Embedded Files
Sources.
The Impeachables: Mock Dating Profiles Of World Leaders.
GEORGE W. BUSH, the Bush administration.
Greg Thielmann, PBS, and MoveOn.org.
The following extract was sourced from a webpage about censuring George W. Bush.
Original URL: www.moveon.org/censure/ad-doc.html; viewable in Mar2004.
URL later moved to: http://civic.moveon.org/censure//ad-doc.html; viewable 20Mar2013.
Archived URL: http://archive.is/DUC9I; archived 20Mar2013.
That webpage cited the following source: 'Statement of top State Department intelligence officer Greg Thielmann,' PBS, 09-Oct2003.
Extract: [...] That decision having been made, the president ran a campaign of misinformation, of cherry-picking and doctoring intelligence, of hype and hysteria that led America into an unnecessary war. [...]
The ‘George W. Bush’ Wikipedia article, as of 13May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush
Capital punishment; extract: [...] Bush is a strong supporter of capital punishment. During his tenure as Governor of Texas, 152 people were executed in that state, maintaining its record as the leading state in executions. [...]
Environment; extracts:
[...] In December 2003, Bush signed legislation implementing key provisions of his Healthy Forests Initiative; environmental groups have charged that the plan is simply a giveaway to timber companies. [...
[...] In 2002, Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol as harmful to economic growth in the United States, stating: "My approach recognizes that economic growth is the solution, not the problem." [...]
Science; extracts:
[...] In August 2003, the Bush Administration's science policy was the subject of an inquiry by the Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee. The inquiry "found numerous instances where the Administration has manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings. [...]
[...] On February 18, 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a report alleging that "the current Bush administration has suppressed or distorted the scientific analyses of federal agencies to bring these results in line with administration policy." Physics Today noted that "a strongly worded statement signed by more than 60 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, charging the administration with manipulating and misrepresenting science for political gain" accompanied the UCS report. More than 8,000 signatures have been added to the UCS report, including 49 Nobel laureates, 63 recipients of the National Medal of Science, and 171 members of the National Academy of Sciences. [...]
Ramsey Clark, ‘What’s At Stake?’; this message was dated 03May2006; it was distributed in a 04May2006 email by ImpeachBush@VoteToImpeach.org
Extracts:
[...] George W. Bush and his principal officials are the greatest threat to world peace, to human rights, to economic justice, to the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law that the American people and the world at large face today. [...]
[...] Bush insists he decides what is right. He threatens North Korea, Cuba, Syria, Sudan, Venezuela, and most critically at the moment, Iran. The threats themselves violate international law and the U.N. Charter. [...]
[Bush] has squandered the largest federal surplus in history and created the largest national debt with his determination to be a War President and his ambition to enrich the rich.
[...] Bush’s contempt for human rights and civil liberties is unprecedented in the American Presidency. He is not only above international law, he is above the Bill of Rights. He can arrest and detain people worldwide, including U.S. citizens, as enemy combatants. He condones torture. He wiretaps U.S. citizens and foreigners alike without court approval. Proclamations concerning his Presidential powers by his Attorneys General, Ashcroft and Gonzales, have stunned the international community. Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo now symbolize U.S. regard for human dignity. Yet George Bush proclaims himself the champion of freedom and democracy! [...]
[...] [Bush] believes he can bully the world into accepting his way and the American people into accepting his decisions as right. For him, his ideology is truth. [...]
George W. Bush.
Quote by George W. Bush: "Fool me once, shame ... shame on ... you." Long, uncomfortable pause. "Fool me — can't get fooled again!"
John Dean, US Senator.
Extract: [...] On April 1, 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing about Senator Russ Feingold's motion to censure Bush. At the hearing, John Dean, former counsel to Richard Nixon, remarked:
No presidency that I can find in history has adopted a policy of expanding presidential powers merely for the sake of expanding presidential powers.... It has been the announced policy of the Bush/Cheney presidency, however, from its outset, to expand presidential power for its own sake, and it continually searched for avenues to do just that, while constantly testing to see how far it can push the limits. I must add that never before have I felt the slightest reason to fear our government. Nor do I frighten easily. But I do fear the Bush/Cheney government (and the precedents they are creating) because this administration is caught up in the rectitude of its own self-righteousness, and for all practical purposes this presidency has remained largely unchecked by its constitutional coequals....
Congress is now confronted with executive branch attorneys who take the most aggressive reading possible in all situations that favor executive power.... If this committee does not believe this Administration is hell bent on expanding its powers ... you have been looking the other way for some five years of this presidency.... That is why censure might be the only way for the Senate to avoid acquiescing in what is clearly a blatant violation of the 1978 FISA stature (sic), not to mention the Fourth Amendment. [...]
Notes: The above appeared in the ‘National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless surveillance controversy’ Wikipedia article, as of 04May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy
‘Saying the Unsayable’ article, by Richard Neville, ‘Good Weekend’ magazine, Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, 13April2002.
Original URL: www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/04/15/1018333477336.html; viewable 13Apr2002 and 20Mar2013.
Archived URL: http://archive.is/3xXy4; archived 20Mar2013.
Note that this same article may be called ‘Beyond good and evil’ in other publications.
Extract: [...] Enron’s disgraced chairman, Ken Lay, a former Pentagon economist, was the biggest single investor in George W. Bush ’s campaign for president. [...]
Stone Sour, a lyric from the ‘Omega’ song, from Stone Sour’s self-titled album.
The line “Fascism you can vote for,” used in a mock personal for Bush, comes from the Stone Sour song ‘Omega.’
Impeachment of Bush.
Ramsay Clark, ‘Articles of Impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John David Ashcroft'; posted 13Sep2003.
Original URL: www.americansonsofliberty.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1063512821/10; viewable 13Sep2003 and 20May2013.
Archived URL: http://archive.is/RLXm5; archived 20May2013.
Extracts:
[...] The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. - - ARTICLE II, SECTION 4 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [...]
[...] President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John David Ashcroft have committed violations and subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to carry out with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rights of the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and those reserved to the people of the United States, by the following acts: [...]
[...] violating within the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agents elsewhere, the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. [...]
[...] manipulating the media and foreign governments with false information; concealing information vital to public discussion and informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate of fear and destroy opposition to U.S. wars of aggression and first strike attacks. [...]
[...] usurping powers of the United Nations and the peoples of its nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejecting treaties, committing treaty violations, and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroy any means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate the exercise of U.S. military and economic power against the international community. [...]
[...] Acting to strip United States citizens of their constitutional and human rights, ordering indefinite detention of citizens, without access to counsel, without charge, and without opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the Executive of a citizen as an "enemy combatant." [...]
[...] Ordering indefinite detention of non-citizens in the United States and elsewhere, and without charge, at the discretionary designation of the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense. [...]
‘Petition To Impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney.'
Original URL: http://democrats.com/elandslide/petition.cfm?campaign=impeach; viewable in Aug2004.
Extracts from Democrats.com’s 2004 impeachment petition:
[...] Even if the President was misinformed by his intelligence agencies, he did not take due diligence in oversight of their information in making the decision to go to war, for which he is accountable. [...]
[...] The President and Vice President undertook aggressive war under cover of a pre-emptive first strike, contrary to the United Nations Charter to which the US subscribes by treaty. Therefore they violated US law. [...]
[...] They also violated US law and the US Constitution in July 2002 by taking $700 million from funds Congress appropriated for the war in Afghanistan, and secretly diverting them to prepare for an unauthorized war in Iraq. [...]
In 2008, the above 2004 petition was changed. The new title is "Special Prosecutor for Bush War Crimes." Author: Bob Fertik. Date: 18Dec2008.
The URL also moved to: www.democrats.com/special-prosecutor-for-bush-war-crimes; viewable 20May2013.
Archived URL: http://archive.is/4ACzL; archived 20May2013.
Archived URL: www.webcitation.org/6FGwPDjO3; archived 20May2013.
Presidential Signing Statements.
Charlie Savage article, ‘Bush challenges hundreds of laws,’ The Boston Globe, 30April2006.
Original URL: www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws/
Archived URL: http://archive.is/e2GlL; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts:
[...] Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.
Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.[...]
[...] Bush has claimed the right to indefinitely suspend habeas corpus without the approval of Congress in the Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla cases, and he has used more signing statements to challenge the enforcement of laws than any previous president. [...]
The ‘Movement to impeach George W. Bush’ Wikipedia article, as of 06May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_to_impeach_George_W._Bush
Extracts:
[...] Notwithstanding the suggestion of official policy, the administration repeatedly assured critics that the publicized cases were incidents, and President Bush later stated that: "The United States of America does not torture. And that's important for people around the world to understand."
To address the multitude of incidents of prisoner abuse the McCain Detainee Amendment was adopted. However, in his signing statement President Bush made clear that he reserved the right to waive this bill if he thought that was needed. [...]
[...] President Bush is alleged to use so-called signing statements to amend portions of a law he disagrees with, instead of issuing a veto. Most prominently discussed is his comment on the McCain Detainee Amendment which is commonly interpreted as reserving the right to waive this law. [...]
[...] In a story broken by Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe, further allegations of abuse of power have come to light. In the article Bush challenges hundreds of laws, the author claims that the President has issued over 750 signing statements, which allow the President to select which parts of the laws will be enforced, based solely on his interpretation of constitutionality. [...]
[...] Past DOJ response has been that this practice is not new, and that it has been used by many Presidents in the past. The Boston Globe article argues that while factually true, it has never been used on such a large scale as that of President Bush. The use of Presidential Signings to defeat certain portions of legislation amount to an end run against the unconstitutionality of Line item vetos. The President has never used his veto powers, instead, waiting until after signing the bill to issue Signing Statements that undermine the law. [...]
Comparisons of Clinton’s impeachment to Bush’s impeachment.
Barron’s magazine editorial, 26Dec2005
Original URL: http://online.barrons.com/article_email/SB113538491760731012-lMyQjAxMDE1MzI1NDMyODQ0Wj.html#EDIT
Archived URL: http://archive.is/Qr0W6
An extract from the Barron's editorial: [...] Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. [...]
The above source was cited in the ‘Movement to impeach George W. Bush’ Wikipedia article, as of 06May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_to_impeach_George_W._Bush
Bruce Fein and Norm Ornstien, on the Diane Rehm show, 19Dec2005
Original 2005 URL #1: www.wamu.org/programs/dr/05/12/19.php
Archived URL #1: http://archive.is/3gF9M
Original URL #2: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2005-12-19/conservatives-foreign-policy; viewable 24Mar2013.
Archived URL #2: http://archive.is/f5lms; archived 24Mar2013.
Bruce Fein (constitutional scholar and former deputy attorney general in the Reagan Administration) and Norm Ornstein (scholar at the American Enterprise Institute) argued 19Dec2005 on Diane Rehm show that, should Bush continue the controversial National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program (as he has indicated he will), Congress should consider impeaching him.
Bruce Fein said, "On its face, if President Bush is totally unapologetic and says I continue to maintain that as a war-time President I can do anything I want—I don’t need to consult any other branches—that is an impeachable offense. It’s more dangerous than Clinton’s lying under oath because it jeopardizes our democratic dispensation and civil liberties for the ages. It would set a precedent that … would lie around like a loaded gun, able to be used indefinitely for any future occupant."
Norm Ornstein said, "I think if we’re going to be intellectually honest here, this really is the kind of thing that Alexander Hamilton was referring to when impeachment was discussed."
The above source was cited in the ‘Movement to impeach George W. Bush’ Wikipedia article, as of 06May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_to_impeach_George_W._Bush
Jonathan Turley spoke about Bush's authorization of warrantless wiretaps in an interview for an article, “Bush’s Impeachable Offense” by Michelle Goldberg, published 22Dec2005
Original 2005 URL: www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/12/22/impeach/index.html
Later the URL was changed to: www.salon.com/2005/12/22/impeach_4/
Archived URL: http://archive.is/sT0y8; archived 24Mar2013.
