Hard Evidence Of Bush's Crime Of Iraq
(The True But Sickening Story Of Why We Are Really There)Executive Summary
What follows is the true, eye-witnessed and well documented story of why and how the premeditated atrocity of Iraq happened. This is also a detailed comparison between the very specific language of federal laws, and Bush's actions taken on Iraq in gross criminal violation of those laws.
Planning The Attack And Cover-up Before Taking Office
As GW Bush began to campaign for his nomination, having virtually no foreign policy experience, he hired C. Rice and P. Wolfowitz to manage his indoctrination into neocon foreign policy ideology (The Price of Loyalty, Suskind, pg. 80). Since the early 1990s the neocon ideology advocated a policy of being unilateral and aggressive, and using preemptive, unprovoked attacks as needed to use the military power of the US to spread democracy (see Google definition of "neo-conservative"). In practice that ideology has shown no regard whatsoever for either basic morality or the law.
Two of Bush's many tutors were Richard Perle, one of three neocon authors of an unused 1996 Israeli war plan called A Clean Break, and Paul Wolfowitz, who was a very outspoken advocate of neocon ideology and the invasion of Iraq (A Pretext For War, Bamford, pg. 282). The other two authors of Clean Break were Douglas Feith and David Wurmser.
The Clean Break plan called for 1) the abandonment of the US involvement in the Israeli peace process, 2) the adoption of a preemptive foreign policy, and 3) an unprovoked attack on Iraq to change the political map of the region. As any such plan or actual unprovoked attack would be a war crime by legal definition, that plan deliberately included 4) a critical phony pretext for public consumption to cover up that lack of provocation, such as non-existent threats of WMD, etc (A Pretext For War, Bamford, pgs. 260-69). Early on, Bush hired Perle as his campaign consultant on Mid-East policy, and Wolfowitz as a defense consultant.
Through his neocon campaign advisors, Bush became very familiar with the Clean Break plan for an unprovoked attack on Iraq; complete with its phony cover-up pretext of non-existent WMDs, etc. For his own political reasons, Bush bought completely into the whole plan during his campaign, and discussed it frequently with his close group of neocons, well before he ever took office. Bush had picked Cheney as his running mate, and after the election hired Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Both men were neocons and both were outspoken advocates of an unprovoked attack on Iraq.
Colin Powell and Paul O'Neill, then Sec. of the Treasury, reported that in their presence on January 30, 2001 (ten days after he took office & 7 months before 9/11), Bush formally adopted the major elements of the illegal Clean Break plan as national policy. A few days later he withdrew the US from the Israeli peace process and announced a new preemptive foreign policy. Because he so admired both them and their Clean Break plan, a few weeks later he hired all three authors of that illegal plan into the three highest war policy positions in the US, and Paul Wolfowitz as Assist Sec. of Defense, who was the architect of the war on Iraq (Hubris, Isikoff & Corn, pgs. 16-19, A Pretext For War, Bamford, pgs. 260-69, and The Smoking Gun).
O'Neil further reports personally seeing in February, 2001 what Rumsfeld's Defense Intelligence Agency had drawn up as a map of Iraq's oil production and exploration areas, shown subdivided into parcels by type and labeled as to which oil companies might get which parcel after Bush et al's already planned war with Iraq (The Price of Loyalty, Suskind, pgs. 70-75, 96).
In August, 2002 the White House Iraq Group (WHIG, name changed before and after) was formed in secrecy under Cheney, with Karl Rove as its Chair, met weekly, and employed all the top spin doctors in the GOP, including C. Rice, S. Libby, K. Hughes, M. Matlin, S. Hadley, and several speech writers. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, all their key staff involved, and all the WHIG members are termed Bush et al. WHIGs' job was to create, write up as public announcements, and coordinate the public release by Bush et al of their many known lies about all the phony reasons to attack Iraq, including phony mobile bio-labs, illusionary mushroom clouds, forged uranium buys, non-existent WMD, bombs on drones, etc, etc (see The Greatest Story Ever Sold, Rich, pgs. 186, 189-92, 217, Hoodwinked, Prados, pgs. 185-95, pgs.13-32, Hubris, Isikoff & Corn, pgs. 27-65, 208-22, 334-38 and A Pretext For War, Bamford, pgs. 160-74, 283-331).
Bush announced a different excuse to attack every week; remember? Whenever one lie was questioned, he was ready with a new one. He was a habitual liar with high job approval ratings — a dangerous combination in a president. Whenever there was a choice between the truth and lies, Bush et al without a single exception supported the lies of the phony pretext. Theirs' was a sales job of a pre-decision, not a factual evaluation of its merits. Ideology and loyalty had replaced reason, common sense, and basic morality. Theirs' was pure pro-war propaganda; a phony hype for a monstrous crime that most Americans bought hook, line, and sinker: Bush's big lie (as Plato once said; if it's a big enough lie repeated often enough by enough people, then it becomes the truth). WHIG was the long premeditated Clean Break phony pretext in action.
Their political spin fun and games, when directed at and resulting in creating a phony excuse to go to war and kill innocent people, became a massive criminal fraud crime by legal definition: because their lies were intentional and they knew people would be physically and financially harmed by them: like 1.2 million people dead and wounded and $350 billion of taxpayer funds; the worst crime in American history. Well documented evidence and many named eyewitnesses support in detail the many examples of their lies about the false need to attack Iraq. All such documentation published by several different well regarded authors can be referenced by name in this ad-free site, BushCrimes.net.
Abundant evidence clearly shows probable cause that Bush et al committed 16 federal crimes regarding Iraq, and 2 more in Afghanistan (see Facts of Crimes & Law on Crimes, The Smoking Gun, Compelling Eye-witnessed Evidence of Cover-up, Bush's Treason in Afghanistan, Sources of Facts, Links to Chapters, and State of War, Risen, pgs. 149-72). At no time during any of the dozens of reported toplevel meetings of Bush et al, either before the attack or afterwards, did anyone express any interest or concern about the potential or actual casualties of Iraqi civilians. Rumsfeld specifically ordered that no records be kept.
A later investigation of the cover-up of the murders of 24 women and children in their beds by the US military at Haditha, Iraq by Maj. Gen. E. Bargewell, found "the absence of virtually any kind of inquiry at any level of command into the circumstances surrounding the deaths." Just as the media should have reacted to Bush's Clean Break plan and Bush's Big Lie, "I found that the duty to inquire further was so obvious in this case that a (any) reasonable person (reporter) with knowledge of these events would have certainly made further inquiries." The complete indifference to civilian fatalities was the culture of the military, and most especially among Bush et al. That helps to explain their mindless murder of over 400,000 innocent Iraqis, and the media's (silence-for-access) non-reporting of that obvious fact: which crime is the inescapable conclusion of any reasonable comparison of the law and Bush et al's actions re Iraq. Such a comparison is made below.
Mass Murder By Bush Et Al: Criminal Intent & Mutilated Bodies
One easily verifiable blatant lie by Bush came on September 7, 2002, while he was at Camp David during a visit by Tony Blair. Bush called a hurried Press Conference to report the urgent news that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had announced that Hussein in 1998 had then been only 6 months away from developing a nuclear weapon, and had recently been rebuilding his nuclear sites. Bush said "I don't know what more evidence we need" (to attack Iraq). While that made front page news, the true facts were later buried elsewhere.
When later contacted by NBC News, the IAEA said they had neither stated nor written either such report, ever (Hubris, Isikoff & Corn, pgs. 33-34, and The Greatest Story Ever Sold, Rich, pg 65). The blatancy of Bush's many lies is now common knowledge. He tries to control access to facts and vigorously tries to block loyalists from testifying under oath to avoid getting caught in his own lies, very often through security classification. Bush is simply a narcissist. He is numb to the needs and pain of others, and desperately seeks control and mastery. He is focused on his own desires, and is skeptical of moral codes in practice; he never grew up (a drunk until age 40, he never went through the AA program because he refused to admit he was an alcoholic). He shares these characteristics with most of the other serial killers of our time.
The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the official voice on the final facts of the matter, later concluded that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11, that Iraq had no WMD prior to the war, and that all of Bush et al's arguments for going to war were fabrications. All of these facts were well known by Bush et al before the attack. In America, federal law defines the knowing telling of lies to congress, in order to gain their unwitting approval to start an unprovoked war that would knowingly kill tens of thousands of unarmed innocent civilians, as a war crime, criminal fraud, and a conspiracy to commit murder.
The planning or action of an unprovoked attack on another country is each a war crime (Crimes Against Peace). The legal definition of criminal fraud is the telling of an intentional lie that causes financial or physical harm to another. Murder is causing the knowing unprovoked killing of another (see Google definition of crimes). The Senate said there was no provocation by Iraq for a US attack. The key pre-requisite elements of any major crime are: advance planning of the act, awareness that people will be harmed by the act, intent to commit the act knowing about that harmful outcome, the means, and the actual commission, ordering, or causing of the act; either directly or indirectly.
All of those factual elements were present in the mass murders committed by the Iraq war, and in the criminal fraud leading up to the war. Bush et al agreed upon the illegal Clean Break plan for unprovoked war in late 2000, complete with the plan for a phony criminal fraud lying pretext as a cover-up. They knew very well that they were telling lies, and certainly knew that innocent Americans and Iraqis would be killed in such an unprovoked war. They intentionally placed the plan's authors and advocates in key war policy positions to help direct the means they now controlled, and vigorously conspired to commit the crime of unprovoked war upon innocents.
To fraudulently obtain approval for their illegal war, Bush et al deliberately created the WHIG criminal fraud propaganda operation to intentionally and pervasively spread their Clean Break lies to the general public and congress; exactly as per the Clean Break plan. They vigorously and intentionally denied the truth and truth-tellers in earnest at every turn. They were collectively very impatient to commit the final act of the crime: the actual illegal attack on Iraq and the murder of masses of innocent people. They thought if they waited any longer the truth might catch up to them (contrary new weapons inspection reports due), and prevent their attack (A Pretext For War, Bamford, pgs. 358-61).
All of the essential elements of the crime are there: planning, intent, means, awareness of harm, intentional lies, denial of truth, and commission of the crime. Numerous eyewitnesses verify and document these facts. The detailed documentation can be found in Links to Chapters.
In plain language: as private citizens the neocons could all agree and conspire as a group that their ideology taught there should be an unprovoked attack on Iraq, with a phony war provocation excuse given to the public, and even publicize that fact. And except for any possible hate crimes issues, they could do that under freedom of expression. They may have had motive and intent but not the means. No crime was involved, and that is what they did. But any such actual unprovoked attack would cause known financial and physical harm and many deaths of innocents, and that fore-known harm is a key test for criminality.
