APFN
Bush's High Crimes Against the Nation...
Sat Aug 2 12:32:25 2003
64.140.159.109


Published on Friday, August 1, 2003 by the Seattle Times
Bush's High Crimes Against the Nation
by Walter Williams
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0801-07.htm

George W. Bush has knowingly deceived the American people on the two overriding policy issues of his presidency — the invasion of Iraq and the deep tax cuts.

Other presidents have lied. Only Bush has repeatedly duped Congress and the public to thwart their exercise of informed consent.

He is the first president to use propaganda as the main weapon in selling his policies. Bush's unprecedented pattern of deception may constitute an impeachable offense.

To date, only the deception in Iraq has brought forth the "I" word. The case for impeachment is materially strengthened, however, when Iraq is combined with Bush's 2001 and 2003 propaganda campaigns to convince the public that tax filers with lower levels of income benefited more from his tax cuts than the nation's richest families.

Hoodwinking the public that Saddam posed a perilous immediate danger to the United States is Bush's greatest treachery. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman observed: "If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American history."

John Dean, counsel to the president during Watergate, wrote in mid-June: "Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be a 'high crime' under the Constitution's impeachment clause."

Before the U.S. invasion, the strong consensus based on intelligence community information held that there were only negligible Iraqi ties with al-Qaida, no nuclear weapons program of any consequence, and limited chemical and biological weapons programs at most.

Lacking hard facts, as evidenced by his now much-discussed deception in his State of the Union address that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa, Bush mixed misinformation, distorted allegations and unsubstantiated rumors to persuade the public of the imminent danger posed by Saddam Hussein.

The experience with the massive tax cuts for families and individuals in both 2001 and 2003 makes patently clear how Bush used the same unscrupulous tactics over time. Moreover, the level of the deception is staggering, as indicated by Bush's 2003 proposal to eliminate taxes on taxable corporate dividends.

Joel Friedman and Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out: "The group with incomes over $1 million — which consists of about 226,000 tax filers in 2003 — would receive roughly as much in benefits as the 127 million tax filers with income below $140,000. Stated another way, the top 0.2 percent of tax filers would receive nearly as much from the tax cut as the bottom 95 percent of filers combined."

Claiming that the 127 million tax filers with incomes of under $140,000 are the big winners when 226,000 of the richest tax filers benefit nearly as much is surely world-class policy deception.

But is it a high crime that warrants impeachment, as was the case with Watergate? YES! YES! YES!

Republican operatives breaking into the Democratic Party's national committee headquarters and President Nixon's covering it up clearly constituted crimes. Bush's propaganda campaign to hide how much the tax cuts benefited the rich is more likely to be viewed by the public as the stuff of politics in which politicians make inflated claims about the importance of a proposed policy and its likely benefits and ignore potential problems.

In actuality, the president's purposeful duping of the public on the nation's most critical policy issues strikes at the heart of American constitutional democracy when it robs the electorate of informed consent. This fraudulent act makes a mockery of Abraham Lincoln's immortal words in the Gettysburg Address, "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth."

Deeming presidential deception a high crime under the impeachment clause can open a Pandora's box of problems. Yet, President Bush's actions appear to be a far more serious assault on the Constitution than Watergate. I hold that interpreting Bush's pattern of deception on his most important policy proposals as a high crime against the nation is a necessary step in rescuing American democracy.

Walter Williams is a professor emeritus at the Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington, and author of the forthcoming book, "Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy."

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company

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Published on Tuesday, July 22, 2003 by the New York Times
Who's Unpatriotic Now?
by Paul Krugman
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0722-01.htm

Some nonrevisionist history: On Oct. 8, 2002, Knight Ridder newspapers reported on intelligence officials who "charge that the administration squelches dissenting views, and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary." One official accused the administration of pressuring analysts to "cook the intelligence books"; none of the dozen other officials the reporters spoke to disagreed.

The skepticism of these officials has been vindicated. So have the concerns expressed before the war by military professionals like Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, about the resources required for postwar occupation. But as the bad news comes in, those who promoted this war have responded with a concerted effort to smear the messengers.

Issues of principle aside, the invasion of a country that hadn't attacked us and didn't pose an imminent threat has seriously weakened our military position. Of the Army's 33 combat brigades, 16 are in Iraq; this leaves us ill prepared to cope with genuine threats. Moreover, military experts say that with almost two-thirds of its brigades deployed overseas, mainly in Iraq, the Army's readiness is eroding: normal doctrine calls for only one brigade in three to be deployed abroad, while the other two retrain and refit.

And the war will have devastating effects on future recruiting by the reserves. A widely circulated photo from Iraq shows a sign in the windshield of a military truck that reads, "One weekend a month, my ass."

To top it all off, our insistence on launching a war without U.N. approval has deprived us of useful allies. George Bush claims to have a "huge coalition," but only 7 percent of the coalition soldiers in Iraq are non-American — and administration pleas for more help are sounding increasingly plaintive.

How serious is the strain on our military? The Brookings Institution military analyst Michael O'Hanlon, who describes our volunteer military as "one of the best military institutions in human history," warns that "the Bush administration will risk destroying that accomplishment if they keep on the current path."

But instead of explaining what happened to the Al Qaeda link and the nuclear program, in the last few days a series of hawkish pundits have accused those who ask such questions of aiding the enemy. Here's Frank Gaffney Jr. in The National Post: "Somewhere, probably in Iraq, Saddam Hussein is gloating. He can only be gratified by the feeding frenzy of recriminations, second-guessing and political power plays. . . . Signs of declining popular appreciation of the legitimacy and necessity of the efforts of America's armed forces will erode their morale. Similarly, the enemy will be encouraged."

Well, if we're going to talk about aiding the enemy: By cooking intelligence to promote a war that wasn't urgent, the administration has squandered our military strength. This provides a lot of aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden — who really did attack America — and Kim Jong Il — who really is building nukes.

And while we're on the subject of patriotism, let's talk about the affair of Joseph Wilson's wife. Mr. Wilson is the former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to investigate reports of attempted Iraqi uranium purchases and who recently went public with his findings. Since then administration allies have sought to discredit him — it's unpleasant stuff. But here's the kicker: both the columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine say that administration officials told them that they believed that Mr. Wilson had been chosen through the influence of his wife, whom they identified as a C.I.A. operative.

Think about that: if their characterization of Mr. Wilson's wife is true (he refuses to confirm or deny it), Bush administration officials have exposed the identity of a covert operative. That happens to be a criminal act; it's also definitely unpatriotic.

So why would they do such a thing? Partly, perhaps, to punish Mr. Wilson, but also to send a message.

And that should alarm us. We've just seen how politicized, cooked intelligence can damage our national interest. Yet the Wilson affair suggests that the administration intends to continue pressuring analysts to tell it what it wants to hear.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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• Nobody wants to say this president is lying — Craig Hulet, Sat Aug 2 13:14
• WHAT DOES BUSH HAVE TO HIDE? — Justin Raimondo, Sat Aug 2 13:42