Jonathan Turley (a law professor at George Washington University and a specialist in surveillance) said: "[President Bush] has already conceded that he personally ordered that crime and renewed that order at least 30 times. This would clearly satisfy the standard of high crimes and misdemeanors for the purpose of an impeachment." Turley testified against Bill Clinton in that impeachment hearing and added, "Many of my Republican friends joined in that hearing and insisted that this was a matter of defending the rule of law, and had nothing to do with political antagonism. I'm surprised that many of those same voices are silent. The crime in this case was a knowing and premeditated act. This operation violated not just the federal statute but the United States Constitution. For Republicans to suggest that this is not a legitimate question of federal crimes makes a mockery of their position during the Clinton period. For Republicans, this is the ultimate test of principle."
The above source was cited in the ‘Movement to impeach George W. Bush’ Wikipedia article, as of 06May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_to_impeach_George_W._Bush
The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder (book).
Bruce David’s interview of Mark Crispin Miller (the author of The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder), Hustler magazine, the interview was viewable (as at 2004) at www.larryflynt.com/articles/dubya.html, the interview is titled ‘Translating Dubya-Speak.’
Archived URL: http://archive.is/FIFLO; archived 24Mar2013.
Extract from an interview with the author:
[...] Miller: Although it has its share of laughs, The Bush Dyslexicon is no joke book. It's a close reading of Bush's off-the-cuff remarks and a critique of the mainstream media, which has enabled him from the beginning. One of the things I've tried to do is debunk the notion that Bush is a simple imbecile. That caricature has actually done him a lot of good, even though it does insult him, because it allows the White House to maintain the fiction that he's a regular guy, salt of the earth. Well, this "regular guy" went to Phillips [Academy] Andover and Yale thanks to his family connections, and then went to the Harvard Business School. He's a member of one of the wealthiest, most powerful families in the country. The queen of England is a distant cousin. I wanted to refute the view that Bush is a plain-spun, down-home Will Rogers type. And I do it, in part, by showing that his is not at all the language of the common man--that his linguistic problems tell us more than that he's just a dunce. In fact, on certain subjects, Bush is perfectly coherent [while speaking] off-the-cuff. What's most troubling about Bush is not stupidity so much as insincerity--that he's incapable of winging it on any idealistic or altruistic theme. It's when he tries to sound like he cares about the unemployed, believes in racial harmony or cherishes democracy that he makes his most hilarious mistakes. But when he talks about revenge, punishment or death, he tends to be quite coherent. This is not a judgment based on one or two stray statements. It's a constant pattern with him and, therefore, I would say definitive. [...]
An article by Murray Whyte titled ‘Bush Anything But Moronic, According to Author’ (and I think the sub-title was ‘Dark Overtones in His Malapropisms), published 28Nov2002, Toronto Star. The article is about Mark Crispin Miller, the author of The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder.
Original URL, viewable as at 2004: www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1128-02.htm
Archived URL: http://archive.is/g70m9; archived 23Mar2013.
Extract from this article:
[Mark Crispin Miller:] "Bush is not an imbecile. He's not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he's incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he's a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss."
DICK CHENEY.
The ‘Dick Cheney’ Wikipedia article, as of 20May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney
The hunting incident. Extract: [...] On February 11, 2006, Cheney, reportedly in view of six witnesses, shot Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old Texas attorney, in the face, neck, and upper torso with birdshot pellets from a shotgun when he turned to shoot a quail (a small bird) while hunting on a southern Texas ranch. Whittington suffered a "minor heart attack" and atrial fibrillation due to a pellet that embedded in the outer layers of his heart. The Kenedy County Sheriff's office cleared Cheney of any criminal wrongdoing in the matter, and in an interview with Fox News, Cheney accepted full responsibility for the incident. [...]
Karen Kwiatkowski’s article, ‘The new Pentagon papers,’ 10Mar2004.
Original URL, which was viewable in Mar2004: www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/
Later the URL was changed to: www.salon.com/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/
Archived URL: http://archive.is/SxkYu; archived 24Mar2013.
Extract: [...] My December articles became more depressing, discussing the history of the 100 Years' War and "combat lobotomies." There was a painful one titled "Minority Reports" about the necessity but unlikelihood of a Philip Dick sci-fi style "minority report" on Feith-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney's insanely grandiose vision of some future Middle East, with peace, love and democracy brought on through preemptive war and military occupation. [...]
Cheney, energy, Halliburton, war, politics.
‘Dick Cheney: A Defense.’
Original URL, viewable as of 06June2006: www.billionairesforbush.com/cheneydefense.php
PDF version: www.billionairesforbush.com/cheney/cheneyflier2.pdf
Archived URL: http://archive.is/5l0ba; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts:
[...]The Accusation: According to an Army Corps of Engineers email, the decision to award a no-bid contract worth up to $7 billion to a Halliburton subsidiary was “coordinated” with Cheney’s office. [...]
[...] The Accusation: It was inappropriate for Dick Cheney to loan the use of Air Force Two to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia while Scalia was presiding over a case titled Sierra Club et. al. v. Cheney. Also, public trust was undermined when Cheney spent three days together with Justice Scalia hunting ducks on the estate of an oil industry executive. [...]
T.D. Allman’s article, ‘The Curse of Dick Cheney: The veep's career has been marred by one disaster after another,’ Rolling Stone.
The original article was posted 25Aug2004 on www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/6450422/the_curse_of_dick_cheney/
However the original Rolling Stone URL is no longer viewable.
The article is viewable, as of 24Mar2013, at: www.tranceaddict.com/forums/showthread/t-207453.html
Archive of the TranceAddict.com article: http://archive.is/uZkAw; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts:
[...] Over at Defense, competent intelligence professionals were purged in order to ease the way to war. [...]
[...] [The following statement is said by Bruce Bradley:] "Cheney saw politics as a game where you never stop pushing. He said the presidency was like one of those giant medicine balls. If you get ahold of it, what you do is, you keep pushing that ball and you never let the other team push back." [...]
[...] Since Cheney lived in Texas at the time, choosing him led Bush into a situation that, if the words of our Founding Fathers still have any meaning, is unconstitutional. The Constitution forbids a state's electors from voting for candidates for president and vice president who are both "an inhabitant of the same state as themselves." Yet by voting for Bush and Cheney, electors in Texas did precisely that. Cheney lived in Texas, had a Texas driver's license and filed his federal income tax using a Texas address. He had also voted in Texas, not in Wyoming, a state where he had not lived full-time for decades. [...]
The ‘Dick Cheney’ Wikipedia article, as of 20May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney
Extracts:
[...] From 1995 until 2000, he served as Chairman of the Board and CEO of Halliburton, a Fortune 500 company and market leader in the energy sector. Under Cheney's tenure, the number of Halliburton subsidiaries in offshore tax havens increased from 9 to 44. As CEO of Halliburton, Cheney lobbied to lift U.S. sanctions against Iran and Libya, saying they hurt business and failed to stop terrorism. [...]
[...] Cheney's net worth, estimated to be between $30 million and $100 million, is largely derived from his post at Halliburton. [...]
[...] Rebuilding of Iraq. Halliburton was granted a $7 billion no-bid contract, the execution of which received much scrutiny from U.S. Government auditors along with the media and various political opponents who also scrutinized the awarding of the contract, claiming that it represented a conflict of interest for Mr. Cheney. In June 2004, the General Accounting Office reviewed the contracting procedures [26] and found Halliburton's no-bid contracts were legal and likely justified by the Pentagon's wartime needs. [...]
Farhad Manjoo’s article, ‘The United States of Texas: Two new books document the hold that Bush, Cheney and their corporate allies have on America.'
Original URL, posted 24June2004: http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/06/24/halliburton/index.html
Later the URL was changed to: www.salon.com/2004/06/24/halliburton_7/
Archived URL: http://archive.is/jdkox; archived 24Mar2013.
Also archived at: www.webcitation.org/6FMo3NcgW; archived 24Mar2013.
Extract: [...] In Dick Cheney's version of the life story of Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney is a self-made man. During the 2000 debate, and countless times since, Cheney has credited his fortune to the magical powers of the "private sector"; for Cheney, the millions he earned as the CEO of Halliburton, the world's largest oil services firm, are completely unrelated to the close connections he forged with government officials during the decades he spent in public office. To hear Cheney describe it, becoming Halliburton's CEO was a testament to his own individualistic business savvy; just part of Dick Cheney's fulfillment of the American dream. [...]
‘Mr. Cheney's Imperial Presidency,’ Editorial by the New York Times, 23Dec2005.
Original 23Dec2005 URL: www.commondreams.org/views05/1223-24.htm
Archived URL: http://archive.is/IQENT; archived 24Mar2013.
Also archived at: www.webcitation.org/6FMo9q6IV; archived 24Mar2013.
Extract: [...] Early in his tenure, Mr. Cheney, who quit as chief executive of Halliburton to run with Mr. [George W.] Bush in 2000, gathered his energy industry cronies at secret meetings in Washington to rewrite energy policy to their specifications. Mr. Cheney offered the usual excuses about the need to get candid advice on important matters, and the courts, sadly, bought it. But the task force was not an exercise in diverse views. Mr. Cheney gathered people who agreed with him, and allowed them to write national policy for an industry in which he had recently amassed a fortune. [...]
Cheney’s health.
The ‘Dick Cheney’ Wikipedia article, as of 20May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney
Extract: [...] Cheney's long histories of cardiovascular disease and periodic need for urgent health care have raised the question of whether he is medically fit to serve as Vice President. Cheney sustained the first of four myocardial infarctions (heart attacks) in 1978, at age 37. Subsequent infarctions in 1984, 1988, and 2000 have resulted in moderate contractile dysfunction of his left ventricle and his crooked smile. He underwent four-vessel coronary artery bypass grafting in 1988, coronary artery stenting in November 2000, and urgent coronary balloon angioplasty in March 2001. [...]
Cheney’s past, including Panama.
T.D. Allman’s article, ‘The Curse of Dick Cheney: The veep's career has been marred by one disaster after another,’ Rolling Stone.
The original article was posted 25Aug2004 on www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/6450422/the_curse_of_dick_cheney/
However the original Rolling Stone URL is no longer viewable.
The article is viewable, as of 24Mar2013, at: www.tranceaddict.com/forums/showthread/t-207453.html
Archive of the TranceAddict.com article: http://archive.is/uZkAw; archived 24Mar2013.
Wyoming; extract: [...] In 1986, he was one of only twenty-one members of the House to oppose the Safe Drinking Water Act. [...]
‘Saying the Unsayable’ article, by Richard Neville, ‘Good Weekend’ magazine, Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.
Original URL: www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/04/15/1018333477336.html; viewable 13Apr2002 and 20Mar2013.
Archived URL: http://archive.is/3xXy4; archived 20Mar2013.
Note that this same article may be called ‘Beyond good and evil’ in other publications.
Extract: [...] 1989, Panama. After sustained Orwellian “hate week ”campaigns against former US ally and puppet president Manuel Noriega, along the lines of those previously directed at Fidel Castro, Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, an aerial assault is launched on Panama City. The official reason is Noriega’s drug trafficking, long known to Washington. Another motive is maintaining control of the Panama Canal, in the face of populist stirrings. An activist tenement barrio is bombed to rubble, a compliant government is installed. Various independent inquiries put the deaths between 3,000 and 4,000, most of the corpses still rotting in pits on US bases, off limits to investigators. American news networks did not regard the UN ’s overwhelming condemnation of the attack to be worth broadcasting. [...]
The ‘Dick Cheney’ Wikipedia article, as of 20May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney
Panama; extracts:
[...] Cheney served as the Secretary of Defense from March 1989 to January 1993 under President George H. W. Bush. He directed Operation Just Cause in Panama and Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East. [...]
[...] Panama, controlled by General Manuel Antonio Noriega, the head of the country's military, against whom a U.S. grand jury had entered an indictment for drug trafficking in February 1988, held Cheney's attention almost from the time he took office. Using economic sanctions and political pressure, the United States mounted a campaign to drive Noriega from power. In May 1989 after Guillermo Endara had been duly elected president of Panama, Noriega nullified the election outcome, incurring intensified U.S. pressure on him. In October Noriega succeeded in quelling a military coup, but in December, after his defense forces shot a U.S. serviceman, 24,000 U.S. troops invaded Panama. Within a few days they achieved control and Endara assumed the presidency. U.S. forces arrested Noriega and flew him to Miami where he was held until his trial, which led to his conviction and imprisonment on racketeering and drug trafficking charges in April 1992. [...]
