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From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
June
16, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Children of Death
June
14 / 15, 2003
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence
Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/12
June
11, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Attack of the Hog Killers: Why the
Generals Hate the A-10
Elaine
Cassel
Meet Michael Chertoff: Ashcroft's
Top Gremlin
David Lindorff
The Republican Drive to Eliminate Overtime Pay
Tom
Gorman
Greens, the Antiwar Movement and 2004
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia: The Most Dangerous Place
on Earth for Trade Unionists
Nnimo
Bassey and Lawrence Bohlen
Bush Must Stop Telling Us What to
Eat!
Julie Hilden
Spike Lee v. Spike TV
CounterPunch
Wire
Blair Bros. Change Jobs!
Eric
Hobsbawm
The Empire Expands, Wider and Still
Wider
Steve
Perry
DHS: As Big
a Planning Snafu as Iraq?
June
10, 2003
Benjamin
Shepard
A Season in the Anti-War Movement
Chris
Floyd
Bush Family Lies About Iraq and Nazi
Germany
Wayne
Madsen
Weaponsgate
Jason Leopold
Powell's Denials Ring Hollow
Richard
Lichtman
Whining, Whimpering Leftists Confront the Logic of American World
Domination
Ray
Close
A CIA Analyst on Why the Lies About
WMD Matter
Hammond
Guthrie
Banking on Saddam?
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/10
June
9, 2003
Alex
Coolman
Male Rape in US Prisons
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft is Coming!
Lee
Sustar
Is Iran Next?
Agustin
Velloso
Equatorial Guinea: Few Rich, Many
Poor
Gila
Svirsky
Some Lives Are Worth Less Than Others
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Human Worth in Bush's America
Michael
S. Ladah
A True Liberation
Ishmael Reed
Iraqi Slaughter, Mayhem and Plunder
Steve
Perry
How to Beat Bush, part 1
June
7 / 8, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Terrible Truth
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Critical: Bush's War on Endangered Species
Joanne
Mariner
Ashcrofts Sides with Torturers
Steven
Sherman
A Different Theory of Everything
Ron Jacobs
Sports, Politics and the 60s
M.
Shahid Alam
Pauperizing the Periphery
Amelia
Peltz
If This is the Road, I'd Rather be Lost
Shelton
Hull
Another Powell, Another Capitulation
Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Deterrence and North Korea
Ben
Tripp
A Fish Story
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Where is the Outrage?
Robin
Philpot
Congo Distortions
Julie Hilden
Murder and the Matrix
Laura
Flanders
An Interview with Isabel Allende
David Lindorff
The Last Byline
Adam
Engel
Talk Dirty Scary Monsters
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Reiss, Guthrie, Albert and Hamod
June
6, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Steve
Perry
Greens and
Moore in 04? No
June
5, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pools of Fire: The Looming Nuclear
Nightmare in the Woods of North Carolina
Imraan
Siddiqi
Ann Coulter's Foul Mouth
Michael
Leon
Clinton, Reno & Waco: Remember What They've Done
Robert
Jensen
Texas Pledge Law Undermines Democracy
Ann Harrison
Rosenthal is Free, But the Fight isn't Over
Paul
Dean
How You Can Be Deliriously Happy in the Age of Bush
Gary Leupp
When Spooks Speak Out
Website
of the Day
Evidence in Black and White?
Hot Stories
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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June
16, 2003
A Threat to Democracy
Bush's
Deceptions About Iraq
By REP. JOHN CONYERS
Speech in the House of Representatives,
June 10, 2003
Mr. Speaker, my service in this House
has often shown me the profound tension between government secrecy
and democratic decision-making. Rarely however, has that tension
been as starkly posed as in the current revelations of divergence
between President Bush's assertions based on "secret information"
about the alleged threat to America posed by Iraq and the actual
assessment of that threat by America's intelligence professionals.
I have seen the American people apparently
deceived into supporting invasion of sovereign nation, in violation
of UN charter and international law, on the basis of what now
appear to be false assurances. The power of the Congress to declare
war was usurped. The consent of the governed was obtained by
manipulation rather than candid persuasion.
Instead of conducting a sustained all-out
war against the genuine terrorists behind 9/11, President Bush
chose to terrorize the American people. The President, Vice President
Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld painted lurid nightmares of al
Qaeda's attacking U.S. cities with insidious anthrax or clouds
of deadly nerve gas. All of this was portrayed as coming courtesy
of Saddam Hussein, unless we destroyed the Iraq regime. They
also wielded the ultimate threat that Iraq would imminently endanger
America and our closest allies with nuclear weapons. Members
of Congress who voiced deep distrust of those claims were privately
briefed with even more vivid descriptions of the deadly threats
that Saddam posed to American security.
In public speech after speech, the President
and his supporting players assured America's anxious citizens
that attacking Iraq was absolutely necessary to prevent the imminent
threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction from harming them
and their loved ones.
In addition, President Bush was determined
to convince the public that Saddam was personally behind, or
at least intimately involved in 9/11. He and Vice President Cheney
repeated that mantra incessantly. No wonder that about half of
the country still believes that Saddam was involved, although
our intelligence community has emphasized that there is no credible
evidence that is true.
