IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED."

Special to BuzzFlash

Thursday, May 5, 2005

By Greg Palast

The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...."

For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, viewers inevitably ask me, "Isn't this grounds for impeachment?" -- vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a "high crime or misdemeanor."

And if this ain't it, nothing is.

The memo, uncovered this week by the Times, goes on to describe an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony.

A conspiracy to commit serial fraud is, under federal law, racketeering. However, the Mob's schemes never cost so many lives.

Here's more. "Bush had made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Really? But Mr. Bush told us, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

A month ago, the Silberman-Robb Commission issued its report on WMD intelligence before the war, dismissing claims that Bush fixed the facts with this snooty, condescending conclusion written directly to the President, "After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons."

We now know the report was a bogus 618 pages of thick whitewash aimed to let Bush off the hook for his murderous mendacity.

Read on: The invasion build-up was then set, says the memo, "beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections." Mission accomplished.

You should parse the entire memo -- posted on my website -- and see if you can make it through its three pages without losing your lunch.

Now sharp readers may note they didn't see this memo, in fact, printed in the New York Times. It wasn't. Rather, it was splashed across the front pages of the Times of LONDON on Monday.

It has effectively finished the last, sorry remnants of Tony Blair's political career. (While his Labor Party will most assuredly win the elections Thursday, Prime Minister Blair is expected, possibly within months, to be shoved overboard in favor of his Chancellor of the Exchequer, a political execution which requires only a vote of the Labour party's members in Parliament.)

But in the US, barely a word. The New York Times covers this hard evidence of Bush's fabrication of a casus belli as some "British" elections story. Apparently, our President's fraud isn't "news fit to print."

My colleagues in the UK press have skewered Blair, digging out more incriminating memos, challenging the official government factoids and fibs. But in the US press nada, bubkes, zilch. Bush fixed the facts and somehow that's a story for "over there."

The Republicans impeached Bill Clinton over his cigar and Monica's affections. And the US media could print nothing else.

Now, we have the stone, cold evidence of bending intelligence to sell us on death by the thousands, and neither a Republican Congress nor what is laughably called US journalism thought it worth a second look.

My friend Daniel Ellsberg once said that what's good about the American people is that you have to lie to them. What's bad about Americans is that it's so easy to do.

----------- Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Read the memo in its entirety at www.GregPalast.com

You may reproduce this report without fee but with attribution.

Media requests: contact(at)gregpalast.com

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add a comment on this article

88 Representatives Want Answers on Leaked Memo 06.May.2005 12:57

by Congressman John Conyers link

Several days ago, I wrote to tell you about a letter I was circulating to the President demanding answers about revelations contained in a leaked British government memo. DailyKos readers, along with the Progressive Democrats of America, placed hundreds of calls to House of Representatives offices asking Members of Congress to sign on to the letter. The results are remarkable (especially given the short turnaround on the letter): as first reported on the Stephanie Miller show, 88 Members have signed the letter.

There would have been many more had there been more time. Every single Member of Congress I personally asked to sign the letter, signed it. You can find the letter here and the press release about it here. [Please use link below]

In the meantime, the mainstream media is slowly waking up about the leaked memo. Knight Ridder, which has led a stampede in the past on other Iraq stories, once again has a thorough story on it today. I am hopeful that a letter on this, signed by 88 Members of Congress will lead other outlets to cover this very important story.

This is simply not the usual day-to-day partisan back and forth. To me, this disclosure raises the most serious constitutional questions.

Story with links here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/6/113947/8072

constitutional question 06.May.2005 15:33

. link

Can we impeach bush and cheney at the same time?

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Not so fast. 06.May.2005 17:40

Matilda link

Vote rigging, the theft of democracy, would also have been a most impeachable offence...if anyone had cared to do something about it. Orchestrating terrorist attacks on the American people would have been the most capital offence...if anyone had even lazily pursued it. But, no one did.

The thing is, people are so entranced by the dance of the corporate media, that they cannot seem to pull free. Palast and others had Bush hands down. All the evidence is clear and present. He is not the president. But he sits there anyway, crown on his fatass head. All the evidence says he knew about September 11th before it happened, and any real journalist could follow the trail of bread loaves -- not crumbs, loaves -- to find that he also had a hand in orchestrating it. All of us intrinsically know that. And all the evidence in the world tells us, if we care, that the anthrax attacks were orchestrated in the Whitehouse. But the corporate media, our surrougate mind, tells us not to think about it, and so we do not.