Vietnam War; extracts:
[...] Cheney was of military age and a supporter of the Vietnam War but he did not serve in the war, applying for and receiving five draft deferments [...]
[...] On October 6, 1965, the Selective Service lifted its ban against drafting married men who had no children. Nine months and two days later, Cheney's first daughter, Elizabeth, was born [...]
DWI; extracts:
[...] at age twenty-one, Cheney was convicted for the first of two offenses of Driving While Intoxicated (DWI).[...]
[...] Eight months later, in July 1963, Cheney was arrested in Rock Springs, Wyoming and fined $100 for his second DWI conviction. [...]
TONY BLAIR.
‘Tony Blair’ Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair, last edited 14June2006.
Extracts:
Laws, international law, the UK’s anti-terrorism laws.
[...] Proposed laws to cope with the threat of terrorism proved extremely controversial; an amendment to require that glorifying terrorism be deliberate in order to be an offence was rejected in the House of Commons by just three votes (a result initially announced as a one-vote margin, due to a miscount). The proposal to allow terrorist suspects to be held for questioning for up to 90 days was defeated on 9 November by a margin of 31 with 49 Labour MPs voting against the government. Instead, MPs supported an amendment to allow questioning for 28 days proposed by veteran backbencher David Winnick. This was Blair's first defeat on the floor of the House of Commons since he became Prime Minister in 1997, and most commentators saw this as seriously undermining his authority. [...]
Note that the above extract cites the following sources:
‘Blair defeated over terror laws,’ 9Nov2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4422086.stm
‘Q&A: Blair's terror bill defeat,’ 9Nov2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4421726.stm
[...] Several anti-war pressure groups want to try Blair for war crimes in Iraq at the International Criminal Court. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, stated in September 2004 that the invasion was "illegal" but did not state the legal basis for this accusation. [...]
Gays.
[...] Blair spoke in support of equalisation of the age of consent for gay sex and opposed capital punishment. [...]
[...] Blair has supported gay rights more then any previous British Prime Minister. Under his Labour Government, the age of consent was equalized, civil unions for gay couples were enacted and the ban on gays in the British armed forces was lifted. [...]
[...] Blair made a case for war against Saddam based on Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction and breach of UN resolutions, but was wary of making a direct appeal for regime change as international law does not recognize that as a legal ground for invasion. [...]
Nicknames, satire.
[...] "Tony Bliar” [...]
[...] he has been called "Bush's poodle". Blair has also been called "Governor of the 51st state", "Tony in the London office" and, by Nelson Mandela, "the US foreign minister" [...]
[...] "King of Spin", "Phoney Tony" [...]
[...] A Guardian/ICM poll conducted after the first wave of attacks found that 64% of the British population believed that Blair's decision to wage war in Iraq had led indirectly to the terrorist attacks on London. [...]
Note that the above extract cites the following source:
‘The Iraq connection,’ 20July2005, The Guardian
Original URL: www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/comment/story/0,,1531902,00.html
Later the URL was moved to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/20/july7.iraq
Archived URL: http://archive.is/bjfaY; archived 24Mar2013.
[...] 'Spin' means to selectively present news in a way which minimizes the political damage, and emphasises any positive aspects. A widely-levelled criticism of Blair and his government is that they make excessive use of spin to such an extent that government statements, even if entirely true, are now disbelieved; it is also said that the government has on occasions crossed the line between selective presentation of information and deliberate misleading. [...]
[...] defenders of Blair point to the fact that he was publishing to the public what he had been told in private and honestly believed at the time - even if such a belief was wrong. [...]
[...] the '45 minutes' claim might refer to ballistic missiles which could reach Cyprus. It was later revealed that it referred to battlefield munitions which could only be a threat to an invading force, but the government did not correct the misapprehension; the lack of action was referred to as 'spin by omission'. [...]
Awards.
[...] In July 2003, Blair became the first Briton since Winston Churchill to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, a honour awarded by Congress and considered the highest expression of appreciation by the American people. This was a controversial honour in the UK, and as of August 2005, Blair had yet to collect the actual medal, though he had already accepted the award. [...]
[...] Blair does not reveal his thoughts about the Bush administration: he has described Guantánamo only as "an anomaly" [...]
[...] an unscrupulous opportunist who was solely interested in doing anything that would get him elected [...]
Impeachment of Blair.
‘A Case to Answer: A first report on the potential impeachment of the Prime Minister for High Crimes and Misdemeanours in relation to the invasion of Iraq’; Produced for Adam Price MP; August 2004; Authors: Glen Rangwala and Dan Plesch; with the assistance of Ffion Evans, John Fellows and Gwenllian Griffiths .
Viewable as PDF on Guardian: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2004/08/26/impeach.pdf
Viewable as PDF on War Is A Crime's website: at: http://warisacrime.org/downloads/blairimpeachment.pdf
Extracts:
[...] Foreword
This report sets out compelling evidence of deliberate repeated distortion, seriously misleading statements and culpable negligence on the part of the Prime Minister[...] the Prime Minister’s conduct has also destroyed the United Kingdom’s reputation for honesty around the world[...]
[...] It is on this basis that a number of parliamentary colleagues have declared their
intention to bring a Commons motion of impeachment as an indictment of the methods, practices and conduct of the Prime Minister in relation to the war in Iraq. [...] We are guided in this action by that most ancient of parliamentary doctrines: the principle of ministerial accountability, that those who lead us cannot mislead us and then remain in office [...]
[...] All the usual constitutional conventions have been exhausted. Further inquiries into the Prime Minister’s conduct have been refused. A vote of no confidence would bring all ministers within its scope and, therefore, fail to reflect the extent to which this Prime Minister made Iraq a matter of individual, not collective, responsibility, through the practice, as revealed by Lord Butler, not of government-by-cabinet but government-by-cabal. [...] Finally, the normal rules of debate in the House of Commons mean that Members cannot accuse the Prime Minister of making misleading statements without immediately being required to withdraw the accusation. It is only by impeachment that Parliament will be able to discuss freely, and possessed of all the facts, the very serious issues raised by this report. [...]
NB: Cabal = a group of conspirators or plotters, particularly one formed for political purposes.
[...] We are used to evasion, to spin and to economies with the truth. But to allow to go unchecked misleading conduct by the most senior minister, on so many occasions; about a war that will influence world affairs for decades to come; is to abandon the cause of liberty that has been so painfully fought for, established and preserved down the generations. [...]
[...] If his actions go unchallenged then we will have established a new constitutional precedent that will say that a minister can mislead the people and still govern with his conduct unpunished. Without the ability to enforce an honest account to Parliament on behalf of the people, there is no democracy. In this way our freedom dies.
Adam Price MP
August 23rd 2004
[...] Introduction
[...] The first chapter of the report examines the statements and actions of the Prime Minister from September 2001 to August 2004 relating to Iraq. In particular, it finds that the Prime Minister:
exaggerated the condition of Iraq's illicit weapons well beyond the assessments of the intelligence services or the United Nations inspectors. He asserted in early 2002 that Iraq had "stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons", whilst the assessment of the Joint Intelligence Committee at the time was that Iraq "may have hidden small quantities of agents and weapons" [...]
asserted that the "UN proved" Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons because they were unaccounted for, in contrast to the warning by the executive chairman of UNMOVIC Hans Blix that "One must not jump to the conclusion that they [weapons that were unaccounted for] exist" [...]
claimed after the invasion that "our intelligence" had confirmed that Iraq's "two mobile biological weapons facilities" were part of a larger set of such facilities, even though intelligence had yet to examine the trailers, and then found them unconnected to biological weapons programmes [...]
held back crucial information from intelligence sources that indicated that Iraq had destroyed its weapons stockpile [...]
claimed that the intelligence available to him was "extensive, detailed and authoritative", even though he had been briefed by the Chief of MI6 about how key sources should be treated with caution [...]
[...] "the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) assessed that any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way in to the hands of terrorists, and that the Prime Minister was aware of this" [...]
[...] 3. The report finds that there is strong evidence that the Prime Minister committed his support to President Bush for an invasion of Iraq in 2002. He did this in the knowledge that the US administration had already decided to oust Saddam Hussein, regardless of any progress on the issue of Iraq's weapons [...]
[...] Chapter I
Statements and actions of the Prime Minister from September
2001 to August 2004 relating to Iraq [...]
[...] 7. As this chapter will demonstrate, the Prime Minister persistently misrepresented, or made statements that were in contrast to, the assessments of the intelligence community. He also made references to statements by the United Nations inspectors which seriously misrepresented those statements. A considerable number of statements made by the Prime Minister about Iraq's weapons were untrue, and there was British intelligence and UN evidence available to the Prime Minister at the time he made these statements showing that they were untrue. The competent exercise of his office would have meant that he knew that what he was saying was unsupported by the facts.
8. Furthermore, evidence that undermined the statements the Prime Minister made concerning Iraqi weapons capabilities and intentions was deliberately concealed from the public and from Members of Parliament, enabling a false case to be presented to the country about Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. There is powerful evidence that the persistent misrepresentation about Iraq's NBC weapons occurred because the Prime Minister had, during the course of 2002, committed his support to President Bush for an invasion of Iraq, [...]
[...] he misreported the findings of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to portray inspections as futile and to assert that Iraq had committed a "material breach" of Security Council Resolution 1441; [...]
[...] 1.1 Claims made about the existence of Iraq's NBC weapons before intelligence had assessed that Iraq possessed these weapons [...]
[...] 14. The Prime Minister made firm claims of certainty about the existence and development of Iraq's NBC weapons from early 2002[...]
[...] 15. On 11 March 2002, he said at a press conference with US Vice-President Dick Cheney: "that there is a threat from Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction that he has acquired is not in doubt at all." [...]
[...] 16. On 3 April 2002, Mr. Blair told NBC news: [...] “we know that he is trying to develop ballistic missile capability of a greater range." [...]
[...] 20. The discrepancies between intelligence assessments and the statements of the Prime Minister are stark. Whilst the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) was suggesting that Iraq "may have hidden small quantities of [chemical] agents and weapons", the Prime Minister was stating that "we know that he has stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons". [...]
[...] 1.2 Claims about a "threat" from Iraq's weapons [...]
[...] 31. For there to be "a severe threat [...] to the wider world" from Iraq's NBC weapons, there need to be two distinct components: the capability (the presence of such weapons or their precursor elements, together with a delivery system) and the intention to use these weapons outside its borders. Both components can be, and were, investigated by the British intelligence services, and their reports on their findings were available to the Prime Minister.
32. In direct contrast to the Prime Minister's statements, the intelligence assessments about Iraq throughout the period of 2002-03 make no reference to any intention by Iraq to use NBC weapons outside its borders, either by the Iraqi armed forces or through the supply of such weapons to non-state actors. In fact, the only situation in which the intelligence assessments envisioned that Iraq would use NBC weapons was if Iraq itself was attacked. [...]
[...] 36. The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) assessment of 9 September 2002 [...]stated clearly: "The use of chemical and biological weapons prior to any military attack would boost support for US-led action and is unlikely." [...]
[...] 42. [...] The Downing Street chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, wrote an email on 17 September 2002 to John Scarlett, about the draft of the September dossier [...]: "the document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam. In other words it shows he has the means but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbours let alone the west. We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat." [...]
[...] 44. [...] The claim to the TUC conference on 10 September 2002 that Iraq had "enough chemical and biological weapons remaining to devastate the entire Gulf region" is on a different scale from any JIC assessment, which stated at maximum that Iraq had a capability of up to 20 missiles with a range extending beyond the battlefield. To convert this capacity into a force that could devastate the "entire Gulf region" - from the Kuwait to the straits of Hormuz, comprising 8 countries and 118 million people - would take a remarkable feat of imagination[...]