After Bush was appointed to president, with a large number of these same neocons placed in high government positions, Bush et al's collective new actions on that same ideological plan but now using the newly hijacked means of the US administration, treasury, and military became criminal. That same Clean Break plan as a US government activity became a crime against peace, a War Crime; its plan for a big lie on provocation to get the war approved became conspiracy to commit criminal fraud; and its plan to attack Iraq and kill innocents became conspiracy to commit murder and another war crime. Actually doing everything they planned became the premeditated crimes they had conspired to commit. Their collective disregard for basic morality and the law caused everyone involved to become criminals.
Laws exist to protect the innocent, and these types of crimes carry severe penalties for the criminals involved. Bush said "We are a county of laws and laws must be enforced." There is no immunity for highly placed politicians. They cannot successfully hide behind their non-existent, fraudulent threats to security. The definition for "racket" is a dishonest practice or drawing illegal profits from organized fraud. Theirs was fraud organized on a giant scale, a dishonest practice without doubt. They certainly profited from it, and so it could be termed as racketeering, and the RICO laws could apply — triple damages ($billions), confiscation of assets, and long prison sentences. The war criminals of WWII were sentenced to life in solitary with no parole. Bush et al should be treated no differently. Health or age should not be a consideration: it was not in WWII.
Despite then known hard-but-manipulated intelligence to the contrary (see all noted references plus State of War, Risen, pgs. 67, 95-114, 125-130, Absence of WMD Verified, and Links to Chapters) Bush's et al's pre-planned Clean Break lies won a fraudulent congressional approval for their Clean Break ideological war on Iraq. On March 21, 2003 the wholesale slaughter of the Iraqi civilians began, with the solid 3 week 24/7 Shock and Awe unprovoked bombing of their residential areas.
Bush used both mis-guided blockbusters (which crushed to death whole extended families living the length of a football field away from targets) and a blizzard of millions of indiscriminately aimed anti-personnel cluster-bomblets (one every second, totally slicing open any civilians outdoors), tens of thousands of which fell unexploded in backyards, school yards, and open fields; shiny with brightly colored ribbons attractive to thousands of small children who were blown-to-bits playing with them (A Pretext For War, Bamford, pgs. 391-3).
More than 400,000 (the prestigious Lancet, the British version of The New England Journal Of Medicine, reported 400,000 to 800,000; Iraqi Dead May Total 800,000, Intl. Hearld Tribune, October 11, 2006) innocent and unarmed Iraqi men, women, and children (most of them children) were massacred and at least twice (and perhaps 4 or 5 times) that many more of them were terribly wounded. 3,900 Americans were killed, and 29,000 more were maimed and wounded. That illegal attack was premeditated murder, by legal definition. Again, this is the worst crime in American history.
These 400,000+ innocent civilians were not, by any definition, mere collateral damage in a legitimate war. Those poor unarmed women and children were intentional victims of the long premeditated Clean Break plan for an unprovoked war crime. Their known deaths were anticipated, sealed, and caused by Bush's adoption of that illegal plan. Their lives were of absolutely no concern to Bush et al.
The lives of 400,000+ innocent Iraqis just happened to be in the way of Bush's ruthless and immoral ideological plans to attack Iraq without provocation, to fulfill the neocon's personal political ambitions for the region. As we were to see, Bush did not let other peoples lives get in his way. To him it was a fair trade-off. He got Hussein, and only had to murder 400,000+ Iraqis and a few thousand Americans, destroy a country, and maim over 20,000 Americans and about 1 million Iraqis for life to do so. He incidentally created about 10,000 new terrorists in the process. Bush is very proud of these results. He said "The sacrifice was well worth it." What exactly did Bush personally sacrifice?
An argument can be made that, since the original vote to attack Iraq was obtained through criminal fraud, any reinforcements or "surge" of troops sent to Iraq is the knowing crime of murder of the .1% of all the troops sent there who are known to be killed by that deployment. Keeping anyone there is the same crime. Anyone involved in knowingly making those acts happen or who is able to but fails to prevent them is a criminal co-conspirator.
Bush deliberately sent our troops into the Iraqi streets with inadequate armor with absolutely no regard for their well being, knowing they would be killed and wounded en mass. That was complete stupidity, willful ignorance, intentional murder; or all three in his infinite arrogance. It only takes the knowing and intentional, unprovoked killing of a single unarmed civilian or the knowing ordering of one inadequately-armored soldier into battle to be classified as murder, let alone this Iraq atrocity of over 1.2 million innocents either murdered or wounded by Bush et al.
Presidents have responsibilities and accountability for their actions and inactions in office, especially including the well being of their troops in a war. As the military commander in chief, Bush should be court marshaled for willful dereliction of his duty. Bush has not only brainwashed and betrayed his own soldiers, but he ordered them to die for a cause that was both unnecessary and illegal. He wasted their lives and ruined the lives of their families: tens of thousands of Americans! This country should be deeply ashamed to have Bush as our criminal president, representing our country in the world, and dictating our domestic agenda by his veto power.
In America we spend months and $millions on the investigation and trial of someone accused of murdering a single person. What should be done with and said about a war criminal president who mass murdered 400,000+? Where is the criminal investigation of Bush et al, and where are the news stories of his crimes? Where is the outcry for justice? How do we look to the rest of the world in our silence, when they accurately view us as war criminals?
Apparently there is no real constituency for truth and justice in our country. We had a national outrage against Imus for calling a basketball team whores. Where is the outrage against a war criminal president who commits mass murder?
What do we tell our children and grandchildren about our collective personal inability to act responsibly in our duty as citizens by ignoring the American near-equivalent of Hitler (pre-planned unprovoked war, illegal invasion and occupation, destruction of another country, and murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents)? Are we proud of that, like Bush was? Exactly what are we doing about these crimes? The answer to that last question is: as of this date, absolutely nothing. No news media stories, no criminal investigations, and not even any public discussion of the criminality involved.
This whole sequence of sickening events — Bush's planning of the unprovoked Clean Break illegal war before he even took office, the pre-planned massive lying campaign to cover it up, blatantly and falsely blaming terrorists and WMD for his ideological war on Iraq, fanatic religious-like faith in criminal neoconservative ideology, a war criminal spouting Christian beliefs, utter disregard for human life and suffering, infinite arrogance, the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, and the vast pain and suffering imposed on the American servicemen and their families by their own commander in chief — besides being astonishing, the reality of this grossly immoral criminal behavior is repulsive enough to make any honest person very sick to their stomach, heart, and head, and wonder; how did we ever get into this sickening mess called Bush? How do we get out?
What Now?
Congress needs to wake up and face/publicize the reality of Bush's criminality re Iraq, with televised criminal hearings under oath, and force special criminal prosecutors into action. Bush's combination of gross criminality, utter incompetence, and consummate lying is the worst and most urgent problem we face as a nation. Solving that issue and immediately replacing all his people leads directly to solving most of our other problems.
It would be truly fitting if all Americans, and especially all employers, cities, states, and congress, would immediately start flying our flag at half mast until the day that Bush and Cheney have left office, to memorialize all their tragic victims: the over 1.2 million American and Iraqi dead and wounded. That would send a powerful message to everyone in the world: that honest Americans are taking back their country.
To put the problem in the context of present world knowledge, we committed a war crime through criminal fraud by invading Iraq. We occupy that country illegally after murdering several hundred thousand of its citizens and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes, jobs, and lifestyles. We are not welcome in our illegal entry into their homes and lives, and the Iraqis want us to leave; now (Iraqi Poll, Wash. Post, Sept 27, 2006). Why are we still there, except to continue the crime?
By law and by logic we should immediately get out of their home that we forcibly broke into, and make offers of compensation for all the damage we have caused. Bush et al should be made to pay to the Iraqis literally everything they own for their personal crimes against those poor innocent victims, in our name. Terrorism is not the primary problem in this world: Bush is. His many sordid crimes should put him in a hard prison for the rest of his life.
All those in congress who unwittingly voted for that war should immediately and very publicly and officially repudiate their votes to enable Bush's crimes, on the grounds they were cast based upon Bush's criminal fraud lies. Then we could see those who refuse to repudiate, who even with today's knowledge continue to support and enable the many crimes Bush et al is still committing. Those persons should then be dealt with accordingly.
Obviously, the immediate appointment of an independent special criminal prosecutor is a matter of extreme national urgency. Only then will we have true justice in America, and meaningful public examples set for the next ideologue president who comes along with false facts, fraudulent intent, and a twisted criminal vision contrary to our national mores. In view of their many crimes committed, Bush and Cheney should resign immediately. Bush's pardoning authority desperately needs to be revoked for anyone who ever worked for the government or his political party, or contributed anything to anything related to him. Or else he will simply give a blank pardon to the very numerous criminals in his administration.
Then we need to find a way to create an independent justice system to permanently guard us against a criminal White House that controls Congress, the Attorney General, FBI, all US Attorneys, the Supreme Court, and the pardoning of its own criminal co-conspirators. Otherwise, who is there to bring criminal charges that stick against a criminal President?
If you have any access to any of the new Congressional Democratic leadership or members/staffers, or the news media, or federal law enforcement, or internet blogs, please ensure that they become fully aware of the above facts by referring them to this website, or printing out and mailing them a copy of this homepage. Then click the Email To Friends link and fill in any appropriate email addresses, so they can read this as well (by passing on a link to this domain name and suggesting they look at it).
If you can pass this true story along to the news media and congress, to the saturation point of this evidence hitting the front pages and evening news, then most of the Republican congressional members will abandon Bush et al and his war in a flash! Those members who do not fully repudiate their war vote and Bush et al, will probably never again be elected to any political office. Once the American public hears this evidence, we would then see an entirely new America emerge from the chaos of Bush.
For your help in returning our country to responsible people, I thank you.
— Dick Fults, VA ex US Air Force Intelligence, rfults1@comcast.net
The Worst Crime in American History
This is not a left wing smear attack on Bush. It is a detailed factual comparison of the U.S. Criminal Code with the eye-witnessed facts of actions taken, and words spoken, by Bush et al (Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Tenet, Rice, and most of their key subordinates) in violation of those laws regarding the Iraq war. The sources of these facts are several prominent respected authors (as noted below) who identify and quote the many eyewitnesses.
The Republican dominated Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the official voice on the final facts of the matter, concluded that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11, that Iraq had no WMD prior to the war, and that all of Bush et al's arguments for going to war were fabrications. In other words, they concluded there was absolutely no provocation for the attack on Iraq.
The commentary, analysis, logical conclusions, and presumption of guilt based upon those facts represent only the personal opinions of the author of this document. In a recent televised speech Bush said "This is a country of laws and laws must be enforced."
The many cited facts contained within, from 18 eyewitnesses, 10 books, and numerous media reports, make it self evident that there is probable cause that Bush et al have committed major crimes related to Iraq. All of these serious crimes need to be immediately investigated and prosecuted.
