Speaking Of Holding Criminals Accountable ...
With the RNC going on and all its trappings of "strong on crime", "9/11", "Defense" and "Security", along with the simply frightening levels of police repression of free speech in the Twin Cities (see here, here and here for examples), I thought the following (lengthy) article is quite à propos in helping the RNC to remind us all of the need to hold thugs, lawbreakers and criminals accountable - the actual bombastic, self-proclaimed forte of the G.O.P. and of our own Canadian branch, the CPC. Enjoy the read:
Holding Murderers Accountable: The Case Against Bush, Cheney, et al.
by William John Cox
Although Americans have access to the greatest selection of information sources in the world, including books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cable, and the Internet, the frequency of the news cycle has increased to the point where we have forgotten that our president and vice president have committed horrendous war crimes, or we may have missed the fact as it flashed by.
Holding Murderers Accountable: The Case Against Bush, Cheney, et al.
by William John Cox
Although Americans have access to the greatest selection of information sources in the world, including books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cable, and the Internet, the frequency of the news cycle has increased to the point where we have forgotten that our president and vice president have committed horrendous war crimes, or we may have missed the fact as it flashed by.
Most of us may have been fleetingly aware in 2006 that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were lying to us about their reasons for the Iraq War which caused the murder and maiming of tens of thousands of our American troops and the waste of billions of our tax dollars. We elected a majority of Democrats to Congress to hold them accountable; however, the Democratic leadership immediately announced that impeachment was off the table and it has been business as usual ever since.
Recently, there has been a flood of new evidence clearly proving beyond any reasonable doubt that our president and vice president, along with others, conspired to engage the United States in an unnecessary and illegal war and repeatedly and deliberately lied to the American people about the true facts of the matter. Most specifically, the president committed felonies when he lied to Congress about his justification for ordering the attack on Iraq which resulted in the murder of all who have died in his fraudulent "War on Terrorism."
As governor of Texas, Bush executed 152 people, including Karla Faye Tucker, a born-again Christian, whose plea for clemency caused Bush to purse his lips in a false smirk of desperation and to whimper, "Please don’t kill me." Under the "Felony Murder Rule," known in Texas as the "Law of the Parties," if a person commits a felony and someone dies during the course of the felony, all parties to the felony are guilty of murder irrespective of which one actually does the killing.
There is strict liability under the rule, even if the death is accidental or unintended. Almost 20 percent of all murder prosecutions result from the rule, and a significant number of Bush’s 152 executions involved criminals who had engaged in felonies where the actual killing was done by others.
Not only has the president escaped all accountability for the serial murders he committed during his phony "War on Terrorism," he recently asked Congress to further aid and abet his crimes by acknowledging "again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans."
We now know to a high degree of certainty who the slaughterers are. The only remaining question is whether the murderers will escape justice.
The Crime
Title 18, Section 2 of the U.S. Code says that "Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal." Section 1111 defines murder as "the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought" and specifically holds that murders perpetrated by any kind of "willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing" are murders "in the first degree. Any other murder is murder in the second degree."
If Bush willfully and deliberately misled Congress into authorizing him to engage in an unlawful war in which American troops and Iraqis were killed, he is guilty of murder. Not only would such killings be premeditated, but they would also be the legal result of his lies to Congress.
Title 18, Section 1001 prohibits anyone from "knowingly and willfully" making "any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation" in "any matter within the jurisdiction of the ... legislative ... branch of the Government." Felony prosecution under the statute was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1955, and a violation of the statute is a crime.
Bush lied to Congress on a number of occasions. Most specifically during his State of the Union address on January 28, 2003, Bush told the following lies to Congress:
- "The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb."
- "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
- "Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction."
- "With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region."
- "And this Congress and the America people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda."
- "We seek peace. We strive for peace."
Ignoring the reports of UN inspectors that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush ordered its invasion on March 20, 2003 because: "the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised" and Iraq "has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda." When Bush deceptively ordered American troops to invade Iraq, he and his co-conspirators not only became war criminals under international law, they became murderers of all those who died as a result of their felonious conduct.
It can now be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Bush was deliberately lying about his justification for war against Iraq, and as of today 4,151 American soldiers and perhaps as many as a million Iraqis have become his victims.
The Evidence
Bush’s conspiracy of deception held for several years, but on May 1, 2005, the Times of London published the first of the so-called "Downing Street Documents." The documents informed us that Bush, irrespective of the lies he was telling at the time, was already committed to going to war with Iraq as early as 2002.
Calling the evidence of weapons of mass destruction "thin," the British memos documented that "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Richard Dearlove, the former head of Britain’s secret intelligence service later said that the Bush administration buried British information about the lack of WMDs.
We also learned that both the CIA and the State Department attempted to keep Bush from referring in his 2003 State of the Union Address to Saddam’s attempted purchase of "yellowcake" uranium from Niger. Indeed, the unsubstantiated allegations were later found to be a complete hoax based on a crude forgery disseminated by Sismi, the Italian intelligence service.
