iraqis have now died. Nearly 1,000 have been killed in just the last three weeks. The real casualty numbers for U.S. personnel are not really known. Thirty thousand have been evacuated from Iraq due to severe wounds, psychiatric and other illness, while nearly 1,600 have been killed so far.
Wolfowitzs Admission Should Cause Impeachment
A number of recent revelations confirm that the Administration knowingly lied about the war and its causes. From their own mouths we know with certainty that they cooked up an explanation for the war that would most scare people - the facts be damned. Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfelds key aide, was quoted in Vanity Fair magazine as saying, "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." Since the Administration was flooded with angry letters, undoubtedly many from families of U.S. soldiers, following the publication of the Wolfowitz interview, the Pentagon attempted to do damage control, asserting that he was misquoted. But that didn't help much either. The Pentagons own version of the interview has Wolfowitz saying: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason."
The public now knows, as does every member of Congress, that in April 2002 Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair secretly agreed to wage unprovoked war against Iraq at a meeting at Bushs Crawford ranch in Texas. This fact and other incriminating information about the secret maneuvers to wage unprovoked war are contained in British government documents, obtained by Michael Smith, a defense specialist writing for the Sunday Times of London. They include a memo of the minutes of a meeting July 23, 2002, between Blair and his intelligence and military chiefs; a briefing paper for that meeting, and a Foreign Office legal opinion prepared before an April 2002 summit between Blair and Bush in Texas.
In a letter to Bush earlier this month 89 House Democrats expressed shock over the documents. They asked if the papers were authentic and, if so, whether they proved that the White House had agreed to invade Iraq months before seeking Congress' OK. (Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2005)
"If the disclosure is accurate, it raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of our own administration," the letter says.
"While the president of the United States was telling the citizens and the Congress that they had no intention to start a war with Iraq, they were working very close with Tony Blair and the British leadership at making this a foregone conclusion," the letter's chief author, Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, said Wednesday.
The evidence is clear. As Ramsey Clark recently stated: "Impeachment now is the only way we, the American people, can promise ourselves and the world that we will not tolerate crimes against peace and humanity by our government. Knowing what we know, to wait longer is to condone what has been done and risk more."
Impeachment Drive Heats Up - Join the Impeach Bush Spring Offensive
Between now and the July 4 weekend the ImpeachBush/VoteToImpeach.org movement is unleashing its own Impeach Bush Spring Offensive. Using the quick and easy-to-use advocacy mechanism on the ImpeachBush.org website, people across the country will be able to send personal customized letters to the representatives from each of their districts and states. To send a letter, just click here.
Impeach Bush Lawn Signs, T-Shirts and Stickers - Help Spread the Word!
We have ordered another large quantity of Impeach Bush lawn signs, T-shirts and stickers. Before the November elections people had lawn signs for candidates. The election is over but the movement to stop Bush is heating up. The lawn signs are a wonderful way to keep neighborhood visibility of this campaign to Save the Constitution. With the arrival of warm weather there is no reason not to occasionally sport an ImpeachBush.org T-shirt. Everyone who does reports that they get an unexpectedly friendly response. Be sure to visit the Impeach Bush Resource Center materials to order lawn signs, t-shirts and stickers for you and your friends.
Please help continue to make the Impeach Bush campaign reach people across the country. This campaign has become a powerful force only with the generous contributions of people who believe that impeachment is an imperative requirement to Save the Constitution. Please make a contribution now by clicking www.votetoimpeach.org for access to the online donation form and the secure server, where you can also get information to write a check.
May we join together Now to Save Our America.
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