The bottom line is that, 7 months before 9/11 (just 10 days after taking office), Bush et al adopted an unexecuted 1996 illegal Israeli war plan to attack Iraq. It was named Clean Break (the Smoking Gun), and had an embedded pre-planned war cover-up. The plan came from fellow neo-cons, and was illegal because even the planning for a war of aggression, a war without provocation, is a war crime in itself. They then hired the plan's three neo-con authors into top US war policy positions and executed that same illegal war plan by both attacking Iraq, and by executing Clean Break's criminal fraud phony war pretext of non-existent WMD, etc. That "pretext for public and congressional consumption" was purposely designed to cover up the lack of any provocation for war.
Upon simple comparison of the very specific language of criminal law with Bush et al's actions, it can be easily seen that the execution of that illegal plan by Bush et al violated 16 different federal criminal laws, illegally killed 400,000 innocent Iraqi civilians and wounded over 800,000 more (more than half of them defenseless women and children, all caused by our massive bombing campaign on residential areas), killed 3,900 American GIs, and wounded 29,000 more; most of them horribly maimed forever: all of this horrendous killing and wounding happening needlessly — for nothing!
Not to mention the vast destruction in Iraq, the complete waste of $350 billion of our tax money, and the millions of lives forever impacted. Bush simply (and simple mindedly) had a personal obsession and a criminal plan to get Hussein; no matter its illegality or the high cost to others. Bush et al deliberately lied to America, Congress, and the UN to obtain their approval for this illegal war; which lying was criminal fraud because they knew their lies would harm others.
On August 25, 2006 the OneWorld news group interviewed Benjamin Ferenccz, a chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg. Ferenccz told OneWorld that both Bush and Saddam should be tried for war crimes, for starting "aggressive" wars (Crimes Against Peace) — Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq. He said further, that "Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime."
Neither the FBI nor the Attorney General has yet announced the beginning of any investigation of the hard, compelling, eye-witnessed evidence of probable cause that these crimes were committed by Bush et al, even a year after the evidence was first published: they have refused to investigate their own bosses and tip the elections against them.
On September 12, 1876, on the occasion of launching Johns Hopkins University to be dedicated to the search for the truth, the keynote speaker Thomas Huxley, one of the most preeminent scientists of his day, said "The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying."
Huxley equated lying with immorality. Bush et al deliberately lying to cause tens of thousands of innocent people to be killed, most of them defenseless women and children, was not only immoral, it was criminal. To be effective, laws must be enforced, and no one is exempt from prosecution: not even Bush.
The compelling evidence against Bush has already been made a matter of public record in several books, magazines, newspapers, and TV broadcasts. This has included a large number of eyewitnesses to the many suspected crimes.
However, this voluminous information has been grouped in a disparate fashion and, while most of them have discussed Bush's many lies at length, none of the authors has discussed these lies in the context of criminal activity.
The two primary sources of facts and quotes for this summary are James Bamford's "A Pretext for War" (investigative reporter and author of "Body Secrets" and "The Puzzle Palace"; the story of NSA) and Jim Risen's "State of War" (national security reporter for the New York Times, and author of several books). There are a great many more details in all books referenced than what is summarized herein. Other sources are noted below.
This 41 page summary contains, for the very first time, all of the highlights of this clear and convincing criminal evidence within a single document, with the focus on the criminal aspect of these events: the probable cause that major crimes have been committed as described.
These separate pieces have now been seamlessly woven together to provide prima facie incriminating and compelling evidence of war crimes and other Federal crimes alleged to have committed by G W Bush et al.
The author is ex Air Force Operational Intelligence, and is an experienced investigator. Given the horrific magnitude of the criminal results, these facts are not sugarcoated. They are just the straight documented facts. The author's commentary, analysis, logical conclusions, and presumption of guilt that flow from these facts are the personal opinions of the author written out for you to judge for yourself.
Politicians are well known for intentionally lying, but their lies are normally aimed at the other party and the voters and do not kill people. That is just politics as usual, unfortunately. When their intentional lies intentionally kill someone it is no longer political. It becomes criminal.
And if those lies intentionally start and cover-up an illegal war, when it was clearly known in advance that tens of thousands of innocent civilians would die solely because of those lies, it then becomes a war crime and murder. It is that simple (see Facts of Crimes & Law on Crimes).
To put things in their proper perspective, how would you or I feel if some fanatical group of war criminals in the top leadership of another country, without any US provocation, deliberately lied (committed criminal fraud) to get unwitting internal approval to illegally bomb out and invade (as we did in Iraq) several major US cities, knowingly killing or wounding hundreds of thousands, and then occupied the innocent US, leaving us without most of our electricity and jobs and some of our homes for several years, with effectively no police to protect us, and no hope of any early resolution?
Especially if the whole war would have been so easily avoided with honest leaders there who would have stood down knowing the true facts? The entire Iraq war is not just a political issue; it is a Criminal matter to be dealt with by the courts!
The Iraq war was a war crime by definition due to the fact 1) that it was preplanned (premeditated) months before 9/11, to take place without any provocation, so that neither 9/11 or a war on terrorism could possibly be the Bush proclaimed justification for attacking Iraq. And 2) As for Bush's other primary excuse, WMD, the CIA had in its possession five months before the Iraq attack, clear and convincing, current (the CIA in 2001 had said the same) evidence that there were no WMD in Iraq and had not been for many years (see Absence of WMD Verified).
But an eyewitness said that CIA Director Tenet intentionally withheld this new documented evidence from Congress, at Bush's indirect request. Another eyewitness privy to White House intelligence fabrications said "The Congress was misled, it was lied to" by Cheney's White House pro-war propaganda group (WHIG).
The Senate Select Committee that later investigated pre-war intelligence failures concluded that Tenet had grossly misstated the facts and had withheld others. And further, that none of the excuses for war that Bush had claimed were true, specifically including the WMD issue and the non-existent Iraq to 9/11 connection. But it did not point out that Tenet had given Bush and Congress exactly the pro-war reports Bush had asked for, even though they had all been fabricated to suit his agenda.
Most astonishingly and revealing (and unfortunately unpublicized) is the smoking gun (see The Smoking Gun) fact that, a few weeks after he first took office, Bush hired three men into top US foreign policy positions who had been the authors of a 1996 illegal plan for Israel ("A Clean Break") to both invade Iraq and create a phony criminal cover-up of the war for public consumption (Israel declined their advice).
According to eyewitnesses and subsequent actual events Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Rice formally adopted this illegal (preemptive attack on Iraq with no imminent danger of attack by them) war plan and phony cover-up during their very first National Security meeting, on January 30, 2001 in the White House. With the help of those three war/cover-up planners, Bush and his new co-conspirators then proceeded to carry out both the illegal Iraq war and its phony criminal cover-up.
This Clean Break plan also called for both an administration preemptive war policy against Iraq and the disengagement of US involvement in the Israel-Palestinian peace process. Both of those new policies were actually implemented by Bush shortly thereafter, to the detriment of the whole world as is now quite self evident.
There was never any credible provocation for war against Iraq, and that fact was very well known to Bush et al. The final proof of probable cause of the war crime was Bush et al's intentional cover-up of the illegality of the war through blatant lies and their withholding of intelligence showing there was no credible evidence of imminent danger from Iraq.
Isikoff and Corn wrote that David Kay, a former weapons inspector who firmly believed that Iraq had WMD in 2003, was sent to Iraq after the attack to manage the search for WMD. In his final personal report to Bush, when Kay told Bush there were no WMD there and none had been there for years before the war, Kay was amazed that Bush acted not at all surprised or upset. Of course, Bush had known that fact ever since he took office.
For purposes of jurisdiction, these many crimes took place within CIA headquarters and the Pentagon, both in VA, and in the White House in Washington DC, and in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Facts of the Crimes & The Law on the Crimes
The unused Israel 1996 criminal war plan, Clean Break contained a written plan to initiate a war of aggression against Iraq with no provocation; a war crime. It also contained a written plan to spread lies for public consumption to cover up, and provide a phony pretext for, the lack of any such provocation; criminal fraud.
Bush et al (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and most of their top staff) knowingly and purposely adopted the Clean Break plan, and began to implement it, on January 30, 2001, 7 months before 911 (see The Smoking Gun and Compelling Eye-witnessed Evidence of Cover-up). A few weeks later they hired the three neo-con authors of the criminal Clean Break plan into top war policy positions.
In August 2002 the Iraq White House Group (WHIG) was formed under Cheney, with Karl Rove as its chair, and employed all the top spin doctors in the GOP to create, develop and embellish, write up for public consumption, and help Bush et al publicly spread very deliberate lies about the urgent need to attack Iraq; mushroom clouds, phony mobile bio-labs, phony uranium buys, non-existent WMD, etc, etc; criminal fraud, and propagandizing the American public at taxpayer expense: a federal crime.
On September 7, 2002, Bush personally came up with his own whopper of a blatant lie while at Camp David with Tony Blair. He breathlessly told the press there was a new urgent development, that the IAEA had just issued a report saying that Hussein was only 6 months away from developing a nuclear weapon. When contacted, the IAEA said they had neither stated nor written any such report, ever.
By Legal Definition; when it is well known by a President of the US that there is no provocation for war and that many innocent people would die if the US were to initiate such an unprovoked war, a war of aggression, then:
It is a war crime for a President and his staff to formally adopt an illegal war crime plan that specifically calls for an unprovoked war; a plan such as Clean Break. It is criminal fraud for a President to initiate and supervise the creation and communication of deliberate lies to convince Americans, Congress, and the UN that another country is an imminent threat to our security if that is knowingly untrue.
It is the crime of conspiracy to commit murder if the success of that intentional criminal lying campaign would result in knowingly causing the death of innocent people; such as a President and his staff deliberately convincing America, Congress, and the UN to approve an illegal war based on lies about a non-existent threat of attack on the US.
It is the crime of mass murder if a fraudulently obtained approval results in a Presidential order for an actual unprovoked attack on an innocent country; an attack that knowingly kills over 400,000 defenseless civilians, most of them women and children bombed in their homes, and causes the death of over 3,900 Americans.
It is premeditation to commit mass murder if a President and his staff adopt an illegal war crime plan, such as Clean Break, and then intentionally carry it out, step by step: both its criminal fraud lying campaign over the following two years, and then its plan of actual unprovoked attack that deliberately caused vast destruction in an innocent country, and the horrible death of hundreds of thousands of its people.
All of the above exact same crimes were committed by Hitler et al within Germany and Europe, in the same sequence as shown above, just prior to WWII. Then, as now, the citizens and parliament of his country did absolutely nothing to stop him, or to hold him accountable. Hitler's big lie was the Master Race. Bush's was that Hussein was going to get us. Both lies sold very well, and humanity suffered accordingly.
Most Americans are familiar with Crimes Against Humanity as a war crime; crimes such as torture of POWs, civilians, etc. Much less familiar is an equally serious war crime called Crimes Against Peace. According to US signed agreements with the International War Crimes Tribunal, any planning or waging of a war of aggression is a Crime Against Peace (a war crime), as well as being a Federal crime in the US. As of now, and for the past 50 years or so, those federal laws are the law of the land and must be enforced.