[...] 1.3 Claims that weapons and material that were unaccounted for still existed
46. Throughout the period from 2002-03, the Prime Minister made repeated assertions that any material that the UN weapons inspections of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) had recorded as unaccounted for, in December 1998 - when the US ordered the inspectors to leave Iraq - still existed. [...]
[...] 48. [...]. However, the fact that these quantities of actual and potential production were unaccounted for did not mean that they still existed. [...]
[...] 53. These three claims all rely upon the direct assumption that material that was unaccounted for by UNSCOM in 1998 still in fact existed. By contrast, UNSCOM and their successors in UNMOVIC repeatedly drew the distinction between what was unaccounted for and what was known to exist. [...]
[...] 55. Despite frequent reminders from UNMOVIC and JIC that material which was unaccounted for could not be automatically considered as still existing, the Prime Minister repeatedly conflated [joined / merged] the two categories. [...]
[...] 59. On 24 September 2002, he told the House of Commons: [...] “The policy of containment is not working. The WMD programme is not shut down. It is up and running." [...]
[...] 61. Interdepartmental advice to ministers in early March 2002, drawing heavily on JIC assessments, concluded with the following judgements:
"Sanctions have effectively frozen Iraq's nuclear programme;
Iraq has been prevented from rebuilding its chemical arsenal to pre-Gulf War levels;
Ballistic missile programmes have been severely restricted;
Biological weapons (BW) and Chemical Weapons (CW) programmes have been hindered" [...]
[...] 63. [...]summarised in the Butler report: [...] there was no recent intelligence that would itself have given rise to a conclusion that Iraq was of more immediate concern than the activities of some other countries." [...]
[...] 64. In summary, the Prime Minister had declared in September 2002 that the reason for producing the dossier at the time was that Iraq's NBC programme was "growing". This was in contrast to the intelligence assessment that Iraq's illicit programme had been frozen or hindered, and to the fact that there was no intelligence of a growing programme. The Prime Minister has now recognised that the cause for concern was not a growing programme, but a changed political environment, which is a direct contradiction of his statement of 24 September 2002. [...]
[...] 68. [...] this section examines the chief allegations made by the Prime Minister at the time of Iraq's "non-compliance and non-co-operation", as this provided the basis of the Prime Minister's claim to be acting lawfully in ordering the invasion of Iraq. It evaluates whether these allegations were compatible with the reports made by UNMOVIC and the IAEA at this time. [...]
[...] 72. No interviews were held out of the country simply because neither the IAEA nor UNMOVIC had yet requested any interviews to be held out of the country. On 7 March 2003, Dr Blix announced that he was intending to begin requests of interviews outside the country. The invasion began before he had the opportunity to make such requests. [...]
[...] 74. [...] the assertion that no evidence had been provided for the prior destruction of chemical and biological agents is in direct contradiction with the accounts of the [UN] inspectors themselves.
[...] 85. The most serious misrepresentations of the work of the UN inspectors occurred in the Prime Minister's statement to the House of Commons on 18 March 2003. In this speech he moved the motion that was adopted by the House of Commons in giving its support to an invasion of Iraq. His claims about Iraq's non-compliance with UN inspectors began: "On 7 March, the inspectors published a remarkable document. It is 173 pages long, and details all the unanswered questions about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It lists 29 different areas in which the inspectors have been unable to obtain information."
86. This is a direct misrepresentation of the "Clusters document" issued by UNMOVIC on 7 March 2003. It was not about "29 different areas in which the inspectors have been unable to obtain information", but an overview of the 29 different areas on which UNMOVIC sought further information. [...]
[...] 87. [...] to state, as the Prime Minister did, that "the inspectors have been unable to obtain information" on Iraq's past mycotoxin programme is to contradict the substance of the inspectors' report[...]
[...]93. In summary, the allegations made by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on 18 March 2003 resort to direct misrepresentation of the reports of UN inspectors in order to make the case that Iraq was in material breach of Security Council Resolution 1441. The Prime Minister thus did not fulfil the requirement laid down by the Attorney-General [the British Attorney General is Lord Goldsmith] that he make sure there were strong factual grounds for concluding that Iraq was not complying or cooperating with its obligations. In presenting what he had been told by the Attorney-General was crucial evidence for the invasion to be lawful, the Prime Minister resorted to exaggeration, misquotation and fabrication. [...]
[...] 1.6 Claims made about items found in Iraq after April 2003 [...]
[...] 97. On 2 June 2003, the Prime Minister claimed again: "I would point out to you, we already have, according to our experts, two mobile biological weapons facilities that were almost certainly part, according to our intelligence, of a whole set of those facilities."
98. It emerged subsequently that these trailers were not suitable for the production of biological weapons, and had been constructed for other purposes.55 Moreover, the Prime Minister's assertion appears to have pre-mpted the assessment of the trailers by British intelligence. [...]
[...] 100. Therefore, the Prime Minister had stated a collective belief ("we believe" and "according to our experts") that the trailers were used for biological weapons production prior to any investigation of those trailers by intelligence experts. He was thus misrepresenting the position of the intelligence assessment by neither waiting for it nor withdrawing his own statement when the intelligence findings had been circulated. [...]
[...] 2. Failure to disclose available counter-evidence, and to ensure claims were verified
104. The government, including the Prime Minister, has been in possession of a substantial amount of information that undermined the case that it was presenting to the public about Iraq's weapons, but which it chose not to disclose. In consequence, Members of Parliament and the public were unable to make a properly informed judgement of the scale of the threat posed by Iraq at the time they were asked by the government to support the invasion. [...]
[...] 113. One can only assume that this information was made up by the Prime Minister as inspectors never found live anthrax in Iraq, and the factory at which anthrax had been produced before 1991 was under UN monitoring from at least October 1991. [...]
[...] 116. [...] The decision to favour those sources with alarmist perspectives over those who presented a "less worrying view" is not supported by any operational or security consideration. The reasonable conclusion is that it was a political choice to exaggerate the scale of the threat Iraq posed.
[...] 2.2 Investigation of intelligence sources [...]
[...]121. The failure of the intelligence services to contact Ambassador Wissam al-Zahawi on an issue so crucial as to be key evidence for whether or not Iraq had an ongoing nuclear programme reflects not just on the junior nature of the staff. It also raises the issue of whether questions were not asked because no one was interested in answers that would not support the presumption of Iraq's active nuclear ambitions. [...]
[...] 2.3 Limitations of intelligence sources [...]
[...] 127. [...] According to the Butler report (§355), over four-fifths of the intelligence about Iraqi deception and concealment activities came from only two sources. Two-thirds of the total amount of intelligence on this theme came from just one individual. Both of these sources are now recognised as being of questionable reliability. On Iraqi weapons, two-thirds of all intelligence reports that were circulated in 2002 came from just two sources (§401): one reported only indirectly, and the validity of the other is now open to "serious doubt" (§403). [...]
[...] 128. [...] None of this information was disclosed to the public by the government, even though it would have enabled the public to make a much better assessment of the reliability of the intelligence claims. [...]
[...] 129. In total, therefore, the considerable majority of British intelligence on Iraq beyond what was already in the public realm came from just five individuals. [...]
[...] 143. The consistent view of the intelligence services, as reported to the Prime Minister, over the period from March to September 2002, was that Iraq would be likely to use chemical and biological weapons if Iraq was invaded by land, but that use prior to this - even during aerial bombardment of Iraq - was unlikely.
144. Despite an extensive search, no evidence has come to light which would indicate that this point had been conveyed to the public by any government minister in the period before the invasion of Iraq. No statements by the Prime Minister refer to the low probability of Iraq using chemical and biological weapons externally other than during an invasion of Iraq. [...]
[...] 152. The removal from published material of text that would contradict those who envisioned that Iraq could use NBC weapons against the UK -- the view represented by the London Evening Standard headline on 24 September 2002 that the UK was "45 minutes from attack" -- strongly indicates that the Prime Minister was ready to allow a highly alarmist view of Iraq's weapons to spread. This view was in direct contrast with the perspective of the intelligence services, but enabled a political climate of fear to be generated in which an invasion of Iraq could be justified to a substantial proportion of the population.
153. The Prime Minister has insisted subsequently that he did not know that the claim from the September dossier that Iraq could use chemical and biological weapons in 45 minutes referred to short-range battlefield weapons, rather than longer range missiles that could threaten other countries. If true, this would reveal a high level of negligence, [...] That he did not reveal this crucial information indicates strongly that he was allowing a highly misleading impression of Iraq's potential threat to become widespread. [...]
[...] 2.5 Non-evaluation of the Iraqi declaration made in December 2002 [...]
[...] 156. The claim by the Prime Minister that "not a single member of the international community seriously believes" Iraq's denial was knowingly false: President Putin of Russia had been standing alongside Mr. Blair at a London press conference when he declared: "Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data which would support the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and we have not received from our partners such information". [...]
[...] 2.6 Not telling the public and Parliament about other threats [...]
[...] 167. [...] The Prime Minister has increasingly justified the war on Iraq upon the argument that it would lessen the risk of a terrorist attack; he did not mention that the intelligence services were giving precisely the opposite assessment: "The JIC assessed that al-Qaida and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq. The JIC assessed that any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of terrorists, not necessarily al-Qaida." [...]
[...] 3. Failure to withdraw material found to be false, or which should have been found to be false
3.1 Evaluating past intelligence after the re-introduction of inspectors
[...] 179. [...] Hans Blix told the Security Council on 14 February 2003: "Since we arrived in Iraq, we have conducted more than 400 inspections covering more than 300 sites. All inspections were performed without notice, and access was almost always provided promptly. In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming. [...] we note that access to sites has so far been without problems, including those that had never been declared or inspected, as well as to Presidential sites and private residences." [...]
[...] 182. The Prime Minister was thus reaffirming the validity of crucial allegations that he had made previously, without re-examining them in light of the large amount of new and detailed information available to him that cast severe doubt upon those allegations. [...]
[...] 3.2 Discredited sources [...]
[...] 193. On 25 January 2004, at least six months after MI6 had withdrawn key reports on Iraq's weapons, the Prime Minister was still defending the validity of the intelligence he had presented, [...]
[...] 194. The Prime Minister has asserted that he was not aware of the withdrawal of the reports on the "new source on trial" until the Butler process was complete in July 2004. The Prime Minister has thus acknowledged that he was in a position of serious ignorance for at least 12 months, during which time he continued to assert the validity of information derived from discredited sources. [...]
[...] 3.3 Interfering with reporting from US-led inspection process to prevent past statements being discredited
195. The Prime Minister only changed his allegations on Iraq's weapons at the end of January 2004, when the former head of the US-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG) David Kay told the US Senate Armed Services Committee on 28 January: "we were almost all wrong [..] it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarised chemical and biological weapons there." [...]
[...] 196. The negative reports on Iraq's past weapons production and retention undoubtedly caused considerable political embarrassment to the Prime Minister. His testimony to the House of Commons Liaison Committee on 3 February 2004 was very different to the account he provided in his interview with the Observer less than ten days before, quoted above. Now he defended intelligence procedures, but not the substance of the intelligence reports[...]
[...] 4. Making a secret agreement with President Bush to remove Saddam Hussein by force if necessary [...]
201. [...] In effect, the Prime Minister had committed the UK to assist the US with the invasion of Iraq, but had not disclosed this commitment to Parliament, to his own Cabinet or to the British public. It may be that there is evidence that has not yet been disclosed which would call this interpretation into question. However, the failure of the Prime Minister to provide informative denials to the statements of senior and respected officials indicates that the accounts of these individuals are true.
