Impeach

A Firm Basis for ImpeachmentBy Robert Scheer, AlterNetJuly 18, 2003Does the president not read? Does his national security staff, led by Condoleezza Rice, keep him in the dark about the most pressing issues of the day? Or is this administration blatantly lying to the American people to secure its ideological ends? Those questions arise because of the White House admission that the charge that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger was excised from a Bush speech in October 2002 after the CIA and State Department insisted it was unfounded. Bizarrely, however, three months later - without any additional evidence emerging - that outrageous lie was inserted into the State of the Union speech to justify the president's case for bypassing the United Nations Security Council, for chasing U.N. inspectors out of Iraq and for invading and occupying an oil-rich country.This weekend, administration sources disclosed that CIA Director George Tenet intervened in October to warn White House officials, including deputy national security advisor Stephen Hadley, not to use the Niger information because it was based on a single source. That source proved to be a forged document with glaring inconsistencies. Bush's top security aides, led by Hadley's boss, Rice, went along with the CIA, and Bush's October speech was edited to eliminate the false charge that Iraq was seeking to acquire uranium from Niger to create a nuclear weapon. We now know that before Bush's January speech, Robert G. Joseph, the National Security Council individual who reports to Rice on nuclear proliferation, was fully briefed by CIA analyst Alan Foley that the Niger connection was no stronger than it had been in October. It is inconceivable that in reviewing draft after draft of the State of the Union speech, NSC staffers Hadley and Joseph failed to tell Rice that the president was about to spread a big lie to justify going to war. On national security, the buck doesn't stop with Tenet, the current fall guy. The buck stops with Bush and his national security advisor, who is charged with funneling intelligence data to the president. That included telling the president that the CIA's concerns were backed by the State Department's conclusion that "the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are highly dubious." For her part, Rice has tried to fend off controversy by claiming ignorance. On "Meet the Press" in June, Rice claimed, "We did not know at the time - no one knew at the time, in our circles - maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery." On Friday, Rice admitted that she had known the State Department intelligence unit "was the one that within the overall intelligence estimate had objected to that sentence" and that Secretary of State Colin Powell had refused to use the Niger document in his presentation to the U.N. because of what she described as long-standing concerns about its credibility. But Rice also knew the case for bypassing U.N. inspections and invading Iraq required demonstrating an imminent threat. The terrifying charge that Iraq was hellbent on developing nuclear weapons would do the trick nicely. However, with the discrediting of the Niger buy and the equally dubious citation of a purchase of aluminum tubes (which turned out to be inappropriate for the production of enriched uranium), one can imagine the disappointment at the White House. There was no evidence for painting Saddam Hussein as a nuclear threat. The proper reaction should have been to support the U.N. inspectors in doing their work in an efficient and timely fashion. We now know, and perhaps the White House knew then, that the inspectors eventually would come up empty-handed because no weapons of mass destruction program existed - not even a stray vial of chemical and biological weapons has been discovered. However, that would have obviated the administration's key rationale for an invasion, so lies substituted for facts that didn't exist. And there, dear readers, exists the firm basis for bringing a charge of impeachment against the president who employed lies to lead us into war.
Democrat Eyes Potential Grounds for Bush ImpeachmentThu Jul 17, 2003By John Milne CONCORD, N.H. (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham said on Thursday there were grounds to impeach President Bush if he was found to have led America to war under false pretenses. While Graham did not call for Bush's impeachment, he said if the president lied about the reasons for going to war with Iraq it would be "more serious" than former President Bill Clinton's lie under oath about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. "If in fact we went to war under false pretenses that is a very serious charge," Graham, the senior U.S. senator from Florida, told reporters in New Hampshire. "If the standard of impeachment is the one the House Republicans used against Bill Clinton, this clearly comes within that standard," he said.Democrats and some Republicans have raised questions about the unsubstantiated claim Bush made in his January State of the Union speech that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa in its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.Graham's comments came as reporters followed up on his remarks earlier this week that any deception by Bush over Iraq might rise to the standard of an impeachable offense -- as defined by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives when it voted to impeach Clinton.Clinton was ultimately cleared by the U.S. Senate after being impeached by the House.After his appearance in New Hampshire, Graham issued a statement saying he was not calling for Bush's impeachment and saw the issue as a largely academic one, adding that if Bush had misled the American public he would pay the price for it in the 2004 presidential election.In Washington on Thursday, Bush told a news conference that the speech reference was based on "sound intelligence" and he was certain that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. "We won't be proven wrong," he said with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at his side.The flap over Iraq upstaged Graham's economic proposals. He said his plan would balance the federal budget within five years while providing middle-class tax relief and creating 3 million new jobs.His plan would repeal most of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. It would reinstate a 38.6 percent tax bracket for wealthy individuals and create a new "millionaires tax bracket" at 40 percent. Graham also proposed cracking down on individuals and companies who transfer assets offshore or renounce U.S. citizenship to escape taxation.
