I just saw Ron Suskind on Countdown promoting his new book,The Way of The World
Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war. The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.” The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’”
It would seem to me this is an impeachable offense.
24 responses so far ↓
BobbyG // August 5, 2008 at 6:09 pm |
“It would seem to me this is an impeachable offense.”
_______
“Impeachment is off the table.”
- Nancy Battered-Spouse Pelosi
Chris Weekly // August 5, 2008 at 7:25 pm |
@BobbyG: good point — but is it really only up to Pelosi? Isn’t there a way to circumvent her cowardice? I know Kucinich has introduced articles of impeachment a few times… I still don’t understand why there aren’t people in the streets shouting “treason” about this stuff, if there were justice would not be so easily trampled by one weak personality. Bush/Cheney et al make Nixon (let alone Clinton) look like George Washington.
Rick Turner // August 5, 2008 at 10:19 pm |
What is with Pelosi, anyway? Jeez… I can understand this crap from the underground Republican Diane Feinstein, but how did Pelosi get so, so far to the right of Boxer? And where the hell is Boxer in all this? And the weird thing is that here we have three…count ‘em, three breakthrough women politicians, supposedly liberal (it’s not a four letter word…), all from the Bay Area, and they’re all acting like Sausalito Republican hill people…it may take long time Bay Area folks to understand that reference…but they’ve all done the too-predictable thing of abandoning principles once they’re inside the Beltway…
Maybe we need a new political system that does not allow local (read “State”) representative elected “leader” to leave their base locale. Do any of us want a representative who has been corrupted by the Boys of K street? In this day of the Internet, why not have virtual Congressional voting, and keep the Senators and Representatives where their constituencies live?
Rachel // August 6, 2008 at 1:34 am |
Rick, while I appreciate your sentiment, Jon is right. It is an impeachable offence. But where is the political mileage in mounting a campaign for impeachment? It makes the Democrats look like they’re focused on the past, like they can’t get over 2004.
Now, I grant you, I can’t get over 2000, let alone 2004. But there’s absolutely no mileage in getting upset about Bush now. By the time you get up a head of steam, he’ll be gone.
Now, signing the US up to the International Criminal Court – that I could go for. Then he, Cheney, Alito and Rumsfeld could be tried as the war criminals they are. Perhaps we could get Henry Kissinger into the bargain after all these years.
But impeachment? Save the political capital for something that counts. The process takes longer than Bush has got left anyway.
Rachel // August 6, 2008 at 1:41 am |
Sorry, Rick, that was a very poorly worded post – hope you get some sense out of it and don’t take offence.
michaelmeme // August 6, 2008 at 5:00 am |
Rachel, your last paragraph cleared it up well.
Jon Taplin // August 6, 2008 at 6:56 am |
Even though I raised the spector of impeachment, I have to agree with Rachel, there is no political gain from it. I guess I would just love one day to see Dick Cheney forced to raise his hand and swear to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
Rick Turner // August 6, 2008 at 7:40 am |
I don’t disagree that now is not the time, but this certainly brings up the issue of what a bunch of wimps the Democrats have been for the past seven and a half years. Kucinich is the only one with any guts.
What about after the election? If there were high crimes and misdemeanors there shouldn’t be a statute of limitations that puts up a brick wall when the next president comes in. Is it possible to impeach someone after they leave office?
BobbyG // August 6, 2008 at 7:44 am |
“Is it possible to impeach someone after they leave office?”
_____
No. But, there’s always the Hague.
STS // August 6, 2008 at 8:30 am |
Since before the 2006 election I’ve been resigned to the fact that there simply wasn’t enough time to build momentum behind an impeachment effort before the clock ran out for Bush. But wouldn’t it be sweet to impeach Bush and Cheney about 20 minutes before they left office … just as a kind of “don’t let the door hit you on the way out?”
Impeachment schadenfreude aside, accountability in some form, whether via Special Prosecutor(s) or the ICC would be better than nothing. I’d prefer some kind of domestic judicial process to having Europeans ‘bail us out’, though.