Aggression is legally defined as any war initiated other than to defend your-self either after an attack or when under credible threat of immediate attack. Under international law only the UN can grant authority to wage war, and only congress can authorize US involvement. Despite all of Bush's claims to the contrary, eyewitnesses say that at the time of the attack current CIA intelligence showed that Iraq had neither the intent nor the ability to attack the US, and any that did were fabrications.
It is also a federal crime to conspire with others to commit any federal crime, including war crimes, or to break federal criminal conspiracy laws. There are also laws against murder and conspiring to commit murder.
Murder is defined as deliberately and knowingly causing the death of another without it being in self defense; either directly or indirectly.
Killing even one person is considered punishable by death in some states and a serial killer of 20 people or so will receive at least life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.
A few American soldiers will soon face trial for the murder of several Iraqi civilians, with the death penalty a possibility. There is no Presidential immunity or biblical forgiveness for intentionally causing the brutal death of 400,000 innocent people, most of them women and children.
There are federal laws against committing criminal fraud: making, or intimidating others to make, fraudulent statements or reports that will result in bodily or financial harm to others, and either distorting or destroying criminal evidence so as to cause harm to others.
Manipulation of intelligence and lying or intentionally withholding evidence about the basis for starting a war is criminal fraud, as is pro war propaganda to the public based on lies. Including fraud such as Bush and Cheney's many witnessed fabrications of evidence and their phony cover-up of his Iraq war plans, Tenet's verified withholding of the truth from Congress about the absence of WMD in Iraq, and the lying campaign of WHIG.
In addition, to be aware of the plans or evidence of another individual to commit federal crimes and then fail to inform law enforcement authorities of those facts in a timely manner is considered obstruction of justice, and is punishable by jail terms. It is also obstruction of justice if an officer of the law fails to investigate a crime after receiving evidence that indicates there is probable cause that a crime has been committed, or fails to prosecute if the evidence is overwhelming (Attorney General Gonzales: please read).
It is also against Federal law to use taxpayer money to propagandize the American public.
It is a federal crime to cause the conversion of federal funds to achieving your own personal objectives that are contrary to the public good: even a few $thousand, let alone $350 billion. Even the non co-conspirators who were aware of the manipulated intelligence but did not report it have obstructed justice.
It is a crime to intentionally wound and maim people in an illegal war, called assault with grievous bodily harm. In an illegal war it is defined as terrorism to cause death and property damage for the purpose of intimidating a society at large (Shock and Awe), most especially if that damage approximates $200 billion as it did in Iraq.
On May 15, 2006 Bush said in a national TV address, "This is a country of laws and laws must be enforced." Even against him and the others listed above. Some people would prefer to pick and choose which laws should be enforced as well as to choose the persons against whom they would apply. It just does not work that way — although in this politically charged case it just might, to our country's great detriment.
Many of the Bush die hard loyalists may say the law against war crimes is a bad law, or that Bush was just honestly trying to do the best he could under difficult circumstances, ie: he's a nice guy so let's make him exempt. But both the law and the documented facts argue the contrary. As you will see documented below, Bush's crimes were many and quite intentional, as evidenced by his multiple criminal actions and his consistency in trying to cover them all up. Presidents are not above the law, and "laws must be enforced."
Over the past few years it has come to light that Bush has caused the secret torture and years long detention of prisoners without any due process (55% of them innocent), ordered the secret wiretapping of Americans on both personal calls and financial wires without warrants, and repeatedly and secretly transported prisoners around the world to hide them from inquiring families, their attorneys, and due process (renditions): all of these actions are against the law and the American moral code.
In addition Bush has knowingly lied to the country about evidence critical to reaching an informed decision about starting a war with Iraq (State of the Union address in 2003 and numerous other occasions). Bush's primary response to all these revelations has been to investigate and prosecute/persecute the leakers of the classified information about the actual truth.
The prestigious British medical journal The Lancet published the conclusion of a study that showed that the overwhelming majority of deaths of Iraqi civilians were caused by little-publicized massive air strikes by the Americans in heavily populated areas. And further, that about 400,000 people were killed, more than half of them women and children.
Bamford writes "That the US military was killing and maiming, by the tens of thousands, the very people it had come to liberate was a fact the Bush administration hoped would remain hidden. To that end, the Pentagon has stuck to its official policy of refusing to acknowledge Iraqi civilian deaths and injuries."
The US situation now is functionally almost like that of Germany at the start of WWII. A war of aggression has been waged by several fanatics in the top leadership of our country. An innocent country was attacked, invaded, and occupied illegally by the US. A great many people have been killed, and there was enormous property destruction. All with no credible justification.
And now, like then, absolutely nothing is being done about these horrific crimes: no public discussion, no investigation, no indictments, no trials, and no punishment. After WWII the world condemned the German people for just standing by, doing nothing about their criminal leader, just as we are today. History is repeating itself.
As a matter of background, Bush Sr. had been president during the first Gulf war, and there were many around him who felt the job had been left undone. After Bush Sr. was out of office he took a celebratory trip to Kuwait to receive their thanks and many personal gifts. While he was there Hussein attempted to assassinate him. GW Bush never forgot that attempt. He thereafter became very focused on Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein.
In 1994 Rumsfeld, Perle, and Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense (three of the later co-conspirators) at the time of the attack on Iraq (in 2003), along with a number of other neoconservatives, had all signed a letter to President Clinton advocating that he should begin "implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power." Clinton replied that the then existing containment plan was working just fine.
Bush et al's 18 Major Federal Crimes: Probable Cause For Prosecution
Based on the evidence from 18 eyewitnesses and the Republican dominated Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, there is probable cause that the following 18 major federal crimes have been committed by Bush et al, and merit immediate prosecution (9 crimes and 9 conspiracies):
Crime #1: Conspiracy to Commit War Crimes and actual War Crimes
According to US signed agreements with the International War Crimes Tribunal, any planning or waging of a war of aggression is a Crime Against Peace (a war crime), as well as being a US Federal crime. Aggression is defined as any war initiated other than to defend yourself either after an attack or when under credible threat of immediate attack.
Under international law only the UN can grant authority to wage war, and only congress can authorize US involvement. Despite all of Bush's claims to the contrary, 18 eyewitnesses and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said that at the time of the attack current CIA intelligence showed that Iraq had neither the intent nor the ability to attack the US, had no WMD, and had no connection to 9/11, and that all information to the contrary was a complete fabrication. No credible threat of immediate attack existed.
It is also a federal crime to conspire with others to commit any federal crime, including war crimes, or to break federal criminal conspiracy laws. As documented below in great detail, Bush et al conspired to lie about every single excuse for the Iraq war in order to gain its criminally fraudulent approval, specifically including the lie that Iraq posed an imminent threat of attack to the US.
By definition that made the attack on Iraq a war of aggression; a crime against peace, and a war crime.
They then initiated that deadly illegal war, killing 400,000 innocent Iraqis (mostly women and children) and over 3,900 Americans as the prior known possible outcome.
On January 30, 2001, just 10 days after taking office, Bush et al formally adopted a prior unexecuted Israeli plan (Clean Break, see The Smoking Gun) to attack Iraq without first having any provocation or threat of imminent attack by Iraq, which plan included (because of its illegality) a phony cover-up story for public consumption.
This plan was by legal definition a Crime Against Peace, a war crime. Bush had personally adopted this plan 18 months before his election when he hired Richard Perle (one of the authors of the plan) as his foreign policy advisor, so the plan was well premeditated. Bush et al each had a personal obsession to get Hussein.
The original Clean Break plan also called for both a US preemptive war policy against Iraq and the disengagement of US involvement in the Israel-Palestinian peace process. Both of those new Clean Break policies were actually implemented by Bush shortly after taking office, to the detriment of the whole world as is now quite self evident.
The Republican dominated Senate Select Committee on Intelligence later found that none of Bush et al's claims about the justification to attack Iraq were true; that they were all fabrications: no WMD, no Iraq connection to 9/11, and no threat of Iraq attacking the US.
Their finding corroborates all the eye-witnessed reports of intensive and intentional fabrications by Bush et al. Subsequent events and numerous eyewitnesses all confirmed Bush et al's intention to start an illegal war.
Both such a plan per se and any such attack are legally defined as both an international and federal war crime (Crimes Against Peace, see Facts of Crimes & Law on Crimes). The approval by Congress and the UN was fraudulently (legally defined as criminal fraud) and unwittingly obtained by Bush et al by fabricating and withholding critical intelligence. This was both a conspiracy to commit a premeditated war crime and the actual war crime itself.
Those actions make Bush et al's war on Iraq both a war crime and illegal, and make Bush et al war criminals.
Had Bush et al told the truth to all involved, instead of deliberately fabricating, distorting, and withholding the pertinent facts, neither Congress nor the UN would have ever granted approval for this war, and massive deaths and destruction and the waste of hundreds of $billions would never have occurred.
In the ramp-up to the war, as it was only weeks away, Bush had both the option and the responsibility as President to recheck all the questionable pro-war claims and then back down when he would discover that an intellectually honest evaluation would prove them all wrong. There was nothing urgent about attacking Iraq. He had plenty of time. But that was not his mindset. Responsible people do not start wars willy-nilly; they are much too dangerous and cause enormous death and destruction.
But Bush wanted to attack before his claims were proven wrong, knowing full well there was no real justification for the war. After all, he had been plotting and planning to attack Iraq for over three years! He was getting inpatient. No one ever accused Bush or his co-conspirators of being either intellectually honest or of being worried about the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people.
But whenever you take an illegal action, you automatically become fully responsible personally for any negative consequences of that illegal action. Like hundreds of thousands of innocent dead and wounded people, and the massive destruction of property. Like going to jail for your crimes.
In wars people die; both yours and theirs. Bush knew that fully well before he started his illegal Iraq war. But the 3,900+ dead Americans and 400,000+ dead Iraqis were just not worthy of Bush's concern: getting Saddam was. All those people Bush killed were just incidental players along his way. For him they were not even worth thinking about beforehand. So he didn't.
Crime #2: (a) Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Fraud and actual Criminal Fraud, and (b) Using Federal Funds to Propagandize the American Public
There are federal laws against committing criminal fraud: making, or intimidating others to make, fraudulent statements or reports that will result in bodily or financial harm to others, and either distorting, withholding, or destroying criminal evidence so as to cause harm to others.
Manipulation of intelligence and lying or intentionally withholding evidence about the basis for starting a war is criminal fraud. Including fraud such as Bush and Cheney's many witnessed fabrications of evidence and their phony cover-up of their Iraq war plans, Tenet's verified withholding of the truth from Congress about the absence of WMD in Iraq, and WHIG's deceptive public lying campaign. It is also against Federal law to use taxpayer money to propagandize the American public
That same original Clean Break plan included the intentional creation of a phony war pretext for public consumption. According to several eyewitnesses this phony pretext was in fact pursued by Bush et al in order to gain the approval of Congress and the UN to initiate the attack (see Compelling Eye-witnessed Evidence of Cover-up).