http://news.independent.co.ukCheney Under Pressure To Quit Over False War EvidenceAnger Grows On Both Sides Of Atlantic At Misleading Claims On Eve Of Iraq ConflictBy Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Marie Woolf7-16-3Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President and the administration's most outspoken hawk over Iraq, faced demands for his resignation last night as he was accused of using false evidence to build the case for war. He was accused of using his office to insist that a false claim about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium from Africa to restart its nuclear programme be included in George Bush's State of the Union address - overriding the concerns of the CIA director, George Tenet. Mr Cheney was also accused of knowingly misleading Congress when the administration sought its authorisation for the use of force to oust Saddam Hussein. The allegations against Mr Cheney have come most vocally from a group of senior former intelligence officials who believe that information from the intelligence community was selectively used to support a war fought for political reasons. In an open letter to President George Bush, the group have asked that he demand Mr Cheney's resignation. As the clamour for a full inquest into the African uranium claims grew on both sides of the Atlantic, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, was accused by MPs of lacking "credibility" after he admitted knowing a month before the war that documents making the assertion were forgeries. Mr Straw said in a statement he had known that letters given to the UN nuclear agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, about the Niger claim were fake as early as February. Mr Straw also claimed that the Government's case for military action was not based on "intelligence reports". Labour MPs, including Tam Dalyell, the father of the House, asked why Mr Straw had not told MPs that the documents were fake in advance of the vote to approve military action on 18 March. "He now says the Government knew it was a forgery in February. Why didn't he tell us before Parliament voted for war?" he said. "Also if the case for war is not based on intelligence, what is it based on?" Last night the Labour-dominated Foreign Affairs Committee asked Mr Straw to reveal what he knew about the Niger claim. Donald Anderson, the committee's chairman, wrote to Mr Straw asking him when the CIA first questioned the Niger connection, and why ministers had not admitted earlier that there were doubts about the claims. The committee also asked whether the CIA had questioned any other claims in the September dossier on Iraq's weapons. The letter, signed by 11 MPs of all parties, called on Mr Straw to confirm The Independent's report that technical documents and centrifuge parts found at the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist in Baghdad had lain buried for 12 years. The letter also asked Mr Straw to reveal when he knew that the former US ambassador Joseph Wilson had found claims about Niger-Iraq links to be false. Last week the White House admitted that the claim that Iraq was seeking "significant quantities of uranium from Africa" - based on faked documents provided by the Italian intelligence services - should not have been included in President Bush's speech of 28 January. In Washington there is no conclusive proof that Mr Cheney was responsible for insisting that the claim be made in the speech. But there is clear evidence of Mr Cheney's interest in the alleged Niger deal. Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador, said he was asked by the CIA to go to Niger and investigate the claim in a request from the Vice-President's office. Mr Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, has admitted that during a briefing from the CIA "the Vice-President asked a question about the implication of the report". There have been reports from CIA officials that in the months before the war Mr Cheney made a "multiple number" of personal visits to its headquarters in Virginia to meet officials analysing intelligence relating to Iraq. "[He] sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here," one senior CIA official told reporters. The CIA director, Mr Tenet, said he accepted responsibility for approving the speech but said his officers had only "concurred" with White House officials that by naming the British Government as the source of the Niger claim it was "factually correct". Britain has stood by the claim, saying it has evidence in addition to the Italian documents.
HUFFINGTON: Bush's Mis-State-Ment Of The Union FiascoBy Arianna Huffington, AlterNetJuly 16, 2003Poor Karl Rove: He spends close to two years meticulously staging photo ops and carefully crafting sound bites to create the image of President Bush as a take-charge, man-the-controls, land-the-jet-on-the-deck-of-the-aircraft carrier, "Bring 'em on" kind of leader. But now the latest revelations about the Misstatement of the Union fiasco are threatening to bring back the old notion of W as a bumbling, detached figurehead-in-chief. And it's the president's own people who are painting this unflattering portrait. Take George Tenet: While robotically impaling himself on his sword, the CIA director took great pains to point out that he thought so little of the Niger/Saddam uranium connection that he and his deputies refused to bring it up in congressional briefings as far back as fall 2002. It just didn't meet his standards. Same with Colin Powell. The Secretary went on at great length about the intense vetting process - "four days and three nights" locked up with the leaders of the CIA, working "until midnight, 1 o'clock every morning," going over "every single thing we knew about all of the various issues with respect to weapons of mass destruction" - that went into deciding what information would be used in his United Nations presentation. A presentation that ultimately did not include the Niger allegation because it was not, in Powell's words "standing the test of time." Hmmm, just how hard is that test? Powell's UN speech came a mere eight days after Bush's State of the Union - leaving one to wonder what the expiration date is on patently phony data? About a week after a president uses it, it turns out. So here's the picture we're left with: When faced with using