202. According to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to the United States, the Prime Minister was aware that the US would invade Iraq during the term of the first Bush administration from 20 September 2001. The Prime Minister and President Bush had dinner on that date at the White House, which Meyer also attended. Meyer's account was contained in an article in Vanity Fair: "On Thursday, September 20 [2001], Tony Blair arrived in Washington for a meeting at the White House. Until now, many assumed his and Bush's early talks had been limited to the coming war in Afghanistan. In fact, they also spoke of Iraq. At a dinner in the White House, attended also by Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and the British ambassador to the United States, Sir Christopher Meyer, Bush made clear that he was determined to topple Saddam. 'Rumors were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq,' Meyer remembers. 'On the one hand, Blair came with a very strong message--don't get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, the Taliban. Bush said, "I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq."' "
203. On 29 January 2002, President Bush declared in his State of the Union address that Iraq was part of an "axis of evil". This was followed up by explicit commitments in public to effect a change in the Iraqi leadership. On 4 April 2002, Bush told British journalist Trevor Macdonald: "I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go. That's about all I'm willing to share with you. [...] I'm confident that we can lead a coalition to pressure Saddam Hussein and to deal with Saddam Hussein."
[...] 207. Secondly, in the months immediately after this statement, British military personnel commenced meetings with US personnel to plan an invasion of Iraq. Air Marshal Brian Burridge, the national contingent commander for Operation Telic (the
invasion of Iraq), told the House of Commons Defence Select Committee on 11 June 2003 that this planning began in "early in June or July" of 2002. [...]
[...] 208. Whilst contingency planning is not to be confused with the political decision to invade, it is clear that at this stage the British government was choosing to participate in a planning process that it knew the US administration had already committed itself to implementing, if other methods of removing Saddam Hussein did not succeed. [...]
[...] 213. In July 2002, the Prime Minister had a 15-minute conversation with President Bush; a senior US official from the Vice-President's office who read a transcript of this conversation gave Vanity Fair a description of its contents: "The way it read was that, come what may, Saddam was going to go; they said they were going forward, they were going to take out the regime, and they were doing the right thing. Blair did not need any convincing. There was no, 'Come on, Tony, we've got to get you on board'. I remember reading it and then thinking, OK, now I know what we're going to be doing for the next year. [...] it was a done deal." [...]
[...] 216. That the reintroduction of weapons inspectors could serve as a pretext for military action was a consistent theme of US-UK planning over the next months: "The role of the United Nations - in building an international consensus on the need for action to tackle Iraq's prohibited weapons programmes; in the re-engagement of inspectors to investigate the extent and scale of those programmes; and ultimately in providing legitimacy for any military action to enforce disarmament"[...]
[...] 221. [...] The Prime Minister has not provided any information to discredit these accounts. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that the Prime Minister had made a secret alliance to go to war by 9 September 2002, and that his subsequent presentation of material on Iraq's NBC weapons were an attempt to win public and international support for a predetermined policy outcome. [...]
[...] Chapter II [...]
[...] Summary [...]
224. [...] there is a clearly established procedure for impeachment in Britain. Impeachment is a parliamentary word for an accusation and arising from this there can be an impeachment trial. However the phrase, “x was impeached” can be used to mean either that he was accused, or tried or convicted. Thus Warren Hastings, back in the eighteenth century was accused and tried but not convicted.
225. It only takes one MP to make the accusation of High Crimes and Misdemeanours against a public official for the impeachment process to begin. Once the accuser has presented his or her proofs to the Commons and if the House agrees that there is a case to answer, a committee is established to draw up articles of impeachment.
[...] 5.4 Entering into a secret agreement with the President of the United States regarding the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. [...]
[...] 273. For the Prime Minister to enter an agreement with a foreign leader without the prior consent or knowledge of Parliament and the Cabinet is impeachable. [...]
‘Impeachment Report."
The original URL was viewable at: http://impeachblair.org/report.shtml
Later however the impeachblair.org page was removed.
Some of page is viewable as of 24Mar2013 at: http://lists.j-n-v.org/pipermail/jnv-announce/2004q3/000021.html
Archived URL: http://archive.is/XKD1X; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts:
[...] The report A Case to Answer reveals:
Tony Blair made 28 statements about Iraq's weapons that were unsupported by the intelligence assessments available to him,
Tony Blair failed to disclose available counter evidence, or failed to ensure that claims were verified on 12 occasions,
Tony Blair failed to withdraw material later found to be false,
Tony Blair had entered into an agreement with the US without the consent of the Cabinet, Parliament or the people of the UK, and
that based on these charges, there is a clear case for the Prime Minister to answer and that regretfully, the only way to hold him accountable is through proceeding with a motion of impeachment.
Chapter I of the report examines the statements and actions of the Prime Minister from September 2001 to August 2004 relating to Iraq. In particular, it finds that the Prime Minister made a series of misleading and exaggerated statements in relation to the war on Iraq throughout this period.
Chapter II of the report finds that impeachment proceedings could be begun in order to hold the Prime Minister to account for his misconduct in relation to the Iraq war. It is unprecedented in modern times for a minister to remain in office when faced with such strong evidence of misconduct. [...]Authoritative texts on United Kingdom constitutional law describe impeachment as the ultimate means by which Parliament may exercise its legal authority to hold the government to account. [...]
[...] Commenting on the report, co-author Dan Plesch [...] said: “It is unheard for a minister to knowingly deceive Parliament and the public and to refuse to resign. Beverley Hughes and Peter Mandelson were forced to resign for misleading Parliament. Can the Prime Minister honestly say that his actions were less serious than those of Ms Hughes and Mr Mandelson?” [...]
The ‘Impeach Blair campaign’ Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeach_Blair_campaign, last edited 12Mar2006.
Extracts:
[...] In August 2004, Adam Price MP commissioned and published the report: A Case to Answer: a first report on the potential impeachment of the Prime Minister for High Crimes and Misdemeanours in relation to the invasion of Iraq. The document was written by Dr Glen Rangwala (lecturer of politics at University of Cambridge) and Dan Plesch (Honorary Fellow of Birkbeck, University of London.) The report is 111 pages and divided into two sections.
Section I
The first part of the report details evidence for charges that an MP could use when moving for impeachment. The evidence detailed by the report suggest that Tony Blair:
made unsupported statements to the house and the public;
failed to report counter-evidence;
failed to verify claims in the evidence;
failed to remove errors found in the evidence; and
made a secret agreement with US President George W. Bush to overthrow Saddam Hussein. [...]
[...] Section II [...]
[...] It also gives the impeachable offences for which Tony Blair must offer a defence:
failing to resign after misleading parliament and the country;
making a secret agreement with a foreign power;
undermining the constitution; and
negligence and incompetence.[...]
[...] The Impeachment Motion [...]
[...] (a) the conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group that in March 2003 Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction and had been essentially free of them since the mid 1990s
(b) the Prime Minister’s acknowledgement that he was wrong when in and before March 2003 he asserted that Iraq was then in possession of chemical or biological weapons or was then engaged in active efforts to develop nuclear weapons or was thereby a current or serious threat to the UK national interest or that possession of WMD then enabled Iraq to inflict real damage upon the region and the stability of the world
(c) the opinion of the Secretary General of the United Nations that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was unlawful
(d) whether there exist sufficient grounds to impeach the Rt Hon Tony Blair on charges of gross misconduct in his advocacy of the case for war against Iraq and in his conduct of policy in connection with that war. [...]
[...] The motion was tabled for the first day of the next session (the day after the Queen's Speech) on 24 November 2004. However, the main three parties forbade their MPs from signing the motion and it was never selected for debate. [...]
[...] Despite the lack of debate on the original impeachment motion, Adam Price has pledged to continue his campaign. In November 2005, the campaign announced a new motion (this time with the support of the Liberal Democrats) asking for a Commons committee to examine the conduct of ministers before and after the war. [...]
[...] Tam Dalyell, then Labour Party MP for Linlithgow said: [...] “I have been quite open in saying I want the Prime Minister to go because of Iraq. I made a speech during the debate on the Butler Report last month in which I said he should resign. Downing Street is trying to close down the impeachment attempt by dismissing it as a joke.” [...]
JOHN HOWARD.
The ‘John Howard’ Wikipedia article, last updated 13May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard
Extracts:
[...] A major change in Howard's political fortunes occurred in August and September 2001, when the government refused permission for the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa, carrying a group of asylum seekers picked up in international waters, to enter Australian waters. Howard ordered the ship be boarded by Australian special forces and spoke strongly of the need for Australia to 'decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come'. This brought censure from the government of Norway at the United Nations as failure to meet obligations to distressed mariners under international law. [...]
[...] Howard's reputation was damaged in what became known as the children overboard affair, when it was demonstrated that one of his claims during the asylum-seeker debate, that asylum-seekers had "thrown their children overboard" in order to force the government to allow them to land in Australia, was untrue and that he had most likely been aware of this during the election campaign. [...]
[...] During his period as Treasurer, Howard became a staunch adherent of Thatcherism (usually known as "economic rationalism" in Australia). Like Thatcher, he embraced the fiscal policies of neoliberalism without the more "libertarian" perspectives of the Chicago school on social issues. He favoured cuts to personal income tax and business tax, lower government spending, the dismantling of the centralised wage-fixing system, the abolition of compulsory trade unionism and the privatization of government-owned enterprises. [...]
[...] As Opposition Leader, Howard adopted a more pragmatic position than he had done during his first term in the leadership. He repudiated his earlier statements against Medicare and in favour of a GST. In a "small target" strategy, he attacked the "arrogance" and the "elitist" nature of Keating's "big picture" politics - issues like foreign relations with Asia, Australian republicanism, multiculturalism and reconciliation with indigenous Australians - which, Howard believed, were irrelevant to ordinary voters. With his slogan "For all of us", Howard signalled his preference for ordinary, mainstream Australia over the unspoken "all of them" of "elite special interest groups".[...]
[...] In 1988, Howard's position was weakened by controversy following a speech in which he claimed that the rate of Asian immigration into Australia was too high [...]
[...] In the lead up to the 1996 election, Pauline Hanson, the Liberal candidate for Oxley in Queensland was disendorsed because of comments she made to The Queensland Times. Howard was slow to express views on Hanson; his initial public reaction was to comment that he thought that it good that the years of "political correctness" were finally over. Howard's lukewarm response was variously interpreted as either indicating tacit support for the sentiments, or as a disingenuous attempt to harness their popularity among certain segments of the electorate. Hanson was elected as an independent member and used her first speech to Parliament to attack multiculturalism and reconciliation and allege that "we are in danger of being swamped by Asians". She later formed Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party. [...]
[...] Howard had come to office promising to improve standards of integrity among ministers and politicians, introducing a strict 'Code of Ministerial Conduct' at the start of his term. The strictness of his code backfired when a succession of seven of his ministers (Jim Short, Geoff Prosser, John Sharp, David Jull, Brian Gibson, Bob Woods and Peter McGauran) were required to resign following breaches of the code, concerning a variety of 'travel rorts' (misuse of the ministerial travel allowance) and conflicts of interest between ministerial responsibilities and share ownership. Prosser had attempted to use his ministerial office to further his own business interests. Another two ministers (John Moore and Warwick Parer) were discovered to have breached the code, but at that point Howard opted to ignore it, rather than lose more of his front bench. [...]
[...] [Howard’s] Second term: 1998–2001. [...] Despite Howard's essentially domestic focus, external issues intruded significantly into Howard's second term when the people of East Timor voted for independence in a United Nations sponsored referendum. Indonesian milita, covertly backed by Indonesian troops, began a brutal campaign of repression. After enormous public pressure, Howard broke with the previous bi-partisan policy of unquestioning support for Indonesia and Australia contributed a significant peacekeeping/policing force to protect the inhabitants against pro-Indonesian militias, attracting praise domestically and in several countries, but angering some Indonesians and Islamists. [...]
[...] In August 2004, Howard's proposed amendment to the Marriage Act -- to ban foreign and domestic same-sex unions from being recognised as marriages within Australia -- was passed with the support of the Australian Labor Party, although several Labor Left MPs had expressed their opposition to the ammendment, including the Premier of Western Australia Dr Geoff Gallop [...]
[...] In late 2005, John Howard ruled out same-sex civil unions under his government stating that "That's why we amended the Marriage Act [in August 2004]." He went on to explain that he believed "very strongly that marriage is exclusively a union for life of a man and a woman to the exclusion of others. That's the common understanding of marriage in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and I would be opposed to the recognition of civil unions." [...]
