Now that many Fitzgerald observers are expecting a Rove indictment on false statement charges in the upcoming month, I would like to outline the more important indictments that should be on the Fitzgerald docket if he has really grasped the next higher level of the Bush administration's transgressions and criminal conspiracy.
President Bush's false And fraudulent uranium claims in the 2003 State of the Union Speech appear to have violated criminal statutes, 18 U.S.C., Sec. 1001, which prohibits knowingly and willfully making false and fraudulent statements to Congress in documents required by law.
Additionally, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condileeza Rice, and members of the White House Iraq Group working directly under V.P. Cheney, including but not limited to, Stephen Hadley, Andrew Card, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, John Hannah, Karen Hughs, and Ari Fletcher appear to have violated The criminal statute, 18 U.S.C., Sec. 371, which prohibits conspiring to defraud the United States and
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is applicable since the Supreme Court in the case of Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182, 188 (1924) held that to "conspire to defraud the United States means
primarily to cheat the government out of property or money, but it also means to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest."
I keep these paragraphs pasted to my bedpost so I do not loose perspective and miss the forest for the many trees. I've adapted them and the ones below largely from Rep. Maurice Hincheys Sept 2005 letter to Patrict Fitzgerald asking him to expand his investigation to include these charges.
The two uranium claims in the 2003 State of the Union Address and the report to Congress concerning Iraq were false and fraudulent, and are in documents that the White House submitted to Congress. See House Document 108-1 and House Document 108-23. The law required the president to give such reports.
Article II, Section 3 of the constitution requires presidents to give State of the Union Addresses. Section 4 of Public Law 107-243, which is the Congressional resolution authorizing the war against Iraq, requires the president to give reports to Congress relevant to the war resolution and the president submitted said report on Iraq pursuant to that law. Thus 18 U.S.C., Sec. 1001 was evidently violated.
Senior Administration officials arguably violated Section 371 because their uranium claims had the effect of obstructing or interfering with the function of Congress to reconsider its Iraq war resolution and to allow further time for U.N. weapons inspections.
If the whole truth had been told, Congress may well have withdrawn the war resolution or delayed the start of the war to allow further U.N. weapons inspections, which would have shown what we now know; that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and had not sought the uranium.
Little doubt exists now that the Bush Administrations 2003 SOTU claims were false. But to constitute an impeachable criminal violation and indictable criminal conspiracy we must prove Bush et. al. made these statements willfully, knowingly, and with an intent to decieve. Can we prove this intent?
Yes, I believe we can and sufficient evidence already exists in the public record to do so. Many writers here like emptywheel, Sherlock Google, levermg, myself, and many others have put the evidence before us here and will do so againt.
But it will only count if it is presented under oath under the congressional record. Prosecutor Fitgerald appears to have the sufficient evidence on record before the grand jury. But the question remains, does he accepts that taking indictments to this level is within the scope of his investigation.
My opinion is that he has and will astonish us with long string of now unexpected indictments of many of the WHIGs. But I should acknowledge that I made that prediction several times last November which proved to be premature if not overoptimistic. But I believe my error was of underestimating the delay, not misanalyzing the evidence. Time will tell. But time is running out. It will be even more tragic if further delays leave these scounderals in office and only indict them after their term is complete.
So what else can we do than wait and pray for Fitzgerald to steps up to the plate on his higher level responsibilities in a more timely manner?
The Disgrace of the The US Senate Intelligence Committee's Refusal To Investigate the Phase 2 Political Dimension of Intelligence Failure
How much longer can the GOP Senators on the Intelligence Oversight Committee delay the long promised and appropriate public hearings? How much longer can the Democratic maintain credibility by quitely going on along with these excessive and unwarranted delays? (Whatever became of Harry Reid's little November tantrum?)
Our nation's credibility in the International community is in tatters. For example,
Respected WMD investigator Han Blix says "Nigergate demonstrates the politicization of intelligence. We've been told that on the eve of the war, the western information services told the national governments what those governments wanted to hear," with the full knowledge that this information was false."
The Senate Intelligence Committee refuses to hold the required and frequently promised public hearings of the political dimension of the intelligence failure because the evidence shows that that the real scandal is not about an intelligence failure, but rather was primarily about an illegal politically motivated subversion of the US Constitutionally required oversight of the Executive Branch by President Bush, V.P. Cheney and all the White House Iraq Group.
