From Online Journal

October 16, 2004—Shouldn't we be thinking of impeaching George W. Bush and Dick Cheney instead of running them for political office? These are two of the most corrupt politicians in U.S. history. We have factual proof they're serial liars. They've hoodwinked Congress and the American people into a war based on lies.

John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon, has said, 'The evidence is overwhelming, certainly sufficient for a prima facie case, that George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have engaged in deceit and deception over going to war in Iraq. This is an impeachable offense.' (Worse Than Watergate, Little, Brown 2004)

More about Dean's views later, but for now let's ask, what the foggin' heck is wrong with America? The malevolent nature of Bush and Cheney's actions, namely cooking up false intelligence and lying Americans into a war, should sicken and outrage any person with a conscience. Yet, in today's upside-down America, Bush and Cheney aren't criminals; they're legitimate candidates, smiling, strutting and backslapping their way across the country, snake-charming voters and continuing to defend their transparent lies. The corporate media eat it up. Half of the public may actually vote for them. There aren't enough world-gone-crazy metaphors to describe this situation. It's Alice in Wonderland and Orwell's 1984 rolled into one. Have a cup of tea with the Mad Hatter. War is peace. God bless America the Delusional.

America's TV talking heads seem preoccupied with asking whether John Kerry should have brought up the fact that Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian and other comparatively trivial aspects of the presidential campaign. They haven't expressed much concern that one of the candidates lied the country into war, much less discussed the chilling implications and ramifications of that lie.

For some sane context and meaning, let's look further at John Dean's views. In Worse Than Watergate, Dean points out that the Bush administration has routinely lied to the public as a matter of policy. However, Bush and Cheney didn't stop with lying to the American people. They also deceived Congress about war with Iraq, thereby committing an impeachable offense, according to Dean.

'Bush deliberately violated the very authorization he sought from Congress,' writes Dean, 'which was not merely a serious breach of faith with a trusting Congress but a statutory and constitutional crime.'

Dean says that at a congressional leadership meeting on October 3, 2002, Bush falsely claimed Saddam's 'regime has the scientists and facilities to build nuclear weapons and the materials needed to do so.' Bush lied to Congress at another classified briefing, according to Dean, claiming Saddam had biological and chemical weapons and was able to use them via unmanned drone aircraft against the United States. He also deceived Congress in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address when he falsely claimed Saddam Hussein had 'sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa [to build nuclear weapons].'

Dean writes that not since Lyndon Johnson tricked Congress 'into issuing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized sending American troops to Vietnam, has a president so deceived Congress about a matter of such grave national importance.' At least one member of Congress today has also expressed concern about Bush's Iraq lies.

Senator Bob Graham echoes Dean. As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and co-chair of the House-Senate joint inquiry into the September 11 attacks, Graham lists reasons he believes the public is badly served by Bush. Graham says, 'any one of these things would warrant a leader's removal from office.' Here's a partial list from his book Intelligence Matters (Random House, 2004):

* In the fall of 2002, the Bush allowed intelligence agencies under his control to present erroneous, misleading, and incomplete information to the Congress, our allies, and the American people in support of the war in Iraq. * Bush further adulterated that intelligence by selective use and presentation of the evidence to justify a preemptive war to the American people and the Congress, and to the world community at the United Nations. * Through delayed, halfhearted, and political use of the proposal to create and expeditiously activate a Department of Homeland Security, Bush has failed to protect our country. * Bush has engaged in a cover-up, withholding from the American people the evidence that supplies the basis of several of the above charges. He has done so by misclassifying information as national security data. While the information may be embarrassing or politically damaging, its revelation would not damage national security.



Could a president commit any misdeed more corrupt than condoning or actively seeking faulty intelligence in order to mislead a nation to war? Think of the blood spilled in Iraq and the families agonizing over loved ones lost.

With any news story, the meaning and implications surrounding the story's facts are as important as the facts themselves. In the case of the Iraq lies, the meaning is this: Both Bush and Cheney conned the American people into risking life and limb based on a fictional rationale—not for the purpose of protecting the country, as they claimed, but for their own self-interested motives.

This con job means that Bush and Cheney have no respect for the American or Iraqi people, don't mind getting thousands of young Americans killed or maimed, along with untold thousands of Iraqis, and have no compunction about brazenly lying to Americans and the world.

Imagine somehow Bush and Cheney were given a magic truth serum and forced to explain to a grieving mother why her soldier son was killed in Iraq. They would have to say the following:

'We knew from the start we had no credible evidence invading Iraq had any meaningful connection with the so-called 'worldwide war on terrorism.' We were aware we had no worthwhile evidence to indicate Saddam had WMD or that he had the capability or intent to supply terrorists with weapons. In fact, what 'evidence' we had, we pressured our intelligence agencies to conjure up in order to build a false case for war.

'We'd wanted to invade Iraq for years, and the whole WMD story was just an excuse. The WMD fiction was nothing more than the rationale we figured the public and the Congress would most likely buy. Your son is dead now because we told him he was going to be fighting in Iraq in order to somehow protect America and promote 'freedom' around the world. We knew all along keeping America and the rest of the world safe and free had nothing to do with it.'

With the recent release of the Duelfer report, the world now knows Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no means to pose a threat to the U.S. The report showed the following: Saddam Hussein was contained (in part via U. N. inspections.) There was 'no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the [Iraqi nuclear weapons] program.' Iraq had destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile and wasn't producing new chemical or biological weapons. There was no evidence Iraq had the means or intent to transfer any weapons to al Qaeda or other terrorists.

Bush and Cheney were aware all along there was no valid evidence that Saddam Hussein was a threat or possessed WMD. It was Bush and Cheney who pressured the CIA and other intelligence agencies to give them only evidence that bolstered their preconceived notions. (For more on this, see my earlier article, 'Bush and Cheney's campaign lies.' Also, see 'The Stovepipe' by Seymour Hersh.)

John Dean points out that 'not all presidential lies are equal.' He suggests deceiving the public about war and 'depriving the people of information they need to make informed political decisions' rank among the most reprehensible lies. Reprehensible, reptilian, vile, cruel, high crimes, treasonous, collusive, scheming, double-dealing, vicious, malicious—these words don't begin to cover the Bush and Cheney lies.

Today the Bush administration is already planning additional preemptive wars. One source is Tom Barry's article 'Is Iran next?' (October 25, 2004, In These Times)

Barry writes that soon after September 11, 2001, neoconservative cohorts of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith 'began planning to take the administration's 'global war on terrorism,' not only to Baghdad, but also to Damascus and Tehran.' He adds, 'U.S. Middle East policy involves covert and illegal operations that resemble the Iran-Contra operations in the '80s.'

If our elected officials cared more about honest government than partisan politics, Bush and Cheney would have already been impeached and removed from office. With a Republican-controlled House of Representatives, impeachment isn't likely. However, as Senator Graham says in his book, the election in November can serve as a people's impeachment.

I happen to like John Kerry, but no matter what one might think of him, his ethics are light years ahead of Bush and Cheney's. This election—if the schemers' supporters don't manage to steal it—may be the people's only chance to bring a modicum of justice and sanity to the current bizarre state of affairs. Vote for Kerry as if your life and the world's safety depended on it, because, as never before, they do.



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