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A Firm Basis for Impeachment
(Robert Scheer, AlterNet, July 18, 2003)
Does 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. . . . 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. . . . For her part, Rice has tried to fend off controversy by claiming ignorance. . . . 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. . . . 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.

posted by LoZo 3:01 PM