This White House Iraq Group,, did knowingly and intentionally engage in a two year conspiracy to manipulate, cherry pick, and distort intelligence presented to the US Congress related to the justification for the War in Iraq thereby subverting ability of Congress to engage in their proper oversight function and directly violate two criminal statutes, 18 U.S.C., Sec. 1001 and 18 U.S.C., Sec. 371. The WHIG included but was not limited to Condilezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Andrew Card, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby, John Hannah, Donald Rumsfeld, and Ari Fletcher
Not only did the Administration make false and fraudulent claims in January 2003 that Iraq had sought uranium for a nuclear weapon, which the Administration offered as one of the key grounds to justify the war against Iraq. But the administration continued forth on the execution of the war even after March 7th, 2003, the day El Baradei declared that the Italian documents concerning yellowcake were false, the war had not yet started. It still could have been stopped.
El Baradei has since received the Noble Prize for this work. America and our Congress remains disgraced by contining to allow a president who is proven to have lied and his criminal adminstration co-conspirators to remain in office unchallanged.
The failure of congressman to uphold their oaths of office to uphold and protect the constution of the US from all threats domestic and foreign represents a further disgrace and complicity of being accesaries after the fact in this conspiracy and it's subsequant coverup. While it has proven possible to fool the public and media on a day to day basis, the rest of the world and history is proving to be a much harsher judge.
The administration did not stop the initiation of its Iraq war plans after El Baredei's March 7, 2003 debunking of the false Niger documents, because the Bush administration had been fully aware that the Niger yellowcake documents were fraudulent for more than a year.
This was never an issue of an intelligence failure. This scandal and subversion of the US constitution and violation of International law, the UN charters, and numerous international treaties was done as part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy by President Bush, V.P. Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condileeza Rice, and all the member of the White House Iraq Group.
These are the same political manipulations that the US Senate Intelligence Committee refuses to investigate in the long blocked and suppressed Phase II of the role of political manipulation and interference of the intelligence process. The facts show that the Nigergate Yellowcake documents were deliberate, illegal, and malicious forgeries.
Who is responsible for this and what was their motivation for fabricating documents that were used to lead us into war?
The evidence increasingly points to members of the Bush Adminstrations extensive network of Neocon coconspirators. While no public evidence yet indicts the Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Scooter Libber, Stephen Hadley, Larry Franklin, Micheel Leeden link, experts have concluded that these forgeries were too crude to have been done by any national intelligence groups, or for financial motivations.
While no publically available evidence yet shows that White House officials directly ordered or requested the production of the forgeries, the most plausible hypothesis, at this time, is that neocon former black bag intelligence operatives familiar with Cheney's iron fisted demands that the CIA produce evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq through Franklin and Leeden may have taken the initiative and acted on their own in an attempt to ingratiated themselves to the Bush-Rove-Cheney neocon network and provide a rational for our country to invade Iraq, which they all "patriotically" believed was the best path anyway for both the US, Israel and global energy security.
But no matter how the forgeries orgininated, little doubt remains, that the entire WHIG and Neocon network including Dick Cheney and Condilieeza Rice eagerly picked up these forgier and exploited them to maximum effect despite frequent and repeated warning from the CIA and other US intelligence agencies that they were obvious and poor forgeries.
And the many revisions, and contorted reversals of the exact wordings of these claims in Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech prove beyond any reasonable doubt, that all administration members including Bush settled on the exact 16 words refering to the British discovery of the Niger Uranium claims because they all knew full well our own intelligence agencies had determined these Niger uranium claims were false.
Therefore we have sufficient evidence and proof that President Bush et. al. knowing and willfully changed the text of the 2003 SOTU speech to Congress which mets all the criteria to be a violations of Criminal Statues 18 U.S.C Section 1001 and Section 371.
There is much additional evidence and proof that can be added during hearings and testomony, but this is more than sufficient to qualify for starting impeachment proceeding which are the metaphorical equivalent of an indictment. Remember, the final impeachment charges Clinton were totally unrelated to the Whitewater charges which started the process.
That House Subcommittee Chairments Henry Hyde and Tom Davis have suppressed 13 consective motions from Representative Maurice Hinchey and Henry Waxman to subpoena the many drafts of the 2003 SOTU speech involves Congress in this suppression of evidence and the truth.
A Call To Action: Now Is the Time For All Good People To Come To the Aid of Our Country
The most common protest at this point of these discussions is that with a GOP dominated House and Senate, no congressional actions is possible or worth pursuing.
Surely, the GOP will continue to do everything they can to squash these efforts, but this stonewalling, instransigence, and suppression should be made visable as an extension of the orginal conspiracy and highlighted as perhaps the primary election issue of 2006 and 2008: Integrity of Goverment and Political Parties.