The above extract cites the following source: www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17640813%5E1702,00.html
[...] In October 2005, the Volcker Inquiry into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme revealed that Australian company AWB Ltd had paid the single largest illicit "kickback" to the Iraq regime. Howard, resisting calls for a Royal Commission, subsequently established a Commission of Inquiry under Terence Cole QC to determine if Australian companies had broken the law. Howard rejected criticisms that the Inquiry Terms of Reference were too narrow (ie. did not permit adequate investigation into the role played by Government Ministers and their delegates) [...]
The above extract cites the following source: www.smh.com.au/news/National/PM-slams-Labor-for-bagging-Cole-terms/2006/04/13/1144521445505.html.
[...] In mid 2005, John Howard and his cabinet began private discussions of new anti-terror legislation which includes modification to the Crimes Act 1914. In particular, sections relating to sedition are to be modified. [...]
Andrew West’s blog, Apr2006, titled ‘Howard is facing his Nixon moment.'
Original Apr2006 blog: http://blogs.smh.com.au/thecontrarian/archives/2006/04/howard_is_facin.html; viewable 24Mar2013.
Archived URL: http://archive.is/LYDPY; archived 24Mar2013.
Also archived at: www.webcitation.org/6FMp3bh8t; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts:
[...] The "please explain" letter sent to the prime minister by Terrence Cole, who is investigating just how much the government knew about the Australian Wheat Board's bribes paid to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has an interesting echo in history. [...]
[...] He has refused to extend Cole's terms of reference to allow him to make findings against ministers, including the prime minister, who have been dissembling, wilfully ignorant or incompetent in not knowing about the AWB's kickbacks to Iraq, despite mounting evidence that they were warned.
Howard's refusal to extend the scope of the inquiry amounts to the same thing as Nixon's firing of Cox: the executive is trying to protect itself from a judicial probe of potential corruption. [...]
The following extracts are ‘comments’ written by others about Andrew West’s blog.
[...] Posted by: ben at April 21, 2006 [...]
[...] The recent events surrounding the AWB Wheat Scandal remind me of an article penned by Salman Rushdie in 2001, titled “The mantra of our age – deny, deny, deny”. Writing as only he can, Rushdie comments on the then hit single by Shaggy titled It Wasn’t Me in which a man vehemently denies having committed any wrongdoing to his girlfriend. This is despite the fact that she catches him out making love to another woman on the sofa, in the shower and on the bathroom floor. This song is best described as a celebration of shamelessness, of the now common political practice of denial in the face of all the evidence and at all costs. [...]
[...] Indeed, the Howard government went so far as to ensure that the Cole inquiry could not make an express finding of wrongdoing against a minister. Despite this restriction, Howard then goes on to say with a straight face that the Cole inquiry’s terms of reference remain both adequate and transparent. As stated by Steve Mulhearn, the inquiry has ‘no teeth’ without the power to make a finding against the government. [...]
[...] Posted by: Marilyn Shepherd at April 11, 2006 [...]
[...] Perhaps the most worrying irony is the fact that we're now thinking of impeaching him for forgetting about under the table payments to a corrupt regime, and not for sending us to an unjustified and unpopular war. [...]
John Howard. The following appear on a webpage by the Australian Labor Party (ALP) titled, ‘Truth Overboard - 35 Lies told by John Howard and counting,’ www.alp.org.au/features/lies.php, viewable as of June2006. Later, that ALP webpage was removed.
The page is reproduced at: www.awu.net.au/news/truth-overboard-35-lies-told-john-howard-and-counting; viewable 24Mar2013.
Archived at: http://archive.is/N3XRm; archived 24Mar2013.
Also archived at: www.webcitation.org/6FMpbLBqB; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts:
[...] John Howard Lie #12:
Labor MP question to the Prime Minister: "Prime Minister, was the government contacted by the major Australian producer of ethanol or by any representative of his company or the Industry Association before its decision to impose fuel excise on ethanol?"
John Howard: "Speaking for myself, I did not personally have any discussions, from recollection, with any of them." John Howard, Question Time, 17 September 2002.
The Truth:
John Howard had met on 1 August the head of Manildra Group [Dick Honan], which makes 87 per cent of our ethanol, and they discussed how to help the Australian ethanol industry.
Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Official Record of Meeting, 1 August 2002. [...]
[...] John Howard Lie #21:
"The Australian Government knows that Iraq still has chemical and biological weapons and that Iraq wants to develop nuclear weapons."
John Howard, Speech to Parliament before the war in Iraq, 04Feb2003. [...]
[...] John Howard Lie #23:
"The Government has decided to commit Australian forces to action to disarm Iraq because we believe it is right, it is lawful and it's in Australia's national interest. We are determined to join other countries to deprive Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, its chemical and biological weapons, which even in minute quantities are capable of causing death and destruction on a mammoth scale."
John Howard, Address to the Australian people, before the war in Iraq, 20Mar2003. [...]
Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).
‘Howard is war criminal, says former colleague,’ 19July2004, no author cited.
Original 19July2004 URL: www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/18/1090089035899.html
Archived URL: http://archive.is/0SC32; archived 24Mar2013.
Also archived at: www.webcitation.org/6FMptyMsk; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts:
[...] A former federal Liberal Party president says Prime Minister John Howard should be tried and punished for war crimes over the Iraq conflict.
John Valder told a peace forum in Sydney yesterday the invasion of Iraq by the United States-led coalition was one of the great military atrocities of our time.
Mr Valder likened the war to a person breaking into a neighbour's house. If a person invaded a home, killing one or two of its occupants, and subsequently found no evidence for their bad behaviour, that person would be arrested and imprisoned, he said.
"Bush, Blair, and Howard, as leaders of the three members of the coalition of the willing, inflicted enormous suffering on the people of Iraq. And, as such, they are criminals," Mr Valder said.
"I believe the only deterrent to a repetition of the Iraq situation is punishment in some form as war criminals." [...]
Children overboard.
The ‘children overboard’ Wikipedia article, last updated 15May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_overboard
Extracts:
[...] The children overboard affair is an Australian political scandal which arose in 2001 when the government claimed that “a number of children had been thrown overboard” from a “suspected illegal entry vessel” (or SIEV) which had been intercepted by HMAS Adelaide off Christmas Island. The vessel, designated SIEV 4, was carrying a number of asylum seekers, and believed to be operated by people smugglers. [...]
[...] A subsequent inquiry by a Senate select committee found that not only was the claim untrue, but that the government knew the claim to be untrue before the Federal elections, which were held one month later. [...]
[...] In August 2004, Michael Scrafton, who had been a senior advisor to Peter Reith, came forward to say that before John Howard confirmed that children had indeed been thrown overboard, he had been informed that this claim was false. [...]
Dossier: The September Dossier; Uranium from Niger.
‘The September Dossier’ Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dossier, last edited 12June2006.
Extracts:
[...] The claim that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from Africa was repeated in George W. Bush's State of the Union Address in January 2003. The controversial 16 words used by US President W Bush on January 28, 2003 were: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.".[1]
In March, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that documents presented by Colin Powell to the United Nations Security Council alleging transactions between Niger and Iraq were blatant forgeries.[2]
However, in July, Tony Blair testified to the House of Commons Liaison Committee that the evidence the government had regards Iraq's dealings with Niger came from a separate source to the fraudulent documents. Ever since Powell's presentation critics argued that had the U.S. and UK intelligence services fully cooperated with United Nations weapons inspectors it could have been found out whether the claims were truthful. [...]
Cited sources. The above extract cites the following sources:
[1] www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html
[2] Original URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2829359.stm
Archived URL: http://archive.is/ChXFn; archived 24Mar2013.
Also archived at: www.webcitation.org/6FMq3lKpJ; archived 24Mar2013.
Dossier: The Dodgy Dossier.
‘The Dodgy Dossier’ Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodgy_Dossier, last edited 26Apr2006.
Extracts:
[...] Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation was a 2003 briefing document for the Blair Labour government that became known as the Dodgy Dossier. It was issued to journalists on 3 February 2003 by Alastair Campbell, Blair's Director of Communications and Strategy, and concerned Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Together with the earlier September Dossier, these documents were ultimately used by the government to justify its involvement in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.
Channel 4 News coined the term "Dodgy Dossier" when its reporters were made aware of Glen Rangwala's discovery[1] that much of the work had been plagiarised from various unattributed sources. The most notable source was an article by Ibrahim al-Marashi entitled Iraq's Security & Intelligence Network: A Guide & Analysis, [2] which was published in the September 2002 issue of the Middle East Review of International Affairs. [3]
Whole sections of Marashi's writings on "Saddam's Special Security Organisation" were repeated verbatim including typographical errors, while certain amendments were made to strengthen the tone of the alleged findings (eg. "monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq" became "spying on foreign embassies in Iraq", and "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes" became "supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes").
In its opening paragraph the briefing document claimed that it drew "upon a number of sources, including intelligence reports". Before the document's release it had been praised by Tony Blair and Colin Powell as further intelligence and quality research. The day after Channel 4's exposé, Tony Blair's office issued a statement admitting that a mistake was made in not crediting its sources, but did not concede that the quality of the documents's content was affected. [...]
Cited sources. The above extract cites the following sources:
East Timor, Indonesia.
The ‘East Timor solidarity movement’ Wikipedia article, last modified 14Mar2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Timor_solidarity_movement
Extracts:
[...] An international East Timor solidarity movement arose in response to the 1975 invasion of East Timor by Indonesia and the brutal occupation that followed. The movement attracted support from churches, human rights groups, and peace campaigners, but developed its own organizations and infrastructure in many countries. Many demonstrations and vigils backed legislative actions to cut off military supplies to Indonesia. The movement was most extensive in neighboring Australia and in Portugal, which had colonized Indonesia, but had significant force in the United States, Canada and Europe. [...]
[...] A turning point in international sympathy was the killing of many East Timorese youngsters (reportedly over 250) at a cemetery in Dili on November 12, 1991. The Dili Massacre [...]
[...] In Australia, there was also widespread public outrage, and criticism of Canberra's close relationship with the Suharto regime and recognition of Jakarta's sovereignty over East Timor. This caused the Australian government embarrassment, but Foreign Minister Gareth Evans played down the killings, describing them as 'an aberration, not an act of state policy'. [...]
The Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) homepage, as at 01-Oct2000. This homepage was previously at www.asiet.org.au, however as at June2006, it is viewable at http://web.archive.org/web/20001001102546/www.asiet.org.au/
Extracts:
[...] Tens of thousands of people in Australia struggled for more than a decade in support of the East Timorese peoples' freedom. This freedom was finally exercised in September, 1999 when over 80% of the Timorese population voted for independence.
Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) was among those organisations campaigning in support of a free East Timor.
ASIET called and chaired the 40,000 strong, militant demonstration held on September 11, 1999 in Sydney demanding Australian and UN armed intervention in defence of the Timorese people against the rampaging Indonesian army backed militias.[...]
Miscellaneous.
'Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian.'
Original URL www.craigslist.org/about/best/phx/167335230.html, posted 2006, still viewable in 24Mar2013.
Archived URL: http://archive.is/P9hSK; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts:
[...] You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt. [...]
[...] You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old. [...]
[...] You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving." [...]
The ‘Economic rationalism’ Wikipedia article, last modified 11June2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rationalism
Extracts:
[...] To a large extent the term merely means economic liberalism, also called neoliberalism. However, the term was also used to describe advocates of market-oriented reform within the Australian Labor Party, whose position was closer to what has become known as the 'Third Way'. [...]
[...] The term "economic rationalism" is commonly used in criticism of free-market economic policies as amoral or asocial. In this context economic rationalism may be summarised as "the view that commercial activity ... represents a sphere of activity in which moral considerations, beyond the rule of business probity dictated by enlightened self-interest, have no role to play." (Quiggin 1997) [...]
[...] The well-known statement of Margaret Thatcher that "There is no such thing as society. There are individuals, and there are families" is often quoted in this context, though the interpretation of this statement is disputed. [...]
Money, Economics, Halliburton.
T.D. Allman’s article, ‘The Curse of Dick Cheney: The veep's career has been marred by one disaster after another,’ Rolling Stone.
The original article was posted 25Aug2004 on www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/6450422/the_curse_of_dick_cheney/
However the original Rolling Stone URL is no longer viewable.