Michael Spencer // August 6, 2008 at 8:31 am |
Dunno, but I think the dust has to settle on this; I have a really hard time that even George Bush would do something like this.
Say what you will about him, Bush always makes decisions according to his ‘principles’. He’s consistent in that sense.
I just think this whole thing is too good to be true.
zak // August 6, 2008 at 8:34 am |
I keep hearing Bush could blanket pardon his senior admin. officials before he leaves office. . . how can you pardon people before they’ve been tried and convicted? It doesn’t seem right.
Rick,
Wexler and Feingold seem to be speaking up more and more. there are a few, it’s just not the tide wave we’d like to see.
Pelosi supposedly just gave a print interview that says impeachment is off the table so that Democrats can take back the legislative branch. It’s kind of counterintuitive — 80% of Americans think we’re heading in the wrong direction, Bush has some of the lowest approval ratings in history — that they think impeaching won’t help them take back the government.
I think there’s been some murmuring that Obama would put together a committee to investigate, and prosecutions would only come in his 2nd term, IF they decide they’re warranted.
Rick Turner // August 6, 2008 at 9:38 am |
So impeachment is appropriate for blow jobs, but not for possibly forging documents, manipulating the CIA, outing spies, and lying. What a country…
STS // August 6, 2008 at 9:55 am |
Michael Spencer:
Only if you recognize that his only principles are: rich folk must pay dramatically less in taxes, and I always get it MY way. He’s flip-flopped on everything else.
It burns me up that back in the “Battle of the $87 Billion” Kerry got nailed for saying he voted “for it” before voting “against it.” That was called being “foragainst.” But Bush had threatened to veto the version Kerry favored. So Bush was “againstfor” the same damn bill.
Rick Turner:
I think Pelosi is being a well-bred polite upperclass person and telling us “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Very High Minded of her. Of course, the whole sorry Clinton impeachment charade was pay-back for the Nixon/Watergate debacle. Gingrich-style Republicans (Abby Hoffman in Brooks Brothers) wanted to play outraged outsiders to generate public support their faux-populist raid on the treasury.
Rick Turner // August 6, 2008 at 5:01 pm |
Well, if another Dem goes for Pelosi’s seat in a primary, I’ll become a Dem instead of an independent, and I’ll vote for them just to vote against Pelosi. That goes ditto for Feinstein, too. Boxer will continue to be OK in my little notebook. Or it might be time to throw some support to some Greens in state politics here…
gage // August 6, 2008 at 6:06 pm |
Rachel, there is some “political mileage” in it if the Democrats want to retain their base. I’m as angry at them as I am at Republicans.
zak // August 6, 2008 at 9:23 pm |
STS, upholding the Constitution is not a Democrat/Republican issue, it’s a red-blooded American who honors what the founders of our nation died for issue.
How would 2 wrongs be committed her. It seems like countless wrongs have been committed by the Bush administration and the legislative and judicial branches just bent over and grabbed their ankles.
zak // August 6, 2008 at 9:23 pm |
2 wrongs be committed here?
Dave // August 6, 2008 at 9:42 pm |
It’s been very frustrating 8 years–sort of “the lost decade” under Bush. After reading Suskind’s 1% solution, the book lead me to conclude that Bush probably knew about 9-11, not the specifics, but that something big time was going down in the U.S. and very possibley in NY City AND decided to let it happen. According to Suskind, his response in August of 2001 was to do nothing to stop it. Bush was briefed at his TX ranch by the CIA according to Suskind and his response to the CIA briefer were words to the effect that “you have CYA”. It seems to me after hearing about a possible attack (don’t forget the PDB a few weeks earlier) that a logical step would have been to inform the FBI, or increase airport security, or if all else fails, form a task force, but he did NOTHING. And as best as I can tell from Suskind’s book, neither did the other particpants at that CIA brief suggest any response to the CIA brief. (Rice, Cheney, etc.) Could you imagine Clinton having the same brief and asking no questions and not having any response–or for that matter any other President (or person for that matter)? So explained to me how, given a brief by the CIA that an attack was likely, no task force was created, the FBI , FAA and local police were not coordinated, NOTHING appears to have been done. This was after Tenet said that the “chatter” was flashing “Red”. After the PDB of early August. At best, IMHO, this was criminal negligance. At worst, ………..
