January 31, 2007
CHENEY’S NOTE IMPLICATES BUSH
Mission Control wrote this in the late evening:
Filed under: Blog, Evidence, In the News, Facts: Lies and Deceptions, Karl Rove, Facts: Breaking the Law, GOP, Iraq War Crimes, Cover Up, Oversight/Investigations, Neocon Madness
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It’s an honor to be part of this obviously growing movement for peace and justice. Our president took us into war before Congress gave its so-called authorization. He did so without telling Congress or the American people and without Congress appropriating any funds for the purpose. In the summer of 2002, Bush took $2.5 billion – according to the Congressional Research Service – away from other projects, including Afghanistan, and used it to build airfields in Qatar and to begin bombing Iraq in preparation for the full-scale invasion.
Not all lies are created equal. It is understood that there is a chasm of importance between little white lies and big black ones. Most would agree that lying about a consensual sexual affair, even by the president, is of significantly lesser concern than lying about the proliferation of nuclear weapons as an excuse to take the nation to war.
I know the Democratic leaders in Congress have said that impeachment is “off the table”, but that is one campaign promise that should not be kept. Oversight of the Bush Administration is not enough.
Let’s take the war in Iraq. The president clearly lied and tricked both the Congress and the American people into allowing him to invade that country. He and Vice President Dick Cheney carefully cherry-picked half-truths and known falsehoods to lay out as “evidence” that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons and that he was in league with Osama bin Laden. His White House orchestrated a campaign to damage the reputation of an honest critic, ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had discovered that a key piece of that “evidence” –some alleged documents from the country of Niger–had been forged, and even “outed” Wilson’s CIA-agent wife. 
While Iran was named a part of President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” in 2002, efforts to ignite a confrontation with Iran date back long before the post-9/11 war on terror. Presently, the Administration is trumpeting claims that Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than the CIA’s own analysis shows and positing Iranian influence in Iraq’s insurgency, but efforts to destabilize Iran have been conducted covertly for years, often using members of Congress or non-government actors in a way reminiscent of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.
The motivations for an Iran strike were laid out as far back as 1992. In classified 
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) says the White House is “up to its old tricks” as it preps for a U.S. attack on Iran, according to a press release.
Approximately a year ago, I wrote in this magazine that President George W. Bush had committed high crimes and misdemeanors and should be impeached and removed from office. His impeachable offenses include using lies and deceptions to drive the country into war in Iraq, deliberately and repeatedly violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on wiretapping in the United States, and facilitating the mistreatment of US detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes Act of 1996.
Since then, the case against President Bush has, if anything, been strengthened by reports that he personally authorized CIA abuse of detainees. In addition, courts have rejected some of his extreme assertions of executive power. The Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees, and a federal judge ruled that the President could not legally ignore FISA. Even Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s recent announcement that the wiretapping program would from now on operate under FISA court supervision strongly suggests that Bush’s prior claims that it could not were untrue.
JERUSALEM (AP) - The small opposition Meretz party said Wednesday it would seek parliamentary backing to launch impeachment proceedings against Israeli President Moshe Katsav, who faces indictment on charges of rape and abuse of power.