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Enemy Combatants, illegal searches and seizures, the fascist PATRIOT act, Enron, Halliburton, and a trail of lies that would make Machiavelli blush...any ONE of these things should have been enough to drive a wooden stake through his black heart once and for all. But yet, he lives. In the Whitehouse.

So unless there's a silver bullet in that smoking gun, then I'm not holding my breath till impeachment day.

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almost too convenient 06.May.2005 18:27

the sheep are already convinced that "memos" are all fake link

I looked at the memo on Greg's website, and I thought it was interesting that it seems to be a big issue in the UK whether the war was "legal" or not.

Is Blair afraid somebody's going to arrest him?

Americans, for all their bullshit about "freedom" (whatever that means at the moment), seem to viscerally understand that "the law" is something that the powerful impose on the weak. And Americans certainly know which of those two roles they intend to play in the world.

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Say it every day until you believe it; then scream it from the rooftops!!! 06.May.2005 19:58

qfg link

Repeat after me: IMPEACHMENT TIME HAS COME! IMEPACHMENT TIME HAS COME! IMPEACHMENT TIME HAS COME! IMPEACHMENT TIME HAS COME!

It will not be easy and anyone who is going to sit on the sidelines will turn out being a cast out devil like him but suddenly an article has the power to make us stop running from them and turn slowly around, with fire in our eyes as we begin with a whisper a beat - IMPEACHMENT TIME HAS COME. Since most stopped praying long ago we can go back to a prayer-like routine and say it with emotion and with longing and with force and with desire and with an anguish that rattles every fiber in our being - IMPEACHMENT TIME HAS COME. Write both of your congressmen and senators and explain how its going to happen: if they do, they may survive but if they don't we will drag their sorry asses tthrough the mud much as we will do with him and end up impeaching them to; tell them to act well because IMPEACHMENT ITME HAS COME! Use your imagination to help to make it happen, let's get the grounswell going!!!!

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this is like agitating to get bush 06.May.2005 21:41

to spontaneously resign link

As long as the republicans are in control of Congress, I don't see how we have the leverage to make this happen.

People who live in Republican districts can certainly harrass their reps. Good luck.

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oh i get it 06.May.2005 21:58

duh link

a democratic congress could impeach bush in 2007 ... thus this could be campaign issue

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Sorry, We didn't get that memo. 07.May.2005 01:01

Corporate Media Watcher link

I didn't see anything at all about any leaked "memo" on the "Newstainment" we get here in the ol' US of A. Impeach who now??? Did that "SLICK" Willy get another BJ? We got much more important things going on like this runaway bride and have you heard about this new casino in Las Vegas? My stars! And how about that Michael Jackson trial, huh? That Jacko sure is Wacko! Whoa, Britney Spears may be preggers and some casino payed 5K for the stick she pissed on. Outrageous! How about those "Activist" Sea Lions eating all the Salmon this year. Ain't that some crazy shit. Well, I better get back to watching TV. I don't want to miss anything important!

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Keep Up The Pressure For Impeachment 07.May.2005 09:38

Anarchy-nonymous link

Vietnam would not have ended had the American people not put more and more pressure on the government. Keep writing the press, the politicians, blog spots, letters, etc. Most of all, just keep telling people you know. Gee, Average Joe, what do you think about that that memo that just got released showing Bush fixed WMD intelligence? If there's a good thing to the level of censorship taking place these days, it's that more and more people who used to believe the news are beginning to realize it's just propaganda. That's a good thing. One reason govt. propaganda continues to work in the US is because it was never so controlled that people, like those in the old Soviet Union, just assume it's all lies.

At some point the Republican Party and the System itself will see Bush as a such a threat to their own credibility that not to let him go will do permanent harm to their order of things. So sustained pressure is essential.

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Impeach the traitors 07.May.2005 15:44

yes yes link

Point out who is controlling GW Bush and the more public this attention gets the more likely they are to dump Bush to deflect the heat off of them.

Who is behind the Franklin spying scandel? Who is financing and driving the agenda of AIPAC?

GW Bush does not control The British government any more than he controls Israel.

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WHY 08.May.2005 17:23

XY link

i talked with a reporter in oregon today. they had heard nothing of this major newstory. what the hell is going on? mind control?

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Your right! 08.May.2005 23:28

Messenger link

We must KEEP THE PRESSURE ON!

Even if it takes months or years. Since we did not do the

Ukrain thing of physically keeping the bush administration

out of office.....we must now keep steady pressure on.

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