Honest intelligence was either ignored or distorted if it did not conform to that illegal war plan (see Absence of WMD Verified). False excuses for war were deliberately fabricated by Bush et al to create a false sense of urgency of an imminent attack by Iraq, to make the illegal war appear legitimate.
According to several eyewitnesses in August 2002, 6 months before the Iraq attack, a secret pro war propaganda unit was set up in the White House, called the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), with very close ties to Cheney. Its members met weekly and included the most experienced spin doctors (best professional liars and propagandists) in the Republican party: its chairman Karl Rove, Mary Matlin, Karen Hughes, Condoleezza Rice, Scooter Libby (Cheney's chief of staff), Stephen Hadley (Rice's Deputy), and Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson. They all knew exactly what they were doing.
WHIG's job was to collect the most saleable intelligence fabrications it could find to feed to the American public that would support the phony need to go to war, and to help suppress and argue any facts to the contrary. Various members of Bush et al would then use them in TV, press, and radio comments around the country in coordinated releases: especially in the months just before the illegal attack.
This was the phony cover-up for public consumption portion of the original Clean Break master plan. At that point all of the major elements of the original Clean Break plan had been put into place by Bush et al, except for the actual attack on Iraq: which took place in March 2003.
These knowingly false charges were assembled and communicated by Bush et al to the public, Congress, and the UN by the named parties as described. Their unwitting approval for the war was thus fraudulently obtained.
All of WHIG's participants and Bush et al were very well aware that an Iraq war would kill many people on both sides, that their propaganda was entirely fabricated, and that if their lies were successful in selling the war approval (fraud), and war commenced, those lies and their personal actions in publicizing those lies would be the direct cause of those deaths.
Without this massive WHIG federally funded lying and war propaganda campaign there would have been no war; no deaths and destruction.
All of its participants, including Bush et al, committed criminal fraud, and knowingly conspired to commit mass murder.
The WHIG campaign was the crime of using federal funds to propagandize the American public (see Compelling Eye-witnessed Evidence of Cover-up). Also see the last 14 paragraphs of compelling eye-witnessed evidence for much more on propagandizing.
From the first month of his presidency, given a choice between the truth or some phony pretext for attacking Iraq, Bush has either spoken or supported the lies of the phony pretext, or else has arranged to hide the inconvenient truth. This has held true for every single publicized claim he and his co-conspirators have ever made about the need to attack Iraq.
This obsessive premeditation to attack Iraq without any provocation and the lies told to gain its approval meant that thousands of innocent people would die solely because of these lies.
Bush told American families that their sacrifice of their sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, was well worth the price of his success in fighting the war on terrorism in Iraq.
But he conveniently and quite intentionally forgot to tell anyone that there were no anti-American terrorists there to fight before the attack, and no WMD to defend against. That those were just lies he had made up to get approval for his personal war. He did not tell them that their family members were dying in vain, or that $350 billion tax dollars were being wasted.
Crime #3: Conspiracy to Commit Mass Murder and actual Mass Murder
It was a well known fact in advance of the war that thousands of people on both sides, but especially in Iraq, would perish needlessly in such an illegal attack. It was also well known by Bush that all of his excuses for war were lies.
But Bush personally gave the order to attack, knowing full well that the war was illegal and that he had designed and carried out the plan for its fraudulent cover-up, and that many people on both sides would be needlessly killed by his actions.
Bush also knew very well that Congress would never have approved of attacking Iraq had they known that he was fabricating and propagandizing the need to start the war, but Bush did not tell them.
The killing of even a single innocent person in an illegal war is the crime of murder. 400,000 innocent Iraqis and 3,900 American GIs were killed in that Bush initiated war, one at a time, in acute pain. And each person there died in an inhumane, horrific manner. But all of Bush's victims died for absolutely no good reason: not to fight terrorism, and not to protect the US from WMD. Those excuses were nothing more than fabricated propaganda, to get Hussein.
By his lies in favor of war, and by giving the attack order anyway, Bush deliberately killed thousands of people on both sides. These acts were, by legal definition, premeditated mass murder.
This does not even count the other 800,000 or so Iraqis who were wounded but managed to survive. In one small example, a large extended family lived right next door to a target hit by US bombs. The father was away when the blast next door completely destroyed his home, and killed all eleven members of his extended family: babies to uncles and grandparents. This scenario was repeated all over Iraq: over and over and over again.
That was actual mass murder. What kind of responsible role models of good citizenship would we be, for our children and grandchildren, if we let these horrible crimes go unpunished? We need to dissuade future leaders from being tempted to do the same thing all over again by imposing stiff sentences for the Iraq crimes.
Crime #4: Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice and actual Obstruction of Justice
To be aware of the plans or evidence of another individual to commit federal crimes and then fail to inform law enforcement authorities of those facts in a timely manner is considered obstruction of justice, and is punishable by jail terms. It is also obstruction of justice if law enforcement officials fail to take action when provided with probable cause that crimes have been committed.
Bush et al knew full well of the illegality of their plans and actions of the others concerning the war on Iraq but intentionally failed to report those plans and evidence to law enforcement or Congress. This was true at all levels within the larger conspiracy. All such participants conspired to obstruct justice and then did obstruct justice.
Crime #5: Conspiracy to Commit Treason and actual Treason
Bush et al were fully aware of the vast amounts of money that were being supplied in Afghanistan to al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the independent warlords from the production, refinement, and sale of record amounts of illegal drugs; possibly tens of $millions or more each year. (see Bush's Treason in Afghanistan).
They were already well aware of the 9/11 type of negative consequences of anti-American terrorists, warlords, and the Taliban being supplied with vast sums of money. They were also well aware of the destabilizing effect these results collectively had upon the central government of the country, and its structural impediment to the actual practice of democracy and freedom within the country.
This drug money distribution particularly prevented the central government from protecting its citizens from Taliban religious intimidation. The Taliban are even now terrorizing the Afghan population in ever increasing intensity, with no effective protection of them by the thus weakened central government.
But Bush et al deliberately took only very little token action to stop this flow of drug trafficking, and deliberately refused to disrupt the drug processing plants and the actual growth of the raw product within Afghanistan which was within his control, knowing full well the many negative consequences of his inaction.
It had taken years, $billions of US taxpayer money, and many lives to free the country, and then Bush et al turned their backs on the very people we fought to help. Instead they knowingly helped fund al Qaeda and the Taliban, and helped destabilize Afghanistan.
In addition, at Bush's orders, the US was providing funds to the government of Pakistan, while the Pakistani intelligence agency was simultaneously providing financial and other assistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Bush was fully aware of this fact but did not interfere.
The many other mistakes made there were due to Bush et al's incompetence, but these noted inactions were quite deliberate.
Bush et al's intentional failure to act provided direct aid and comfort to our enemies, al Qaeda and the Taliban, and was a premeditated conspiracy to commit treason and actual treason against the United States of America.
Crime #6: Conversion of Federal Funds to Personal Use
Bush et al pursued an intentional illegal war with Iraq simply because it was their personal philosophy and ideology about what should be done to Iraq. There was no factual evidence to support such an attack.
The only reason the war had been unwittingly sanctioned by Congress and the UN was because Bush et al had deliberately distorted and fabricated the intelligence reasons for going to war in order to gain their approval. Without those factual fabrications there would have been no such unwitting approval.
Because of Bush et al's criminal fraud involved in obtaining unwitting approval, there is no official sanction of this war given all the actual facts. Consequently everything about this war was a purely personal matter between Bush et al and Iraq.
This is a personal war, not a government war. However this war was funded by $350 billion in US tax dollars which were diverted to funding Bush et al's personal grudge against Iraq, contrary to the best interests of the US. They basically hijacked the war apparatus and treasury of this country for their own selfish interests. They betrayed our trust with their arrogance.
Not only did they commit criminal fraud to get their hands on our federal funds, they then wasted it away on cruelly punishing innocent people and destroying their homes, self-dealt with affiliated contractors with no bid contracts, and committed criminal acts with the diverted funds: permanently degrading the image of the United States in the eyes of the world.
This is a premeditated crime of conversion of federal funds to personal use, and its conspiracy.
Crime #7: Intentional Assault With Grievous Bodily Harm
Bush et al, during the course of waging an illegal war against Iraq, engaged in the intentional assault with grievous bodily harm of approximately 200,000 Iraqis and almost 29,000 American GIs, with half of them horribly maimed forever. This outcome was well known to be certain prior to the attack, to different degrees of wounded and maimed and the exact number actually to be affected by Bush et al's illegal actions. This is premeditated assault with grievous bodily harm, and its conspiracy.
Crime #8: Terrorism
Bush et al, during the course of waging an illegal war against Iraq, engaged in the intentional terrorism (see Facts of Crimes & Law on Crimes) by severely damaging property, homes, businesses, and infra-structure for the intimidation of Iraqi society at large ("Shock and Awe" bombing campaign).
This outcome was well known to be certain prior to the attack, to different degrees of damage and destruction to be caused by Bush et al's illegal actions. Total damage was estimated to be approximately $200 billion. This is the crime of premeditated terrorism, and its conspiracy.
Author's Notes
It would appear there are easily several hundred individuals in the US government who should be thoroughly investigated and then prosecuted as appropriate for one or more of these crimes related to the Iraq war and the cover-up of its true facts.
That list starts with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, and Rice, followed by the three Clean Break authors, the WHIG participants, and other top people in the White House, Pentagon, CIA, Cheney's office, and State Department, and most of their principal subordinates, plus any others who knew but did not tell. It also may include several people in the Attorney General's office.
It should be noted that virtually all of these people are federal employees, who have all violated their oath of office or condition of employment as described.
The worst crime in American history has just taken place, on live TV, but there has not been a single word of protest or any demand for legal action from the Republican right wing. The "law and order" crowd must be slipping.
The Republican far right is famous for their "proclaimed" and beloved tough stance on American "law and order." Either they do not understand the law or are so hypocritical that they do not bother to read the words of American law that define the federal crimes of war, murder, and criminal fraud, and compare those criteria to the widely reported actions and words of hundreds of the top people in their own administration regarding Iraq.
If they did, they would have a real field day prosecuting a lot of criminals, and showing the whole world how they "vigorously enforce the law!" If they do not, it would be more intellectually honest of them to simply shut up about law and order. Do they have a good reason why they do not immediately enforce the very clear law on these crimes (besides the obvious political one)?
John Lennon said of Nixon during the Vietnam war, "it was an insane government trying to accomplish an insane objective." Today he would say the same about Bush and Iraq. Gore Vidal spoke of "wholesale criminality" in the Nixon administration, and many would say it is far, far worse today under Bush. Vidal went on to say "Nixon and Bush are for death" while everyone else wants peace.