explosive but highly questionable charges in vital presentations leading up to a possible preemptive war, both Powell and Tenet gave the information they were handed a thorough going over before ultimately rejecting it. But not the commander in chief. Apparently, he just took whatever he was handed, and happily offered it up to the world. He was, therefore, little more than the guy in the presidential suit, mindlessly speaking the words that others had debated and polished and twisted and finally agreed he would say. And then when the uranium hit the fan, our stand-up-guy president decided that the buck actually stops with George Tenet. As the Niger controversy - Yellowcake-gate - is turning into a political firestorm, the question should be: What didn't the president know - and why didn't he know it? And why does he know less and less every day? After all, it's becoming clearer by the day that just about everyone else involved knew that the president was using a bogus charge to alarm the nation about Saddam's nuclear threat. Whatever the opposite of "top secret" is, this was it. The U.S. ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, knew: She had sent reports to Washington debunking the allegations. Joe Wilson, the envoy sent to Niger by the CIA, knew: His fact-finding trip quickly confirmed the ambassador's findings. The CIA knew: The agency tried unsuccessfully in September 2002 to convince the Brits to take the false charge out of an intelligence report. The State Department knew: Its Bureau of Intelligence and Research labeled it "highly dubious." Tenet and Powell knew: They refused to use it. The president's speechwriters knew: They were told to remove a reference to the Niger uranium in a speech the president delivered in Cincinnati on Oct. 7 - three months before his State of the Union. And the National Security Council knew: NSC staff played a key role in the decision to fudge the truth by having the president source the uranium story to British intelligence. The bottom line is: This canard had been thoroughly discredited many, many times over, but the administration fanatics so badly wanted it to be true they just refused to let it die the death it deserved. The yellowcake lie was like one of those slasher movie psychos that refuse to stay buried no matter how many times you smash a hatchet into their skull. It had more sequels than "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween" combined. Cherry-picking convenient lies about something as important as nuclear war is bad enough but the administration's attempts to spin the aftershocks have been even worse. They just don't seem to grasp the concept that when you're sending American soldiers to die for something the reasons you give - all of the reasons - should be true.Instead of a sword for Mr. Tenet, somebody should get this bunch a copy of "All the President's Men." The slow drip, drip, drip of incremental revelations and long-overdue admissions is not the way to stem a brewing scandal.Condoleezza Rice has been the worst offender. Now that we know that Tenet personally warned Rice's deputy, Steve Hadley, not to use the yellowcake claim back in October, and the role NSC staffers played in manipulating the State of the Union, Rice's widely publicized claim, made little over a month ago, that at the time of the State of the Union, "maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery" has been revealed for what it is: A bald-face lie.And even now as the truth comes flooding out, Rice continues to play fast and loose with the facts - and stand by her man. "The statement that he made," she said on Sunday, speaking of the president, "was indeed accurate. The British government did say that."Joining the still-don't-get-it unit were Don "Haldeman" Rumsfeld, who termed the president's speech "technically correct," and Ari "Ehrlichman" Fleischer who offered up this classic bit of spinsanity: "What we have said is it should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech. People cannot conclude that the information was necessarily false."Watergate gave us the non-denial denial. Yellowcake-gate is giving us the non-admission admission.And that's not the only parallel. In July 1973, at the height of the Watergate hearings, Richard Nixon announced: "What we were elected to do, we are going to do, and let others wallow in Watergate." George Bush seems to be taking the same head-in-the-sand approach, letting it be known that, with Tenet taking responsibility for the Niger snafu, he considers the matter closed. "The president has moved on," said Fleischer over the weekend. "And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on as well." Let others wallow in Yellowcake-gate, right, Ari? But wishing doesn't make it so, either for phantom uranium transfers or the evaporation of skepticism.In the spirit of Tricky Dick, let me make myself perfectly clear: I'm not saying that Yellowcake-gate is the equivalent of Watergate. I'm saying it's potentially much, much worse.At its core, Watergate was all about trying to make sure that Nixon won an election. Yellowcake-gate is much more than a dirty trick played on the American public. It's about the Bush administration's pattern of deception as it pushed and shoved this country into a preemptive war - from the much-advertised but nonexistent links between Iraq and al-Qaeda to the sexing-up of Saddam's WMD.No one died as a result of Watergate, but more than 200 American soldiers have been killed and thousand more wounded to rid the world of an imminent threat that wasn't. To say nothing of the countless Iraqis who have lost their lives. And those numbers will only rise as we find ourselves stuck in a situation Gen. Tommy Franks predicts will continue for at least another four years. With the events of the last week, George Bush has come across as very presidential indeed. Like his Dad, he's been out of the loop; like Clinton he's become a world class word weasel; and like Nixon he's shown a massive propensity for secrecy and dissembling. Not exactly the role models Karl Rove had in mind. President Clinton was impeached for seven words he should never have uttered: "I never had sex with that woman." What price will President Bush have to pay for his sixteen-word scam?Arianna Huffington is the author of "Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America."