The article is viewable, as of 24Mar2013, at: www.tranceaddict.com/forums/showthread/t-207453.html
Archive of the TranceAddict.com article: http://archive.is/uZkAw; archived 24Mar2013.
Extract: [...] Halliburton was Cheney's first real chance to get rich; he grabbed it with both hands. His principal action was his acquisition of a subsidiary called Dresser Industries. Dresser struck lucrative deals with Saddam Hussein; Halliburton did business with Muammar el-Qaddafi and the ayatollahs of Iran. [...]
Farhad Manjoo’s article, ‘The United States of Texas: Two new books document the hold that Bush, Cheney and their corporate allies have on America.'
Original URL, posted 24June2004: http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/06/24/halliburton/index.html
Later the URL was changed to: www.salon.com/2004/06/24/halliburton_7/
Archived URL: http://archive.is/jdkox; archived 24Mar2013.
Also archived at: www.webcitation.org/6FMo3NcgW; archived 24Mar2013.
Extract: [...] Halliburton is an immensely successful federal contractor, and many of its biggest deals have involved government agencies. It's not just the war in Iraq -- for more than half a century, Halliburton's fortunes, and especially the fortunes of Halliburton's construction subsidiary Brown & Root (which has received some of the largest contracts in Iraq), have tracked closely with the fortunes of the politicians it has chosen to get close to. [...]
Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg%2C_Brown_and_Root, sourced Aug2006
Extracts:
[...] KBR (formerly Kellogg Brown and Root) NYSE: KBR is an American engineering and construction company, a private military contractor and a subsidiary of Halliburton, based in Houston. After Halliburton acquired Dresser Industries in 1998, Dresser's engineering subsidiary, M.W. Kellogg, an engineering contractor begun as a pipe fabrication business by Morris W. Kellogg in 1900 and acquired by Dresser in 1988, was merged with Halliburton's construction subsidiary, Brown and Root, to form Kellogg, Brown, and Root. The legacy of Brown and Root is many contracts with the U.S. military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as during World War II and the Vietnam War. [...]
[...] On March 24, 2003, the Army announced publicly that KBR had been awarded five task orders in Iraq potentially worth $7 billion to implement the plan. One of the task orders, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, required KBR to "procure, import and deliver" fuels to Iraq. In fact, the contract was awarded more than two weeks earlier, without submission for public bids or congressional notification. In their response to Congressional inquiries, Army officials said they determined that extinguishing oil fires fell under the range of services provided under LOGCAP, meaning that KBR could deploy quickly and without additional security clearances. They also said that the contract's classified status prevented open bidding. [...]
[...] The Army's actions came under fire from Congressman Henry Waxman, who, along with John Dingell, asked the General Accounting Office - the investigative arm of Congress to investigate whether the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Pentagon were circumventing government contracting procedures and favoring companies with ties to the Bush administration. They also accused KBR of inflating prices for importing gasoline into Iraq. In June 2003, the Army announced that it would replace KBR's oil-infrastructure contract with two public-bid contracts worth a maximum total of $1 billion to be awarded in October. However, the Army announced in October it would expand the contract ceiling to $2 billion and the solicitation period to December. As of October 16, 2003, KBR had performed nearly $1.6 billion worth of work. In the meantime, KBR has subcontracted with two companies to work on the project: Boots & Coots, an oil field emergency-response firm that Halliburton works in partnership with (CEO Jerry L. Winchester was a former Halliburton manager) and Wild Well Control, both of Texas. [...]
More info: www.halliburton.com/kbr/
National Security Agency (NSA).
The ‘National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless surveillance controversy’ Wikipedia article, as of 04May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy
Bush and the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy.
Extract: [...] According to a report in The Boston Globe on February 2, 2006 three law professors, David Cole (Georgetown University), Richard Epstein (University of Chicago), and Philip Heymann (Harvard), said that what [George W.] Bush is doing is unprecedented. Bush's claim that other presidents asserted that wartime powers supersede an act of Congress, "is either intentionally misleading or downright false," Cole said. [...] Epstein believes the United States Supreme Court would reject the Administration's argument and said, "I find every bit of this legal argument disingenuous...The president's position is essentially that (Congress) is not doing the right thing, so I'm going to act on my own." [...]
Cheney and the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy.
Extract: [...] Beginning in mid-January the Administration campaigned to assert the legality of the program. Dick Cheney said the program "is fully consistent with the constitutional responsibilities and legal authority of the President, and with the civil liberties of the American people," in a speech on January 19 [2006]. [...]
Glenn Greenwald.
Original URL: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/03/advocacy-v-lying.html
Archived URL: http://archive.is/30B57; archived 24Mar2013.
Extract. [...] Sean Hannity defended Bush during his January 3, 2006 broadcast saying that Americans should be thankful that the president was doing his job and protecting the country. "What are we supposed to do if Osama bin Laden calls the United States?", he states, and says that the president is just upholding his oath of office by protecting the nation. He ends by asking, "If Osama calls America, should we listen in or worry about his civil liberties? However, many commentators have pointed out that while defenders of the warrantless wiretapping typically reframe the debate as a choice of whether or not to wiretap Al Qaeda, no Democratic politician has suggested that wiretaps not be performed on Al Qaeda, only that wiretaps be performed in accordance with the law. [...]
Notes: The above appeared in the ‘National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless surveillance controversy’ Wikipedia article, as of 04May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy
The ‘Movement to impeach George W. Bush’ Wikipedia article, as of 06May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_to_impeach_George_W._Bush
Extract.[...] Proponents of impeachment based on warrantless surveillance controversy Elizabeth Holtzman (served four terms in Congress, where she played a key role in House impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon), John Dean (former counsel to the president) and Jennifer van Bergen from FindLaw assert that by authorizing warrantless domestic wiretapping in some cases, President Bush violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without legal basis, constituting a felony and as such an impeachable offense. [...]
Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
The Project for the New American Century’s homepage, www.NewAmericanCentury.org, as of 11Dec2004.
Archived at: http://archive.is/43g6O; archived 24MAR2013.
Extract: [...] The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle; and that too few political leaders today are making the case for global leadership. [...]
Margo Kingston’s article about the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), ‘A think tank war: Why old Europe says no’, 07Mar2003, Sydney Morning Herald.
Original URL: http://smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/07/1046826528748.html
Archived URL: http://archive.is/ThgUP; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts.
[...] In this liberal climate there came, nearly unnoticed, a 1997 proposal of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) that forcefully mapped out "America's global leadership". On 28 Jan 1998 the PNAC project team wrote to President Clinton demanding a radical change in dealings with the UN and the end of Saddam.
While it was not clear whether Saddam was developing WMD, he was, they said, a threat to the US, Israel, the Arab States and "a meaningful part of the world's oil reserves". They put their case as follows:
"In the short term this means being ready to lead military action, without regard for diplomacy. In the long term it means disarming Saddam and his regime. We believe that the US has the right under existing Security Council resolutions to take the necessary steps, including war, to secure our vital interests in the Gulf. In no circumstances should America's politics be crippled by the misguided insistence of the Security Council on unanimity." [...]
[...] This [Jan1998] letter might have remained yellowing in the White House archives if it did not read like a blue-print for a long-desired war, and still might have been forgotten if ten PNAC members had not signed it. These signatories are today all part of the Bush Administration. They are Dick Cheney - Vice President, Lewis Libby - Cheney's Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld - Defence Minister, Paul Wolfowitz - Rumsfeld's deputy, Peter Rodman - in charge of 'Matters of Global Security', John Bolton - State Secretary for Arms Control, Richard Armitage - Deputy Foreign Minister, Richard Perle - former Deputy Defence Minister under Reagan, now head of the Defense Policy Board, William Kristol - head of the PNAC and adviser to Bush, known as the brains of the President, Zalmay Khalilzad - fresh from being special ambassador and kingmaker in Afghanistan, now Bush's special ambassador to the Iraqi opposition. [...]
Stephen Colbert, Steve Bridges, truthiness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert_at_the_2006_White_House_Correspondents%27_Association_Dinner; viewable as of 19May2006.
Extracts.
[...] On Saturday night, April 29, 2006, Stephen Colbert was the featured entertainer for the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, delivering a 20-minute speech and video presentation which was broadcast on C-SPAN and MSNBC. As his conservative character from The Colbert Report, Colbert satirized the Bush administration and the White House press corps. Several of Bush's aides and supporters walked out during Colbert's speech, and one former aide said that the President had "that look that he's ready to blow." [...]
[...] Several times during the routine, Colbert spoke directly to the president, chastising his foreign policy, energy policy, approval rating, lifestyle, and personality. Before Colbert's presentation, Bush mocked himself with the help of a celebrity impersonator, Steve Bridges. Colbert followed his speech with a prepared video satire, featuring Helen Thomas. President Bush shook Colbert's hand after his presentation. [...]
The ‘Truthiness’ Wikipedia article, as of 18May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness
Extracts.
[...] Truthiness is the quality by which a person purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or to what the person might conclude from intellectual examination. Stephen Colbert coined this definition of the word during the first episode (October 17, 2005) of his satirical television program The Colbert Report, as the subject of a segment called "The Wørd." [...]
[...] By using the term as part of his satirical routine, Colbert seeks to critique the tendency to rely upon "truthiness," and its use as an appeal to emotion in contemporary socio-political discourse. He particularly applied it to President Bush's modus operandi in nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and in deciding to invade Iraq. [...]
[...] Colbert unknowingly reinvented the word "truthiness", as it appears in the Oxford English Dictionary, where "truthy," the word it is derived from, is defined as a variation of straightforward truthfulness, and indicated as rare or dialectal. Colbert invented its new definition and popularized it among a mainstream audience. [...]
[...] Colbert introduced the word "truthiness" on the premiere episode of The Colbert Report, on October 17, 2005. He came up with the idea of "truthiness" just moments before filming for the show began. [2] He used "truthiness" in a monologue that emphasized its role as an ironic political polemic compressed into a single word, as demonstrated in the following excerpts:
"I will speak to you in plain, simple English. And that brings us to tonight's word: 'truthiness'. Now I'm sure some of the 'word police,' the 'wordanistas' over at Webster's are gonna say, 'Hey, that's not a word.' Well, anyone who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books....
"I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart. And that's exactly what's pulling our country apart today. 'Cause face it, folks; we are a divided nation. Not between Democrats and Republicans, or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms. No, we are divided between those who think with their head, and those who know with their heart...
"Consider Harriet Miers. If you 'think' about Harriet Miers, of course her nomination's absurd. But the president didn't say he 'thought' about his selection. He said this:
(video clip of President Bush:) 'I know her heart.'
"Notice he didn't say anything about her brain? He didn't have to. He 'feels' the truth about Harriet Miers.
"And what about Iraq? If you 'think' about it, maybe there are a few missing pieces to the rationale for war. But doesn't taking Saddam out 'feel' like the right thing?..." [...]
[...] Colbert gave an out-of-character interview with The Onion's A.V. Club [3], in which he responded to the question, "What's your take on the 'truthiness' imbroglio that's tearing our country apart?" by elaborating on the critique he intended to convey with the word "truthiness":
Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word...
It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love the President because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?...
Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.' It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality. [...]
SyBaRa.
SyBaRa is the name of the group behind The Impeachables. To create the name, we searched for American, British, and Australian activists and resistance groups. We used the following:
US: Operation Sybil.
UK: Banksy.
Australia: Rainbow Warrior.
Operation Sybil.
Media release about Operation Sybil titled ‘Activists Hang 60-Foot Banner On Plaza Hotel,’ 26Aug2004, www.questionauthority.org/nycplazaaction/NYCPlazaAction.pdf, also viewable at www.TruthVsBush.org
Extracts:
[...] This morning, a group of young professionals and students from across the country, unfurled a giant banner in midtown Manhattan off the front of the Plaza Hotel. The banner was critical of the Bush/Cheney Administration’s poor record of leadership during its term in office. Two climbers safely rappelled down the facade of the NYC landmark in order to deploy the banner, which stretched 60-feet across and several floors high, depicted arrows pointed in opposite directions; the forward pointing arrow, titled “Truth”, contrasted sharply with the backwards pointing arrow, titled “Bush”. [...]