The Washington Post, on September 27, 2006 reports that US government polls in Iraq show that 65% of the Iraqis want the US troops to leave immediately, ie: it is the free will of a vast majority of the Iraqis that want us to cut and run, and leave them to sort things out for their own country!
Bush said that we were in Iraq to allow them to determine their own fate. Well, now we know what fate they want; so what is he waiting for? The planes full of troops can start leaving tomorrow.
It is revealing to note that despite the spending of $900 million on a 16 month investigation by the Iraq Survey Group that found that Iraq had no WMD just before the war, Bush apparently did not spend a single cent or a single second publicizing that fact to the American people.
It better suits Bush's political purposes if most people are still in the dark on that, because any honest president would have straightened out the truth in their minds long before now.
The Survey Group confirmed the findings of both the UN weapons inspectors and the Republican dominated Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the Iraq WMD programs had been ended in 1991.
But a Harris poll released July 21, 2006 found that 50% of Americans still believed yet today that Iraq had WMD in 2003! In an article in the Arizona Daily Sun. on August 7, 2006, reporter Charles Hanley wrote "...and experts see a raft of reasons why: A drumbeat of voices from (right wing) talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise (news) heading here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq."
Even though experts have found the facts to be completely to the contrary in three separate corroborated in-depth studies, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld have continued the Clean Break phony cover-up attempt by repeatedly reiterating their original lies about Iraq's WMD and links to 9/11 in recent public comments. In addition, two weeks before this poll, republicans Sen. Rick Santorum and Rep. Peter Hoekstra had released and publicized a report saying that many chemical munitions had been collected in Iraq since the 2003 invasion: proof of WMD they said.
"But the Pentagon and outside experts stressed that these abandoned shells, many found in ones and twos, were 15 years old or more, their chemical contents were degraded, and they were unusable as artillery ordnance...In other words, this was no surprise," said Hanley, given the prior war with Iran. Scott Ridder, the former UN weapons inspector said "These were not stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction."
One other problem is that Bush also continues to lie (eg: on May 27, 2006, West Point graduation speech) about Saddam not allowing the UN inspectors to complete their job, thus forcing him to attack. The true fact is that Bush invaded Iraq before they could finish.
Regarding the Bush hyped pre war (and yet today!) Iraq connection to terrorists, the Washington Post on September 9, 2006 reported: "A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that US intelligence analysts were strongly disputing (before the war) the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while (at the same time) senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq."
"Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda's overtures and tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said. Tariq Aziz, the detained former deputy prime minister (of Iraq), has told the FBI that Hussein "only expressed negative sentiments about (Osama) bin Laden."
And yet in mid September, 2006 Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice publicly continue to go on and on about those fabricated links as justifying the war! And Bush still continues the lie that Iraq is related to the war on 9/11 terrorism. The only way it is related is that his war on Iraq predictably turned highly outraged people into becoming terrorists because of the horrendous war crimes he committed on their country.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice are all chicken hawks, never having served in the active military. Essentially all of the top military brass in 2001 counseled against attacking Iraq. Bush has tragically betrayed all Americans by starting and lying about this illegal Iraq war, and most especially he has betrayed the American GIs who are needlessly dead and wounded.
All of congress was lied to by Bush et al in order to gain their approval of the war. Given that fact, it would have changed most members' vote had they known the truth.
Every single Congressperson who voted their approval of this illegal war should now be extremely vocal in their anger. They should rapidly and publicly repudiate that vote as having been obtained by criminal fraud, and call for the immediate appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the probable cause that Bush et al committed major federal crimes regarding Iraq.
For any members who would have voted the same way had they known the truth, and now knowing the truth still refuse to repudiate that vote, they should be investigated along with Bush et al for maintaining their prior official approval for Bush to murder tens of thousands of innocent people.
The Smoking Gun: Bush Plans War Months Before 9/11 or WMD
In 1996 three Republican neo-conservative, ex-Reagan security policy advisors at the Pentagon were hired by Israel to act in that same role for them, to advise Prime Minister Netanyahu. Their names are Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser.
Both Perle and Wolfowitz had been hired by Bush as top advisors to his foreign policy team at the start of his candidacy for president, as well as Rice. Feith and Wurmser were well known pro-Israeli activists, as were Perle and Wolfowitz.
The plan these three developed for Israel, "A Clean Break," called for a new policy of preemptive war as the only practical means to accomplish the key objective of the plan: drawing a new political map of the Middle East. Their task force for this plan was set up by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, in Jerusalem, Israel. The plan is on file there.
The 1996 original Clean Break Plan had 4 major policy components:
- get the US out of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations
- adopt a preemptive war policy
- attack Iraq without any provocation (a war crime by definition: a Crime Against Peace)
- because such a war would be illegal, publicly propagandize a phony pretext (lies) for public consumption that would be used as a cover-up for that lack of provocation, such as the non-existent threat of WMD, mushroom clouds, etc. (since the plan implementers would know that people would die needlessly as the direct result of those lies if the phony pretext worked, that made the phony pretext a criminal fraud crime)
The three authors of that plan even wrote press releases of the phony pretext for Netanyahu, designed to convince the public of the war's legitimacy. Fortunately, Netanyahu wisely did not act on their criminal war plans.
These three plan authors, in addition to being pro-Israeli activists, were all neo-conservatives. As such Perle came to Bush's attention when he started to run for president, when Bush was looking for a foreign policy advisor for his campaign. Bush is famous for selecting loyalty over competence in his personnel decisions. Other neo-conservatives would know of Perle's work and philosophy on the Clean Break issues, and Bush would naturally seek their opinion and knowledge of Perle before he hired him.
All during his presidential campaign Bush was tutored by Rice in the religious-like political beliefs of the neo-cons, complete with visiting neo-con guest lecturers, as Bush had no foreign experience other than Mexico. Isolated in a neo-con information bubble, Bush became a convert to their way of thinking: especially about their favorite subject, Iraq. Because of their zealot-like thinking and extensive public networking, the neo-cons left a very long paper trail for investigators to follow.
The neo-cons share many beliefs, and getting rid of Hussein was one of them: by any means necessary. They had collectively talked about this act for many years during the 1990s, according to published letters.
Bush normally would, and most probably did, ask Perle directly for his views on foreign policy, most especially for the Middle East; just to confirm conceptual policy agreement between the two of them. Quite obviously, if Bush did not want anything to do with illegal war plans with a built-in criminal fraud element, he would never hire Perle.
Of course, any other presidential candidate would not have touched a war crime/criminal fraud advocate like Perle with a ten foot pole.
But Bush, who would never hire someone into a sensitive position like this one unless he completely agreed with their point of view, liked Clean Break and Perle, and hired Perle for the job. So, many months before taking office, Bush personally adopted the Clean Break concept for his new US Middle East policy.
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz reinforced these ideas to Bush while vigorously recommending to him that the Clean Break plan be adopted both as a new US preemptive war policy towards Iraq and the abandonment of US participation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process (the latter policy well known to be desired by President Sharon of Israel, Cheney, and most of the top people at the Pentagon).
Both Perle and Feith had previously worked with Cheney on the neoconservative dominated board of advisors for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and all three thought alike. All of the neo-conservatives were of a like mind about Iraq, and they were all in love with Bush's new get-tough policy — legal or not.
At Bush's very first National Security meeting, on January, 2001 (just 10 days after his taking office), the then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, the Bush appointed chair of the meetings, started off the discussions, not by saying anything about imminent threats to the US from Iraq or WMD or terrorism, but by stating "that Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire Mid East region:" a conclusion lifted directly from Clean Break.
In attendance, among others, were Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Powell, and O'Neill (then Secretary of the Treasury).
The two sole items on the agenda were not terrorist related, but Israel and Iraq: leaving Israel to deal with Palestine however it desired with the US out of the loop, and a preemptive US attack on Iraq. Bush then made the statement that "We're going to tilt it back towards Israel," exactly as called for in the Clean Break plan. Colin Powell voiced his objections, saying that "the consequences of that could be dire."
Right after that meeting Paul O'Neill concluded that "getting Hussein was now the administration's focus." O'Neil also remarked that "The meeting had seemed scripted." There was very little discussion and no dissent by any of the insiders, and it seemed that everything had been pre-decided. The focus of the meeting was on 'how' to get Hussein, not 'why'.
One reason this meeting was so pre-scripted was that Bush had been planning these actions with other insiders for over a year prior to that meeting. All of the people in his inner circle were already in agreement. That this plan was adopted just 10 days after he took office according to script is clear evidence that Bush et al had already endorsed Clean Break many months beforehand.
This meeting marked the formal Bush adoption of the Clean Break plan, and the beginning of their criminal conspiracy to commit a number of federal crimes.
Ron Suskind writes in his book with Paul O'Neil (Secretary of the Treasury), The Price of Loyalty, pg 96 etc, about the Iraq situation in early February, 2001 "Beneath the surface was a battle O'Neil had seen brewing since the NSC (National Security Council) meeting on January 30 (2001). It was Powell and his moderates at the State Department versus hard-liners like Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz, who were (7 months before 9/11) already planning the next war in Iraq and the shape of a post-Saddam country."
The hard-liners, at the same time, said O'Neil as he watched, were reviewing the Iraqi oilfields on a map Rumsfeld had prepared, and talking about which oil company should get which oilfield.
Just a few weeks later Bush hired, not just Perle, but all three authors of that criminal war crime plan, including its criminal fraud lies of phony pretext, into extremely high policy levels in the government; obviously to implement Clean Break. And this all took place 7 months before 9/11! No terrorist issues, no WMD: just Bush's personal obsession to get Hussein.
Perle was named Chairman of the Pentagon Defense Policy Board, Feith became Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (the 3rd highest ranking person in the pentagon), and Wurmser wound up as Cheney's top Middle East expert. Hardly the actions of an honest, peace loving, law abiding President.
One of the very first things Bush did was to announce as new U.S. policies the first two policy components of Clean Break; the US withdrawal from the Israel peace process and his new policy of preemptive war. The 3rd Clean Break policy component, the phony pretext for war, would begin a few months later and, per the 4th policy component, the US would attack Iraq without provocation in 2003.
So the evidence we have here is that Bush was, by February 2001, embracing, implementing, and expertly staffing for:
- the adoption of the Clean Break plan to attack Iraq with no provocation (a war crime), for the same reason as the original Israeli plan, knowing full well that many thousands of innocent people on both sides would die as the direct result of such an illegal attack
- the adoption of the Clean Break plan to create a phony pretext for that illegal war both for public consumption and to obtain the fraudulent approval of Congress (no approval without all the lies), which in legal terms is criminal fraud because they knew very well that the lies of that phony pretext would cause physical and financial harm to people if it led to an illegal war (which it did)
When you combine #1 and #2, you suddenly have, by both logical and legal definition, a documented conspiracy to commit premeditated mass murder by following the Clean Break plan to commit criminal fraud in order to obtain approval for an unprovoked attack on Iraq; a war crime that, with foreknown certainty, would cause thousands of deaths if it happened.
When they initiated the actual war itself, the final execution of Clean Break, was, by legal definition, actual premeditated mass murder of 400,000 innocent Iraqi civilians (more than half of them defenseless women and children), all killed by our massive bombing campaign on residential areas, and the murder of 3,900 American GIs; all of whom died needlessly.
Keep in mind that the Senate Select Committee concluded that, before the start of the war, Iraq had no WMD, no ties to 9/11, that Iraq was not part of the war on 9/11 terrorists, and that all of Bush's highly publicized excuses for attacking Iraq were fabrications. These facts were well known by Bush et al in early 2001, and that is exactly why the phony cover-up was planned and executed.
The bottom line is that Bush et al adopted an illegal war plan from fellow neo-cons (because even the planning for a war of aggression, a war without provocation, is a war crime in itself), hired its three neo-con authors into top US war policy positions, and then executed that illegal war plan, including its criminal fraud phony pretext. That plan execution violated 16 different federal laws.
By February, 2001 the criminal war plan Clean Break was back in business, fully embraced by Bush and his top people. The three master planners of this war crime had found a welcoming home with fellow believers who had the power and the intent to make an unprovoked Iraq invasion happen, and they had been hired to help implement that plan and its criminal cover-up.
This all happened seven months before 9/11!
Also in February, 2001 Bush officially implemented the withdrawal of the US from the Israeli peace process and declared that the US would thereafter follow a preemptive war policy. The first two components of Clean Break were then in place. The criminal fraud phony pretext would soon follow, and then the illegal attack on Iraq began in March, 2003.
Yet, on the NBC Evening News on August 30, 2006, in an unscripted question and answer session with Bush by Brian Williams, Williams pointed that many people had said that Bush's attack on Iraq became a huge recruitment poster for the fundamentalists (terrorists).
And Bush responded (emphatically, with no aides around) that "the fundamentalists attacked America on 9/11 (2001) and killed 3,000 Americans, and that was the first time I ever even thought about attacking Iraq!" (On neither 9/11 nor at any other time was there any legitimate intelligence connecting Iraq to that attack).
Feith much later left the Pentagon after the FBI began an investigation about intelligence leaks to Israel flowing through his office. Feith had a habit of allowing Israeli Generals to come into his office without the proper clearance or sign-in process: in effect secret access. Later, when Israel had first issued dire warnings about Iraq simultaneously with the US, and then their after-the-fact review found their sources were all fabrications, many wondered what role these secret visits had played in that strange coordination of phony public fear announcements.
Much later, both Lawrence Wilkerson (Powell's chief of staff) and General Tommy Franks, both of whom worked closely with him, would call Feith (the Bush appointed 3rd highest ranking person in the Dept. of Defense and one of the authors of Clean Break) the most stupid person they had ever met. Franks called him "the f.....g stupidest guy on the face of the earth."
If one stops to think for a moment, why would any responsible religious minded President of the United States be open to seriously and formally considering a plan for a major war crime that even the ultra hawkish Israeli government would not touch, let alone immediately placing the criminal plan's three authors in the top government policy positions where they could best help implement that criminal plan?
When asked previously about Cheney and Rove's apparent authority to make key decisions on their own rather then Bush, Bush replied that he alone made all the key decisions. He wanted to implement the Clean Break war crime plan, and so he did. He wanted to get Hussein, and he seemed to be totally unconcerned with how many Iraqis and Americans had to die in the process.
The plan's formal adoption by Bush obviously had nothing to do with 9/11 or WMD. It was premeditation and conspiracy to commit war crimes with a phony cover-up: Clean Break, the Smoking Gun.
Whenever there is a cause with a well known effect, then whoever intentionally initiates that cause is equally responsible for that ultimate effect. Wars kill people, both yours and theirs.
That's why we never start them unless it is critically and absolutely essential, far beyond any reasonable doubt. The resultant death of even a single innocent person in any premeditated illegal war is the crime of murder, punishable by life in prison.
Later events and actions would make it clear that there would be a Clean Break preemptive war against Iraq, complete with its phony pretext and cover-up. Bush had already tilted mid-east foreign policy towards Israel per the same Clean Break plan. It should be noted that Bush publicly reiterated that preemptive war policy as national doctrine on March 16, 2006 (Washington Post and TV news).
While Bush et al were still thinking about how to go about implementing the rest of Clean Break, along came 9/11: the perfect phony, public excuse for an attack on Iraq.
Compelling Eye-witnessed Evidence of Cover-up & Crimes
On 9/11 while Rumsfeld was taking cover in the War Room in the basement of the Pentagon, Tenet handed him a note saying that bin Ladin's people seemed to have prior knowledge for the attacks. Rumsfeld said that was "vague" information. A few hours later an aide to Rumsfeld wrote some notes relative to Tenet's conversation with Rumsfeld that said that Rumsfeld wanted "best info fast; judge whether good enough (to) hit SH (Saddam Hussein) at (the) same time. Not only UBL (Usama bin Ladin). Go massive, Sweep it all up. Things related, and not."
In other words using 9/11 as a pretext, and with zero evidence relating Iraq with 9/11, Rumsfeld was suggesting we hit Iraq and sweep up Hussein even if there was no relationship between Iraq and 9/11.
On the very next day Richard Clarke, the Counterterrorism Coordinator, went into the equivalent of a National Security Meeting at the White House expecting to talk about getting al Qaeda. Instead he found Rumsfeld and his deputy secretary "trying to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq. My friends in the pentagon had been telling me (pre 9/11) that the word was we would be invading Iraq sometime in 2002."
The next day in the same meeting continued, "Rumsfeld complained that there were no decent targets in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq, which he said had better targets. At first I thought Rumsfeld was joking. But he was serious and the President did not reject out of hand the idea of attacking Iraq. Instead, he noted that what we needed to do with Iraq was to change the government, not just hit it with more cruise missiles, as Rumfeld had implied."
Clarke then spoke up and said "Having been attacked by Al Qaeda, for us to now go to bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor." In legal terms, this is what is called "premeditation:" planning in advance to do something quite illegal and unjustified.
A few days later Wolfowitz told the Deputy Secretary of Defense told Bush that 9/11 had created an opportunity to attack Iraq. Earlier, in January, Wurmser had made recommendations about the US waging a preemptive war against Iraq. In that same paper he said "crisis can be opportunities."
A few days after that Perle and a number of other neoconservatives sent a letter to Bush starting with "it may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States. But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."
After 9/11 Bush asked US Intelligence to find evidence that Iraq had WMD and ties to al Qaeda. Their response to him was that, based on the data they had, neither claim was true. Their intelligence showed that there was no war provocation or threat of imminent attack by Iraq, that Iraq was unrelated to 9/11, and that Iraq had neither the capability nor the intent to attack the US.
But the attack on Iraq was neither self defense nor was it a mercy mission: the US attack caused far more death and damage than would ever have happened without it, and there was nothing to defend against. Bush knew that but did not want the official reports to reflect the truth. So he developed a plan to distort and manipulate reported intelligence in order to provide public support for his war plans: the Clean Break cover-up plan.
By systematically punishing those who reported data contrary to his views and rewarding those who told him what he wanted to hear and see. Bush set out to make the reported intelligence fit his pre-established war agenda. He weeded out many of those intelligence specialists who were non-cooperative and inserted his own inexperienced loyalists.
Loyalty was Bush's key hiring criteria, not competence: just as was tragically demonstrated by Katrina and the after-attack ultra disastrous US misadministration of Iraq by the US.
In the process George Tenet, the Director of the CIA, was intimidated and co-opted by Bush because Tenet (a career bureaucrat) desperately wanted to please him: to give Bush in writing whatever he wanted to see and to officially withhold from him whatever he did not want to see. Tenet had clearly gotten the message.
In order to convince congress and the UN to approve his war plans Bush desperately wanted official reports to conform to the phony war pretext as much as possible. For complete details of how he manipulated intelligence and most of the other matters covered herein, see "State of War" by James Risen, and "Pretext for War" by James Bamford (this also contains the "Clean Break" details). Both books are very well documented as to sources. Also see "Against All Enemies" by Richard Clarke, and "Cobra II" by Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor, equally well documented.
"A lot of people went to George (Tenet) to tell him that Iraq would hurt the war on terrorism (resources being spread too thin), but I never heard him express an opinion about war in Iraq," said one former Tenet aide. "He would just come back from the White House and say they are going to do it."
Risen writes "That was the central message that Tenet brought to the CIA from the White House and the Pentagon: war with Iraq was inevitable, and it was time for the CIA to do its part. Agency officials who appeared to be unenthusiastic about Iraq soon mysteriously found themselves sidelined, while their more eager and ambitious colleagues began to rise, both within the Directorate of Operations and in the Directorate of Intelligence, the analytical arm. The pressure from the Bush administration was being transmitted directly into the ranks of the nation's intelligence, affecting careers and lives."
Bamford writes that one veteran CIA DO case officer who had been overseas running agents, had been reassigned to "to the unit charged with finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq,..." "According to the official, the group never found any indications of WMD in Iraq." "Where I was working I never saw anything — no one else did either," the person said. "Nevertheless, there was a great deal of pressure to find a reason to go to war with Iraq, and the pressure was not just subtle, it was blatant."
At one point in January 2003, the person's boss called a meeting (of about 50 CIA people) and gave them marching orders, "And he said, 'You know what — if Bush wants to go to war, it's your job to give him a reason to do so,' according to the official." It was the first time the CIA person had ever heard anyone order (CIA) employees to slant their analysis for political (or criminal) purposes. Then the official said "This is awful" "And I just remember saying 'This is something that the American public, if they ever heard, if they ever knew, they would be outraged'.
"It is the cult of secrecy within the CIA," the person said, "that keeps people from speaking out." "No one is willing to say the emperor has no clothes — no one is willing to say that," said the official. "Your job is just to salute and say okay...I said to another colleague how embarrassed I was, and he said you better be careful, someone's going to report you."
"When the person arrived in the office, others there mentioned that Vice President Cheney had also made very unusual visits to the agency to pressure analysts to come up with something to justify the war." "Before I got there," said the other official, "Cheney came and literally went around to people saying find something." Cheney had said they needed to find something nuclear.
Larry Johnson, a republican former CIA official, said in 2004 "By April of last year, I was beginning to pick up grumblings from friends inside the intelligence community that there had been pressure applied to analysts to come up with certain conclusions. Specifically, I was told that analysts were pressured to find an operational link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. One analyst, in particular, told me they were repeatedly pressured by the most senior officials in the Department of Defense."