It has been revealed that Michael Ledeen, a representative of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s Office of Special Plans, had been in Rome at the same time gathering intelligence to support military intervention in Iraq and that the Sismi’s director later met with Stephen Hadley, Bush’s deputy national security advisor, after the CIA rejected his initial overtures.
Additional evidence has been provided by Pultizer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind in his new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. Suskind reveals that Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the head of Saddam’s intelligence service, was secretly reporting the true status of Iraq’s WMDs to the British.
Habbush informed the British (and the Bush administration) in January 2003 that there were no WMDs in Iraq. When CIA Director George Tenet told Bush about Habbush’s information, Bush replied, "Well, why don’t you tell him to give us something we can use to make our case?"
Rather than using Habbush to provide Saddam with effective disinformation, to arrange Saddam’s removal, or to even make operational use of the valuable intelligence, the U.S. terminated further communication with Habbush, paid him $5 million to keep quiet and resettled him in Amman, Jordan. Officially, Habbush is still wanted by the U.S. and there is a $1 million reward offered for his capture.
Further evidence that Bush had official knowledge that there were no WMDs in Iraq was provided by Naji Sabri, Iraq’s foreign minister, in autumn 2002. He passed information through a French government official that Iraq’s "WMD program" was actually a ruse to ward off Iran and other foreign enemies.
Sabri was paid at least $200,000 by the CIA and French intelligence to provide documents about Saddam’s WMDs; however, Bush rejected Sabri’s intelligence as worthless when CIA director George Tenet tried to tell him about it on September 18, 2003. According to a senior CIA officer, "Bush didn’t give a f**k about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."
Sabri received safe passage to Cairo during the first days of the Iraq invasion and is presently enjoying a comfortable retirement teaching journalism in Qatar.
Instead of informing the military, Secretary of State Powell, or Congress about Sabri’s high-quality intelligence, the CIA rewrote the report of his debriefing into an opposite falsehood stating that Saddam was "aggressively and covertly developing" nuclear weapons and that he already had chemical and biological weapons. The restructured report was then passed on to British intelligence to share with Prime Minister Blair.
During the same period, Saad Tawfik, an electrical engineer in Iraq, was identified by the CIA as a "key figure in Saddam Hussein’s clandestine nuclear weapons program." His sister lived in Cleveland and was recruited by the CIA to meet with her brother in Iraq and to obtain details about the program. Tawfik told her the program was completely abandoned in 1991 and there were no centrifuges or nuclear weapon facilities. The CIA obtained similar results from 30 other former Iraqi WMD experts who also told relatives the same thing.
Evidence of Bush’s consciousness of guilt can be found in Ron Suskind’s report of the White House’s subsequent attempt to create a fraudulent justification following the invasion of Iraq and the failure to find any WMDs. The White House ordered the CIA to forge a backdated letter purportedly sent from Habbush to Saddam.
The resulting handwritten forgery dated July 1, 2001 talked about Saddam buying yellowcake uranium from Niger with the help of al Qaida. Fortuitously, the phony letter also mentioned that 9-11 ringleader Mohammad Atta was in Iraq at the time being trained by al Qaida terrorist Abu Nidal for an upcoming righteous mission.
Keep reading ...
Recently, there has been a flood of new evidence clearly proving beyond any reasonable doubt that our president and vice president, along with others, conspired to engage the United States in an unnecessary and illegal war and repeatedly and deliberately lied to the American people about the true facts of the matter. Most specifically, the president committed felonies when he lied to Congress about his justification for ordering the attack on Iraq which resulted in the murder of all who have died in his fraudulent "War on Terrorism."
As governor of Texas, Bush executed 152 people, including Karla Faye Tucker, a born-again Christian, whose plea for clemency caused Bush to purse his lips in a false smirk of desperation and to whimper, "Please don’t kill me." Under the "Felony Murder Rule," known in Texas as the "Law of the Parties," if a person commits a felony and someone dies during the course of the felony, all parties to the felony are guilty of murder irrespective of which one actually does the killing.
There is strict liability under the rule, even if the death is accidental or unintended. Almost 20 percent of all murder prosecutions result from the rule, and a significant number of Bush’s 152 executions involved criminals who had engaged in felonies where the actual killing was done by others.
Not only has the president escaped all accountability for the serial murders he committed during his phony "War on Terrorism," he recently asked Congress to further aid and abet his crimes by acknowledging "again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans."
We now know to a high degree of certainty who the slaughterers are. The only remaining question is whether the murderers will escape justice.
The Crime
Title 18, Section 2 of the U.S. Code says that "Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal." Section 1111 defines murder as "the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought" and specifically holds that murders perpetrated by any kind of "willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing" are murders "in the first degree. Any other murder is murder in the second degree."
If Bush willfully and deliberately misled Congress into authorizing him to engage in an unlawful war in which American troops and Iraqis were killed, he is guilty of murder. Not only would such killings be premeditated, but they would also be the legal result of his lies to Congress.
Title 18, Section 1001 prohibits anyone from "knowingly and willfully" making "any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation" in "any matter within the jurisdiction of the ... legislative ... branch of the Government." Felony prosecution under the statute was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1955, and a violation of the statute is a crime.
Bush lied to Congress on a number of occasions. Most specifically during his State of the Union address on January 28, 2003, Bush told the following lies to Congress:
- "The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb."
- "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
- "Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction."
- "With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region."
- "And this Congress and the America people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda."
- "We seek peace. We strive for peace."
Ignoring the reports of UN inspectors that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush ordered its invasion on March 20, 2003 because: "the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised" and Iraq "has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda." When Bush deceptively ordered American troops to invade Iraq, he and his co-conspirators not only became war criminals under international law, they became murderers of all those who died as a result of their felonious conduct.
It can now be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Bush was deliberately lying about his justification for war against Iraq, and as of today 4,151 American soldiers and perhaps as many as a million Iraqis have become his victims.
The Evidence
Bush’s conspiracy of deception held for several years, but on May 1, 2005, the Times of London published the first of the so-called "Downing Street Documents." The documents informed us that Bush, irrespective of the lies he was telling at the time, was already committed to going to war with Iraq as early as 2002.
Calling the evidence of weapons of mass destruction "thin," the British memos documented that "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Richard Dearlove, the former head of Britain’s secret intelligence service later said that the Bush administration buried British information about the lack of WMDs.
We also learned that both the CIA and the State Department attempted to keep Bush from referring in his 2003 State of the Union Address to Saddam’s attempted purchase of "yellowcake" uranium from Niger. Indeed, the unsubstantiated allegations were later found to be a complete hoax based on a crude forgery disseminated by Sismi, the Italian intelligence service.
It has been revealed that Michael Ledeen, a representative of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s Office of Special Plans, had been in Rome at the same time gathering intelligence to support military intervention in Iraq and that the Sismi’s director later met with Stephen Hadley, Bush’s deputy national security advisor, after the CIA rejected his initial overtures.
Additional evidence has been provided by Pultizer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind in his new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. Suskind reveals that Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the head of Saddam’s intelligence service, was secretly reporting the true status of Iraq’s WMDs to the British.
Habbush informed the British (and the Bush administration) in January 2003 that there were no WMDs in Iraq. When CIA Director George Tenet told Bush about Habbush’s information, Bush replied, "Well, why don’t you tell him to give us something we can use to make our case?"
Rather than using Habbush to provide Saddam with effective disinformation, to arrange Saddam’s removal, or to even make operational use of the valuable intelligence, the U.S. terminated further communication with Habbush, paid him $5 million to keep quiet and resettled him in Amman, Jordan. Officially, Habbush is still wanted by the U.S. and there is a $1 million reward offered for his capture.
Further evidence that Bush had official knowledge that there were no WMDs in Iraq was provided by Naji Sabri, Iraq’s foreign minister, in autumn 2002. He passed information through a French government official that Iraq’s "WMD program" was actually a ruse to ward off Iran and other foreign enemies.
Sabri was paid at least $200,000 by the CIA and French intelligence to provide documents about Saddam’s WMDs; however, Bush rejected Sabri’s intelligence as worthless when CIA director George Tenet tried to tell him about it on September 18, 2003. According to a senior CIA officer, "Bush didn’t give a f**k about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."
Sabri received safe passage to Cairo during the first days of the Iraq invasion and is presently enjoying a comfortable retirement teaching journalism in Qatar.
Instead of informing the military, Secretary of State Powell, or Congress about Sabri’s high-quality intelligence, the CIA rewrote the report of his debriefing into an opposite falsehood stating that Saddam was "aggressively and covertly developing" nuclear weapons and that he already had chemical and biological weapons. The restructured report was then passed on to British intelligence to share with Prime Minister Blair.
During the same period, Saad Tawfik, an electrical engineer in Iraq, was identified by the CIA as a "key figure in Saddam Hussein’s clandestine nuclear weapons program." His sister lived in Cleveland and was recruited by the CIA to meet with her brother in Iraq and to obtain details about the program. Tawfik told her the program was completely abandoned in 1991 and there were no centrifuges or nuclear weapon facilities. The CIA obtained similar results from 30 other former Iraqi WMD experts who also told relatives the same thing.
Evidence of Bush’s consciousness of guilt can be found in Ron Suskind’s report of the White House’s subsequent attempt to create a fraudulent justification following the invasion of Iraq and the failure to find any WMDs. The White House ordered the CIA to forge a backdated letter purportedly sent from Habbush to Saddam.
The resulting handwritten forgery dated July 1, 2001 talked about Saddam buying yellowcake uranium from Niger with the help of al Qaida. Fortuitously, the phony letter also mentioned that 9-11 ringleader Mohammad Atta was in Iraq at the time being trained by al Qaida terrorist Abu Nidal for an upcoming righteous mission.
Keep reading ...
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