The manipulation was massive and malicious.
The motive was simple. The Administration wanted to attack Iraq
for a variety of ideological and geopolitical reasons. But the
President knew that the American people would not willingly risk
shedding the blood of thousands of Americans and Iraqis without
the immediate threat of deadly attack on the United States. As
Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz recently admitted to an
interviewer in an unguarded moment, when the threat of weapons
of mass destruction was chosen as the banner to lead a march
to war, it was chosen for "bureaucratic reasons," not
because the danger was imminent or paramount.
The President and his Cabinet were well
aware that these claims either rested on flimsy projections or
came from sources that most of our Intelligence Community disdained.
The President and his Cabinet knew that in some cases those discredited
sources' assertions were flatly contradicted by the professional
assessments of the intelligence Community experts at CIA, the
Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department, and were
only supported by a rogue special office established under Secretary
Rumsfeld precisely to "find" or reinterpret intelligence
in order to support the Administration's determination to invade
Iraq.
When war came, our own military field
commanders were surprised by the fierce, often deadly, resistance
that our troops faced from Saddam's "militia." We,
and our British allies, were surprised when the Iraqi people
in Basra and elsewhere did not rise up to welcome our troops
with open arms. Most of all, our military commanders, the Congress
and the American people all were surprised when no weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) were found. Now, as each day passes, and
no WMD has been found, that surprise has turned to suspicion,
to concern and finally to outrage at the deception practiced
by the Bush Administration.
In response, President Bush, Vice President
Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, and their spokespersons have offered
one excuse after another. As reporters and whistle-blowers have
exposed the flaws in each excuse, the White House has scrambled
to create another, with the confusing speed of a kaleidoscope's
changing patterns. Law students are taught to plead in the alternative:
"I never borrowed your pot." "Besides, it wasn't
cracked when I returned it." "Anyway, it was not cracked
when I borrowed it in the first place." The Bush Administration
has learned that lesson well:
The Bush White House assures us that
weapons of mass destruction will inevitably be found.
At the same time, the Bush White House
argues that they never really said Iraq had such weapons in 2002,
only that they had programs to develop those weapons.
Finally, the Bush White House argues
that it doesn't matter whether Iraq did or did not have such
weapons posing a threat to the United States, because Saddam
was a repressive ruler and its good that the world is rid of
him.
They cannot succeed with this shell game
because they cannot outrun the truth. There are too many previous
contradictory statements, too many reports leaked by outraged
veteran intelligence analysts, and too great a record of established
facts. The Administration's arrogantly crafted script is unraveling.
President Bush and his courtiers now have learned the wisdom
of the Scottish poet Robert Burns, who warned:
"Oh what a tangled web we weave,
when first we practice to deceive."
Now, the Administration's final refuge
is that the public thinks the war was justified even if no weapons
are found. Obviously, those poll results reflect the American
people's relief that our military's losses, and the loss of Iraqi
civilians, regrettable as they are, have not been even greater.
They reflect understandable revulsion at the horrors of Saddam's
regime. Nevertheless, continued ethnic conflict and violence,
ambushes of American soldiers, political disarray, malnutrition
and disease mount daily in the aftermath of this "easy war."
Also, the Bush White House is forced to acknowledge the re-emergence
of al Qaeda's terrorist threat. So the American people have begun
to focus on how badly it appears that they, and their congressional
representatives, may have been misled by a president anxious
to stampede America into war.
In any event, regardless of the final
tally on the war in Iraq, there is a growing awareness that this
disturbing presidential conduct raises issues that transcend
any particular hostilities in which America might engage. It
raises the most profound constitutional questions. How can the
separation of powers and checks and balances designed to protect
our Republic continue to do, if the Executive can work its will
through falsehood, deception and concealment?
Equally pressing is a determination of
the appropriate remedy, should the Administration's assurances
to Congress and to the electorate prove to have been as knowingly
false [*E1208] as now seems to be the case. In the days ahead,
I shall consult with my colleagues, with legal scholars, political
scientists and historians, in order to weigh the appropriate
actions necessary to prevent this or any future Administration
from usurping the power of Congress and the power of the people
to decide public policy on the basis of accurate knowledge.
An accurately informed public is the
essence of our democracy. It is most essential on the ultimate
question of peace or war. To deceive the Congress and the public
about the facts underlying that momentous decision is to transgress
one of the president's supreme constitutional responsibilities.
I believe the House Committee on the Judiciary should consider
whether this situation has reached that dimension.
That question is especially acute at
this time because President Bush's disturbing doctrine of "preventive
war" means he plans to persuade the Congress and the electorate
that additional "preventive wars" are necessary. Will
that advocacy be based on deception and false statements, too?
The prospect is frightening.
Finally, I note the provocative analysis
on this point recently offered by former Counsel to the President
John Dean, who has carefully analyzed the nature and context
of the President's many assertions about the threats allegedly
posed by Iraq and the constitutional implications should they
prove false upon further examination. It deserves wide dissemination.
Yesterday's Features
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
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