STS // August 7, 2008 at 4:41 am |
zak,
Pelosi was being too kind to Bush, but two years ago she probably honestly believed that impeaching Bush would at best fail and at worst be perceived as a vendetta. No, Clinton should not have been impeached, but the standard should be absolute not relative. So the first wrong was Clinton’s impeachment, and the second wrong would have been a Bush impeachment.
As I said, it’s Very High Minded. Bush richly deserves impeachment, but there has never been time — Republican majorities before Jan 07 and too few Democratic Senators (and too many chicken Dem Reps) since then.
Dave — totally agree on the ‘lost decade’, but I don’t believe Bush ‘knew’ 9/11 was going to happen. A more diligent, intellectually curious and reflective president might have made more and better use of the intelligence available. But I think Bush is narrow-minded, insular and a poor judge of advice and advisors — not a criminal mastermind. He’s done the damage he has because so much of our ruling elites share his superficial understanding of history and politics and share his enormous sense of entitlement.
Dave // August 7, 2008 at 5:00 am |
STS–I totally agree with your points on Bush, but after reading Suskind’s 1% Solution book, even someone as narrow-minded and lacking in curiousity as Bush, I am hard pressed to think given the extreme weight of the matter, that he would have done nothing. And even if one assumes that, how does that explain everyone else that was attending that CIA brief at his ranch in August of 2001 also failed to suggest any course of action to Bush. It seems too hard to believe. Isn’t their lack of action that day one of gross negligence? And if 3,000 people die because of one’s negligence, isn’t that criminal negligence?
STS // August 7, 2008 at 7:12 am |
Dave — haven’t read the Suskind book yet, so maybe there’s new evidence. I’m just wary of 20-20 hindsight.
The Clinton team emphatically warned the Bush people to watch bin Laden and it’s clear they had “other priorities” (as Cheney put it in connection with his Vietnam non-service). My guess is that was blinkered vision, not malice. I see that kind of lack of insight or vision in corporate America on a daily basis. Just people sticking with “what they know”. Bush’s team “knew” that non-state actors were “small ball” and they were going to realign middle eastern states around their “forward strategy”. (Cue the Will Rogers: “… it’s what they know that just ain’t so” that scares me.)
The Bush team sitting in Crawford in August ‘01 was no more likely to have an epiphany about asymmetric threats than GM that same month was to suddenly commit itself to building plug-in hybrids. The crime isn’t so much what they didn’t know or do in August ‘01 — it’s what they still haven’t learned 7 years later.
Dave // August 7, 2008 at 3:25 pm |
you could be right, it’s just a working hypothesis on my part—but I would still have given anything to have been a fly on the wall at the Crawford ranch back in 2001.
Andrew Wang // September 28, 2008 at 3:51 pm |
Bush is the worst president in American history. Bush facilitated the 9/11 attacks. Subsequently, Bush lied to Congress and the American people relative to the reasons for invading Iraq. Bush purposefully misled Congress and the American people. Then, Bush murdered more than 4,000 United States service members. And Bush wounded more than 30,000 United States service members. In torturing prisoners of war, Bush patently violated the Geneva Convention. Bush unlawfully wiretapped United States citizens. In using “signing statements” to challenge hundreds of laws passed by Congress, Bush violated the Constitution. Bush has ignored global warming. Bush is guilty of criminal negligence relative to the response to Hurricane Katrina. Bush disobeys our democratic values and Constitution. Bush is a disgrace to the United States.
Furthermore, Ron Suskind has revealed that Bush directed the forgery of a letter connecting Iraq to the 9/11 attacks. Bush is beyond help.
Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA