In this almost four-minute long video here, Bugliosi documents Bush claiming that Hussein was an imminent threat to the U.S., while a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) published prior to that stated that he was not. That would be enough in a normal world. The NIE went further to say that Hussein would likely only attack if he felt that he was about to be attacked. Bugliosi highlights the "Manning Memo," a five-page summary of a meeting 1/31/03 between Bush and then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, written by Blairs top foreign policy advisor David Manning. According to the Manning Memo, Bush was willing to provoke Hussein into attacking us. And the NIE had stated that Hussein would only attack if provoked.
For some reason, our Democratic "leaders" have said that impeachment is off of the table. In a sane world, impeachment proceedings would have been underway long ago. It matters not if the impeachment were to ultimately fail. There is a lot of investigation to do, and who knows what things might be uncovered during the investigation? But the Democrats don't even want to investigate.
Sometimes, it does appear that the Democrats are in collaboration with the Bush Gang. Or is Bush blackmailing some of them into complicity? The Democrats unwillingness to pursue Bush crimes is quite unsettling.
Bugliosi also appeared on the June 13 Democracy Now! program. It's a good transcript and can be found here. Of course, you can also watch the video segment at the same link.
As you may expect, the mainstream "liberal press" barely made mention of Bugliosi's book.
Here are a few excerpts from Vincent's book:
With respect to the position I take about the crimes of George Bush, I want to state at the outset that my motivation is not political. Although I've been a longtime Democrat (primarily because, unless there is some very compelling reason to be otherwise, I am always for "the little guy"), my political orientation is not rigid. For instance, I supported John McCain's run for the presidency in 2000. More to the point, whether I'm giving a final summation to the jury or writing one of my true crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. Therefore, my only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others. This is why I can give you, thereader, a 100 percent guarantee that if a Democratic president had done what Bush did, I would be writing the same, identical piece you are about to read.More of this excerpt can be read here.
Perhaps the most amazing thing to me about the belief of many that George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns. Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That's almost too self-evident to state. But he deserves much more than impeachment. I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That's just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he'd still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.
Let's look at the way some of the leading liberal lights (and, of course, the rest of the entire nation with the exception of those few recommending impeachment) have treated the issue of punishment for Bush's cardinal sins. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote about "the false selling of the Iraq War. We were railroaded into an unnecessary war." Fine, I agree. Now what? Krugman just goes on to the next paragraph. But if Bush falsely railroaded the nation into a war where over 100,000 people died, including 4,000 American soldiers, how can you go on to the next paragraph as if you had been writing that Bush spent the weekend at Camp David with his wife? For doing what Krugman believes Bush did, doesn't Bush have to be punished commensurately in some way? Are there no consequences for committing a crime of colossal proportions?
Bush could face the death penalty, if we could find one prosecutor willing to take the case. Said prosecutor has to have standing, meaning loosely that at least one soldier from his district would have to have been killed in Iraq. Going up against the Bush Gang would be a bold, courageous thing to do. Surely someone has the guts?
Another excerpt:
More of this excerpt can be found here.How has George Bush reacted to the hell he created in Iraq, to the thousands of lives that have been lost in the war, and to the enormous and endless suffering that the survivors of the victims -- their loved ones -- have had to endure?
I've always felt that impressions are very important in life, and other than "first impressions," they are usually right. Why? Because impressions, we know, are formed over a period of time. They are the accumulation of many words and incidents, many or most of which one has forgotten, but which are nonetheless assimilated into the observer's subconscious and thus make their mark. In other words, you forgot the incident, but it added to the impression. "How do you feel about David? Do you feel he's an honest person?" "Yeah, I do." "Why do you say that about him? Can you give me any examples that would cause you to say he's honest?" "No, not really, at least not off the top of my head. But I've known David for over ten years, and my sense is that he's an honest person."I have a very distinct impression that with the exception of a vagrant tear that may have fallen if he was swept up, in the moment, at an emotional public ceremony for American soldiers who have died in the war, George Bush hasn't suffered at all over the monumental suffering, death, and horror he has caused by plunging this nation into the darkness of the Iraq war, probably never losing a wink of sleep over it. Sure, we often hear from Bush administration sources, or his family, or from Bush himself, about how much he suffers over the loss of American lives in Iraq. But that dog won't run. How do we just about know this is nonsense? Not only because the words he has uttered could never have escaped from his lips if he were suffering, but because no matter how many American soldiers have died on a given day in Iraq (averaging well over two every day), he is always seen with a big smile on his face that same day or the next, and is in good spirits. How would that be possible if he was suffering? For example, the November 3, 2003, morning New York Times front-page headline story was that the previous day in Fallouja, Iraq, insurgents "shot down an American helicopter just outside the city in a bold assault that killed 16 soldiers and wounded 20 others. It was the deadliest attack on American troops since the United States invaded Iraq in March." Yet later in that same day when Bush arrived for a fund-raiser in Birmingham, Alabama, he was smiling broadly, and Mike Allen of the Washington Post wrote that "the President appeared to be in a fabulous mood." This is merely one of hundreds of such observations made about Bush while the brutal war continued in Iraq.
And even when Bush is off camera, we have consistently heard from those who have observed him up close how much he seems to be enjoying himself. When Bush gave up his miles of running several times a week because of knee problems, he took up biking. "He's turned into a bike maniac," said Mark McKinnon in March of 2005, right in the middle of the war. McKinnon, a biking friend of Bush's who was Bush's chief media strategist in his 2004 reelection campaign, also told the New York Times's Elisabeth Bumiller about Bush: "He's as calm and relaxed and confident and happy as I've ever seen him." Happy? Under the horrible circumstances of the war, where Bush's own soldiers are dying violent deaths, how is that even possible?
In a time of war and suffering, Bush's smiles, joking, and good spirits stand in stark contrast to the demeanor of everyone of his predecessors and couldn't possibly be more inappropriate. Michael Moore, in his motion picture documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, captured this fact and the superficiality of Bush well with a snippet from a TV interview Bush gave on the golf course following a recent terrorist attack. Bush said, "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you." Then, without missing a single beat, he said in reference to a golf shot he was about to hit: "Now watch this drive."
One thing that has always struck me is the way Bush continually mentioned Hussein (Iraq) and al Queda in the same sentence, even in the same breath. He never came out and directly said that Hussein was working with al Queda, but the constant co-mingling of the two led to 80% of Americans thinking that Hussein was involved in 9/11. Indeed, about 90% of our troops thought that we were in Iraq for "payback."
They were there because of lies.
And there is good ol boy, George W. Bush. He's the guy you wanna have a beer with. Down home George. And he's parsing the language like a motherfucker. Fooling the rubes is as easy as breathing to this guy. Why he hasn't been run out of town on a rail and tossed in jail is a true injustice of our age.
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