Impeachment hearings formally begin when the House Judiciary Committee refers charges to the full House, where a majority vote is required to refer the charges to the full Senate for the actual trail. While Bush and Cheney have committed many outragious and infuriating offenses, which if any rise to the threshold required to acheive such a referal? It comes down to a majority vote. Given a GOP majority on both the House Judicary Committee as well as the full House many assume this will only be possible if we win back a house majority in November of 2006.
This may be true, but it is also possible that we will find a transgression and smoking gun so compelling that combined with a loud chorus of public outrage, several Republicans will be willing to cross over and join Democrats in this vote. We've already been amazingly close to acheiving this. When Jim Leach (R) crossed over and helped Rep Hinchey block Chairmen Hydes attempt to quash his Articles of Inquiry Motion last fall, it took the GOP a week to despartely re-leash their members to kill it off. All we need is just a couple more Republican cross overs on the HJC. Let's focus on this.
And Democrats should remember that everytime the GOP committee head squash and suppress motions and calls for impeachments the public relations impact will acheive a good deal of the value in terms of descrediting Bush, the Neocons, and restoring the credibility of the rule of law and expectation of honesty in government.
But now the steady stream of additional charges, that are no doubt even more serious, is having the perverse affect of causing even more unneccesary delay!
The Bush Administration's expert distraction, media manipulation, smoke puffing, and changing the subject seem to have confused the public, democratic leaders, and all of us. We seem to be caught in endless delays, due to both GOP stonewalling and obstructions, as well as a freeding frenzy from the seemly never-ending stream of new transgressions including domestic espionage, violations of international law, support for torture and other offenses almost shamefully inimaginable.
These newly reported transgression should all be investegated, but not allowed to cause further delay on congressional hearings as well as the appointment of a US Special Prosecutor to investigate the charges above which are already more than sufficient to meet the threshhold for imeachment.
The unneccesary and prolonged delays in addressing these criminal violations can not solely be blamed on the intransigence of the GOP dominated House and Senate Committees. All Democrats, Independents, and Republicans of conscionce and patriotism are capable of making more agreesive and vigorous demands than we have so far, for proper hearings and justice to remedy the tremendous damage these transgressions against our constitution and international law are doing.
While I remain hopeful about the Conyer's resolutions, the domestic spying and long-promised Phase 2 Intelligence hearings, I continue to believe our best opportunity to restore integrity and justice to the White House rests on the immediate escalation of our demands for an immediate confrontation of this evidence and remedy in every legal and peaceful way we can. This can include, but not be limited to a formal expansion of the investigation by Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald or another so appointed, Congressional Hearings, and an immediate Senate Democratic Investigative Sub-Committee as promised by Jay Rockefellor and composed of five Democrats with approval from the sub-committee chair (Democrat.) No GOP cooperation is neccessary here to have sub-poena power or to get this evidence on the congressional record.
In the 2003 SOTU case, the law is undeniable and non-controversial. Overwhelming evidence is available or obtainable by subpoena. We merely need to get this evidence on the congressional record. Many of the ways to do this require no GOP cooperation.
For example, Senator Jay Rockefeller reminded us in his November strategy letter, that any five Senators can demand an investigative committee with subpoena powers, with the approval of a vice-committee chairmen (a Democrat in all cases).
It's well past time to do this.
Also, please do not write off all Republicans as lacking a sufficient sense of integrity, patriatism, respect and love for our constitution. In the Richard Nixon impeachment, it was the senior members of the Republican party who finally made the somber trip to the White House to tell Nixon it was time for him to go.
So the lesson for Democrats, Independents, and Republicans of good consciounce is to proceed full speed ahead and do the right thing. Let the vote counts take care of themselves.
I believe, that in the grand, noble, and patriotic traditions of our country, the most loyal Rebublicans will intiate the final decisive actions to terminate this discraceful and dangerious Bush administration. And my friends who are these decisive loyal Republicans, the time has come. You must act now to prevent even further damage to our country and our precarious world situation. The eyes of the world are watching and waiting for the truly American democratic and constitutional response. You all know what must be done to protect the integrity and noble heritage of our nation.
Sorry for the excessive length and repetition. I am trying hard to boil all the Bush Administration's wrong doings into easily digestable sound byte still sufficiently substantive to be actionable.
Because I believe the time for action is now. Let me thank anyone in advance who will pick up any of these threads and repackage them in more effective communictions and action steps.
Cheers.