[...] “We love our country, but Bush and Cheney are taking us in the wrong direction”, said Terra Lawson-Remer, an organizer with New York City’s Operation Sibyl. “Bush lied about WMDs and Iraq, and he continues to deceive us regarding healthcare and the state of the economy. We can’t afford four more years of deception, miscalculation, and arrogance.” [...]
[...] Revelations that members of the Bush/Cheney Administration knowingly lied about supposed stock piles of chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq in order to justify a pre-emptive war exemplify a pattern of deception that has become a hallmark of this government. [...]
[...] “Engaging in creative, peaceful civil disobedience to hold our government accountable serves to revitalize democracy,” said Lawson-Remer. “Throughout history such actions have secured the right to vote for women, ended segregation, and hastened the end of unjust wars.” [...]
Don Hazen’s article about Operation Sybil, ‘The Banner Seen 'Round the World.
Original URL posted 30Aug2004: www.alternet.org/election04/19715/
Later the URL was moved to: www.alternet.org/story/19715/the_banner_seen_%27round_the_world
Archived at: http://archive.is/HvgIQ; archived 24Mar2013.
Also archived at: www.webcitation.org/6FMr7UJgp; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts:
[...] But so many things had to go right, especially in those early morning hours when the anxiety was pulsing through the veins of crack climbers Terra Lawson-Remer and David Murphy, hanging at the top of the Plaza Hotel, and ready to unfurl their giant "Truth-Arrow North; Bush-Arrow South" banner. [...]
[...] The highly organized activists – including compatriots Cesar Maxit and Rebecca Johnson – started their stealth effort at 5:00 a.m. from a cozy room inside the Plaza Hotel. At 6:15 a.m. they began rappelling down the face of the opulent building, a symbol of New York aristocracy and a favorite City landmark anchoring the Southeast corner of Central Park. Finally at 9:30 a.m. – more than three excruciating hours later – the banner was unfurled. [...]
[...] Essentially the action was the brain child of Lawson-Remer, who pulled the team together, and raised the funds, at least enough to make the action happen. Just 25, Lawson-Remer is nevertheless a veteran activist who counts Tom Hayden and Ruckus Society leader John Sellers as mentors. [...]
[...] As a result of the banner drop, Lawson-Remer and her partners have been charged with felony assault and reckless endangerment and as well as criminal trespass, which is a misdemeanor. [...]
[...] But like everything else in this meticulously planned project, Lawson-Remer had secured legal help long before the event. She went to Gerald Lefcourt, a veteran progressive attorney who long ago was Abbie Hoffman's lawyer. Lefcourt agreed immediately to do the case pro bono. [...]
[...] With all the risks, the grand goal was the media message. [...]. A photo of the banner was on page 2 of USA Today, a paper that gets read in middle America, the action was on television screens across the country and internationally." [...]
[...] Needless to say, Lawson-Remer and the team have a bunch of bills to pay and there will be considerably expenses in the legal case beyond Attorney Lefcourt's time. Contributions can be sent to Operation Sybil c/o Gerald Lefcourt, 148 East 78th Street, New York, NY 10021. Contributions are not tax deductible. [...]
Rainbow Warrior.
The ‘Rainbow Warrior’ Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Warrior, last modified 14June2006.
Extracts:
[...] Rainbow Warrior is the name of a series of ships operated by Greenpeace. The first ship was sunk by the French foreign intelligence agency (DGSE) in Auckland harbour, New Zealand, on 10 July 1985. [...]
[...] Rainbow Warrior was used as a support vessel for many Greenpeace protest activities against seal hunting, whaling and nuclear weapons testing during the late 1970s and early 1980s. [...]
[...] In 1985, she travelled to New Zealand to lead a flotilla of yachts protesting against French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago of French Polynesia. [...]
[...] Moruroa, and its sister atoll Fangataufa, were the site of extensive nuclear testing by France between 1966 and 1996, as well as the site of numerous protests by various vessels, including the Rainbow Warrior [...]
Tish Falco’s ICE case study, ‘French Nuclear Tests in South Pacific.'
Original URL: www1.american.edu/ted/ice/MURUROA.htm
Archived URL: http://archive.is/vJgwR; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts:
[...] On June 13, 1995, French President Jacques Chirac announced that he would break a three-year moratorium and resume nuclear testing in French Polynesia. France planned to conduct eight underground tests in the South Pacific or French Polynesia, particularly in Mururoa Atoll. The underground tests caused geographical degradation to the atoll as well as imposing potential health risks to the inhabitants of the South Pacific [...]
[...] French products were boycotted and peace protests evolved to symbolize condemnation of France's actions. Greenpeace was involved adamantly in expressing discontent with the French government [...]
Torture.
‘Mr. Cheney's Imperial Presidency,’ Editorial of the New York Times, 23Dec2005.
Original URL: www.commondreams.org/views05/1223-24.htm
Archived URL: http://archive.is/wLVxy; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts:
[...] And when Senator John McCain introduced a measure to reinstate the rule of law at American military prisons, Mr. Cheney not only led the effort to stop the amendment, but also tried to revise it to actually legalize torture at C.I.A. prisons. [...]
[...] Republicans in the Senate and House forced Mr. Bush to back the McCain amendment, and Mr. Cheney's plan to legalize torture by intelligence agents was rebuffed. [...]
The ‘Dick Cheney’ Wikipedia article, as of 20May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney
Extract: [...] Opponents however accuse [Cheney] of following policies that indirectly subsidize the oil industry and major campaign contributors and hold that Cheney strongly influenced the decision to use military force in Iraq. He is the leading proponent within the Bush administration of the right of the United States to use torture as part of the War on Terror and has been lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from Senator John McCain's proposed anti-torture bill. [...]
Valerie Plame.
The ‘Movement to impeach George W. Bush’ Wikipedia article, as of 06May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_to_impeach_George_W._Bush
Extract: [...] After Ambassador [Joseph / Joe] Wilson wrote an OpEd article in the New York Times denouncing the yellowcake basis and other justifications for the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, the identity of his wife [Valerie Plame] as a CIA employee appeared in media reports for the first time. Wilson later made the allegation her identity was leaked in personal retaliation against him for his. An investigation into this by Patrick Fitzgerald led to an indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby on perjury charges, not for releasing information regarding Plame. [...]
The ‘Plame Affair’ Wikipedia article, as of 05May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair
Extracts:
[...] On October 28, 2005, a federal grand jury returned a 5-count indictment against Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff, on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to the FBI and the grand jury investigating the matter. When the indictment was announced, Libby resigned his post as Chief of Staff to the Vice President. [...]
[...] The indictment alleges that Libby had informed several reporters about Ms. Wilson's employment at the CIA, that this information was classified, and that Cheney got the information from CIA sources and brought it to Libby's attention. Libby has been accused of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about the disclosure to investigators, but has not been criminally charged for releasing Plame's name. Both Karl Rove and Lewis Libby had told reporters about the occupation of Joe Wilson's wife in CIA, but Lewis Libby did it first, according to the investigation, to reporter Judith Miller on June 23, 2003. [...]
Pete Yost, Associate Press. This was posted/submitted by David Swanson on 14May2006 to After Downing Street’s homepage, www.afterdowningstreet.org and to www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/10345; the posting was titled ‘New filing in CIA leak case focuses on Cheney references.’
Later the URL was moved to: http://warisacrime.org/node/10345
Archived URL: http://archive.is/WpfWU; archived 24Mar2013.
Extracts:
[...] In a new court filing, the prosecutor in the CIA leak case revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney made handwritten references to CIA officer Valerie Plame — albeit not by name -- eight days before her identity was publicly exposed.
The new court filing is the second in little more than a month by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald mentioning Cheney as being closely focused with his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, on Plame's CIA identity and on her husband, Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. [...]
War.
Richard Neville’s article ‘Making the world a better place for arms dealers, millionaires and screwed up weirdos,’ Feb2001; it also appeared in the Journal of a Futurist, 31Jan2002; the subtitle/by-line of this article is ‘Excluded from CNN, Censored from Consciousness.’
Original Feb2001 URL: www.richardneville.com.au/archive/2002/journal310102.html
Archived URL: http://archive.is/XrUXB; archived 24Mar2013.
Extract: [...] Just because the number of civilian casualties isn’t mentioned on CNN, doesn’t mean it it’s not a crime. Indeed, its omission hints at a dim awareness of guilt. As well as dimness. CNN is now asking viewers to vote on what country should be next in line for a US attack. The American Taliban recruit John Walker Lindh is being charged with “conspiring to kill Americans”. We await the day when Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush and John Howard are charged with conspiring to kill Afghanis. Oh, that figure? More civilians have been killed than were murdered in the World Trade Centre. Nearly all of whom, movingly and appropriately, were commemorated in the media. The dead Afghanis? They don't count, so they’re not counted. Not by the Pentagon, which is too busy showing off its weapons. The dead are not named, not mourned, not remembered. [...]
Iraq Body Count; www.iraqbodycount.org
Extract as of 26Aug2007:
[...] Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq
Min: 70663
Max: 77183 [...]
War and Peace.
The ‘Statement of Conscience’ of the organization called Not In Our Name (NION); www.nion.us.
There are 2+ versions of the Not In Our Name’s Statement of Conscience.
The Aug2003 version, from www.nion.us/NION.HTM
Extract: [...] We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their o`wn governments do -- we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name. Thus we call on all Americans to RESIST the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral, and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world. [...]
The Aug2005 version, from www.nion.us/NSOC/NION2wsigninfo.htm
Extracts:
[...] No election, whether fair or fraudulent, can legitimize criminal wars on foreign countries, torture, the wholesale violation of human rights, and the end of science and reason. [...]
[...] In our name, the Bush government holds in contempt international law and world opinion. It carries out torture and detentions without trial around the world [...]
[...] Could we have imagined a few years ago that core principles such as the separation of church and state, due process, presumption of innocence, freedom of speech, and habeas corpus would be discarded so easily? [...]
US Senator Robert Byrd’s Senate Floor Speech, ‘Reckless Administration May Reap Disastrous Consequences,’ 12Feb2003.
Original 12Feb2003 URL: www.commondreams.org/views03/0212-07.htm
Archived URL: http://archive.is/LFULC; archived 24MAR2013.
Extracts:
[...] The doctrine of preemption -- the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future -- is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN Charter. [...]
[...] To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is "in the highest moral traditions of our country". This war is not necessary at this time. [...]
Paul O'Neill, Former US Secretary of Treasury, on CNN, 14Jan2004.
Extract: [...] Long before September 11th, 2001, the Bush Administration was planning for war with Iraq and the subsequent occupation of the country. [...]
War and Oil.
The ‘Dick Cheney’ Wikipedia article, as of 20May2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney
Extract: [...] Cheney directed the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) commonly known as the Energy task force. Comprised by people in the energy industry, this group included several Enron executives. Because of the subsequent Enron scandal, critics accused the Bush Administration of improper political and business ties. In July 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the Department of Commerce must make the NEPDG's documents public. The documents included information on companies that had made agreements with Saddam Hussein to develop Iraq's oil. The documents also included maps of oil deposits in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates. The NEPDG's report contains several chapters, covering topics such as environmental protection, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy security. Critics focus on the eighth chapter, "Strengthening Global Alliances", claiming that this chapter urges military actions to remove strategic, political, and economic obstacles to increased U.S. consumption of oil, while others argue that the report contains no such recommendation. [...]
Words, definitions.
Julia Alvarez’s entry for ‘bushwacked’ in The Future Dictionary of America, Jonathan Safran Foer, Dave Eggers, and Nicole Krauss.
Alvarez’s entry is for ‘bushwacked’ is: [...] the removal from office by the force of public outrage of any public official who has misrepresented, falsified, or in any way lead a nation into unilateral action obviating planetary consensus. [...]
Contact The Impeachables.
leegolit[at]gmail.com — www.LeeBobBlack.com — This website is parody.
Google Sites
Report abuse