"In congressional testimony, former CIA Counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro said that in the weeks and months leading up to the war in Iraq, the White House had exerted unprecedented pressure on the CIA and other intelligence agencies to come up with evidence linking Iraq to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda." But in the end there was nothing to come up with, because it simply did not exist. (Except in fabricated form)
Another CIA DO case officer "brought up the order issued at the staff meeting 'if Bush wants to go to war, it's your job to give him a reason to do so.' "The fact that someone could say that in the agency and get away with it is just disgusting," said the official. "He said that to his full staff. I can't believe that" someone would say that openly and get away with it. But there was a lot of that.
"My dissent was that the role of the agency had become 'provide support for what the administration's viewpoint was'. And for me that was the final straw. It was criminal the way we were implicitly deceiving people...You know, what I heard from everyone was this had been planned for a long time."
In his book "The One Percent Doctrine," by Ron Suskind, Suskind writes of a meeting between Tenet and Cheney soon after 9/11 "It was clear to Tenet, that at this point, Cheney was in charge of much of the administration's foreign policy. He would clearly be in charge of the most critical area: WMD." They went on to discuss some later discredited intelligence about al Qaeda getting nuclear weapons.
Then Cheney says "If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response," Cheney said. He paused in to assess his declaration. "It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence," he added. "It's about our response."
Suskind writes "So now spoken, it stood: a standard of action that would frame events and responses from the administration for years to come. The Cheney Doctrine. Even if there's just a one percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty. It's not about "our analysis" as Cheney said, It's about "our response." This doctrine — the one percent solution — divided what had largely been indivisible in the conduct of foreign policy: analysis and action, Justified or not, fact based or not, "our response" is what matters. As to 'evidence' "the bar was set so low that that the word itself almost didn't apply."
At first glance, without thinking about it, the Cheney doctrine sounds like it might have possibilities as a national policy in a time of crisis. But, after a few seconds of genuine thought, anyone analyzing it soon realizes it is an asinine and very dangerous concept!
To begin with, where did the one percent number come from? Months of scientific based computer analysis of past experience or projected results by the very best minds available? No, it came as an offhand statement by a neo-conservative Vice President of the United States who was obsessed with attacking Iraq, who would like to avoid defending the validity of fabricated evidence.
Cheney's new doctrine was the equivalent of "if you see the shadow of a cloud, shoot first and ask questions later, because one of the 100 people you kill might be the bad guy."
One simple way to get outside support without doing any analysis or fact finding about the merits of your questionable actions is to come up with a new doctrine that says you don't need any facts. Keep in mind that, mathematically, a 1% probability of an event happening is also a 99% probability of it not happening. Why one percent, as opposed to .01%, or 10%, or 50%?
How do you objectively measure that 1%? Without any criteria, it becomes an entirely subjective conclusion. But by the new doctrine you do not have to support any rationale you come up with to say it is 1% or more. You just say so.
It is accepted scientific fact that the end results of any theorem (doctrine) are wholly dependent upon the basic assumptions behind it. If the assumptions came from thin air, how much faith can you put in the theorem?
Would you spend $350 billion and kill 400,000 innocent Iraqis and 3,900 GIs based on a 99% (or more likely 99.999%) probability that Hussein had no WMD? Or would you prefer to first see some facts analyzed and then double checked before taking any action?
In addition it is a smoke and mirrors game with circular reasoning. The smoke is the non-existent basis for the 1%. The mirror is the justification reached by the doctrine, which says you need no justification for the justification. In short you can make any decision you want with no analysis and then say that it meets your new standard doctrine, which in turn says you didn't need any analysis to justify the doctrine.
It is a universally accepted fact that true Americans do not first decide to start a war that will kill tens of thousands of innocents, including American GIs, and then only as an afterthought try and find a reason for killing all those people. That concept is completely foreign to our thinking. It goes against all our moral codes. It is unchristian. It is criminal, and not by any means patriotic. It is Bush et al's official foreign policy doctrine.
In late September, 2001 Feith asked Wurmser to set up a secret intelligence unit in his office that would go around the usual channels and report to Feith only. It had the cover name Policy Counterterrrorism Evaluation Group (PCEG).
It was tasked to find evidence of links between Iraq and 9/11 from various sources of intelligence. But it was essentially a pro-war propaganda unit. It was designed to provide information to offset the fact that the CIA had found no such link. Wurmser's background was as a pro-Israeli activist, with no experience in Intelligence.
Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the Office of Special Plans (OSP, see below for details), into which PCEG had been merged, said "It wasn't intelligence, it was propaganda." Gregory Thielmann, the director of military assessments within the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research said "There's no logical explanation for the office's creation except that they (the Bush administration) wanted people to find evidence to support their answers about war."
In their first 12 months of existence, with many people working full time and with access to every piece of intelligence known, Wurmser's people found absolutely nothing except the later discredited lies about "nuclear" aluminum tubes, phony uranium purchases, non-existent mobile WMD labs, non-existent WMD storage locations, non-existent nuclear weapons, non-existent armed drones, and non-existent terrorists.
In August, 2002 Feith took two of the analysts working on Wurmser's project to brief the CIA of its findings to date, including to Tenet. One CIA participant noted that "Much of it we had discounted already." So the CIA ignored the findings. But, according to James Bamford, soon thereafter Feith gave the same briefing at the White House for senior officials, including Stephen Hadley (Rice's Deputy) and Scooter Libby (Cheney's Chief of Staff), but included a new slide critical of the CIA for disagreeing with them. The CIA had previously stated repeatedly, over and over again since 9/11, that they could find no link between Iraq and 9/11 (al Qaida), at any time.
Bamford writes "Despite the inaccuracy of the information contained in the high-level (White House) briefings, the top-down pressure worked and the CIA quickly reversed itself." Soon thereafter John McLaughlin, CIA deputy director, wrote a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee saying "We have solid evidence of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida going back a decade." That was a blatant lie from the number two official at the CIA. Bush's cover-up had won again.
Of the Office of Special Plans (OSP, where she worked), Kwiatkowski said "They pushed an agenda on Iraq, and they developed pretty sophisticated propaganda lines which were fed throughout government, to the Congress, and even internally to the Pentagon — to try and make the case of immediacy, this case of severe threat to the United States...They were political, politically motivated. They did have, obviously, bits of intelligence in them, but they were created to propagandize. This was creatively produced propaganda spread not only through the Pentagon but across a network of policymakers." The OSP had a "very close relationship" with Vice President Cheney's office.
She also said that they maintained an enemies list, which included Colin Powell. "Before he was removed by Bush, I heard (General) Zinni called a traitor in a staff meeting. They were very anti anybody who might provide information that (negatively) affected their paradigm. They were the spin enforcers. They spent their energy gathering pieces of information and creating a propaganda story line, which is the same story (propaganda) we heard the president and Vice President Cheney tell the American people in the fall of 2002."
She went on to say "The very phrases they used are coming back to haunt them, because they are blatantly false and not based on any intelligence. The OSP and the Vice President's office were critical in this propaganda effort — to convince Americans that there was some just requirement for preemptive war...The Congress was misled, it was lied to. At a very minimum, that is a subversion of the Constitution. A preemptive war based on what we knew was not a pressing need is not what this country stands for."
Bamford continues "Hadley and Libby (representing Rice and Cheney) were part of another secret office that had been set up within the White House. Known as the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), later called the White House Information Group. It was established in August, 2002 by Chief of Staff Andrew Card, at the same time the OSP was established in Feith's office. Made up of high-level administration officials, its job was to sell (propagandize) the war to the general public, largely through televised addresses and by selective leaking the intelligence (classified) to the media."
"In June, 2002, a leaked computer disk containing a presentation by chief Bush strategist Karl Rove revealed a White House political plan to use the war as a way to "maintain a positive issue environment (for the next elections)." But the real pro-war media blitz was scheduled for the fall and the start of the (mid-term) election season "because from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," said Card" (beware of Rove September-November, 2006!).
Karl Rove has been called Bush's brain: he thinks up ideas and Bush executes them. In the early 1970s Rove, as chairman of the College Republicans, gave a series of lectures at 15 campuses about practical politics. One of his standard seminars was how to perform "dirty tricks" (Rove called them "pranks"), which he practiced in Texas and subsequent state and national elections (see "Rove Exposed" by James Moore & Wayne Slater).
Centuries ago Plato wrote that if you tell a big enough lie often enough and pervasive enough, most people will come to believe it. Rove seem to have had great success with that age old concept in his political career, most especially with the Iraq "Big Lie."
As an aside, on May 1, 2002, Press Secretary Ari Fleicher was reporting to Bush on the that day's daily press briefing and his verbal go-around with Helen Thomas about Iraq. Bush wanted to know how Fleicher had responded to Thomas about Hussein. "Did you tell her I don't like assholes who lie to the world?" Bush said; aptly describing himself.
"At least once a week they (the WHIG team) would gather around the blonde conference table downstairs in the Situation Room, the same place the war was born on January 30, 2001, ten days into the Bush presidency." "Although real intelligence had improved very little in the intervening nineteen months, the manufacturing (fabrication) of it had increased tremendously. In addition to its Chairman Karl Rove, and Hadley and Libby, those frequently attending the WHIG meetings included Condoleezza Rice, communications guru Karen Hughes, Mary Matlin, James Wilkinson (and Bush's chief speechwriter Michael Gerson), and legislative liaison Nicholas Catlin."
These WHIG members were the very best spin doctors and propagandists in the Republican party, spending taxpayer money to convince the American public of the Clean Break phony pretext that war with Iraq was an absolute and urgent necessity. They were spinning Bush and Rove's new "Big Lie." But this time it wasn't political, it was criminal.
Just to clarify how sinister and dangerous and what kind of vicious liars these Bush political "spin doctors" can be, recall the 2000 Republican presidential primary contest. The deep-south South Carolina primary was a make or break contest for Bush, as McCain was rapidly gaining momentum on him. Much earlier McCain had found the good heart to adopt a black child who needed a home.
Bush and Rove were desperate to win this primary, and willing to do anything to defeat McCain. So they and their spin doctors started a purposely widely spread rumor that McCain had a love child with a black woman and then adopted it. That then being the still backward deep south, the redneck voters there rapidly turned against McCain and picked Bush.
Had Bush's ugly lie not taken place McCain might have well won the nomination and the election, and the Iraq war would never have happened. And 400,000 dead Iraqis and 3,900 dead Americans would still be alive.
The next time Bush and McCain shared a public platform, McCain openly complained to Bush about the really despicable dirty tricks Bush and his spin doctors were pulling. Bush said to him "it's nothing personal, it's just politics."
If those dead Iraqis and Americans could listen to Bush's excuse for his illegal war that killed them, and all the criminal fraud lies he told to gain congressional approval for it, Bush might say "it's nothing personal, it's just global politics". Just the normal everyday lies of spin doctors and lie-masters like Rove — that happen to intentionally kill people.
They were the driving force behind the vast Bush disinformation campaign,