Page 1      HOME    A Short and Incomplete List of President Bush's Dishonesty & Criminality    HOME      Page 1

Beginning With 5 Reasons He & VP Cheney Should Be Impeached & Then Prosecuted

The occupation of Iraq is not a war for freedom – that’s why lies are needed to wage it

The biggest threat to our troops in Iraq has always been dishonest & incompetent White House leadership

1.    President Bush repeatedly lied about Iraq's nuclear threat

     In 10/2/02 Bush warned, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Yet he knew the nuclear evidence was false 6 months earlier. When he wanted to repeat these scare tactics, the CIA refused to support his claims. So he referenced faulty British intelligence instead in his 1/28/03 State of the Union Address, claiming "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Today President Bush has the gall to scapegoat the CIA for his failures.  

2.    President Bush lied about Iraq's other WMDs

Repeatedly using fear to gain support his preplanned war, Bush lied about Iraq's WMD program, selectively quoting General Hussein Kamel – head of Iraq's weapons program who defected in 1995.  Many of the WMD details Sec Powell enumerated to the UN Security Council on 2/5/03 (over a month before Bush's 3/20/03 illegal invasion) were from Gen Kamel's testimony.  But Sec Powell and President Bush failed to mention that the Gen Kamel also said the weapons had been entirely destroyed in 1991. That fact didn't stop Bush from repeatedly making false statements like this one:

"In 1995, after several years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq's military industries defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of killing millions."

Notice the President said the Iraqi regime admitted it "had produced" a stockpile of weapons.  But then he created the lie that it "is ... capable of killing millions" when he knew Gen Kamel had in fact "accounted" for it.  Bush convinced us to invade a country he knew posed no credible threat.  And our unprofessional mainstream media reported the incomplete & misleading propaganda just as the Bush team had packaged it. This war crime has cost over 4300 coalition lives and well over half a million Iraqis lives, not to mention uncountable injured.

3.     President Bush bribes American journalists and Iraqi journalists to promote his propaganda

     As his propaganda machine chokes off the freedom of speech and press here and in Iraq, his lie "I love free speech" reverberates hollowly. And Bush's cadre of military sychophants are reaping the spoils of war.  I suggest you listen instead to the many officers who have resigned or been forced out for givng honest assessments rather than the preordained reports that Bush demands.

4.     President Bush and his cohorts consider torture a tool of their trade (ABC is finally airing the complicity of Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet, and Ashcroft)

     Bush fought McCain's anti-torture bill, then threatened to veto it until he was forced to sign it when the Senate supported it 90 to 9. Unable to challenge unanimous bipartisan support, Bush snuck in a signing statement (as he has done to ignore over 1,100 other laws) preserving his power to have people tortured. No wonder so many US held detainees were, and continue to be, tortured. Bush's system of secret Soviet-style gulags where abductees disappear from sight and justice, are likely chambers of torture given the torture we know occurs in prisons holding thousands of abductees throughout Asfghanistan and Iraq. If that weren't enough, President Bush also sends captives to other countries to be tortured. It is not suprising that much of the rest of the world views Bush like they did Pinochet – a dictator and an assassin.

5.     President Bush, like Nixon, illegally wiretapped US citizens
         The basis for impeaching Nixon is reason enough to impeach Bush, as most Americans agree.

A Zogby poll showed the vast majority of US troops in Iraq felt we should leave before the end of 2006:
          72% (nearly 3/4) wanted us out in 1 year or less (29% of which said pull out immediately, 22% said out within 6 months)

    23% (less than 1/4) said we should stay "as long as it takes." Bush's propaganda was so successful that 90% of the troops at that time still believed the lie that Saddam participated in the 9/11 attacks. Yet, even believing that, 72% of them saw the futility of the occupation, and today we know how correct they were. Yet, 1,700 of them have been killed since that poll was taken because we failed to heed their warning.

 

 

 

The failure of the invasion was predicted since an attack would play right into Osama Bin Laden's hands. Mock posters of Osama as Uncle Sam saying "I Want You To Invade Iraq" were common before the war, dramatizing that a US invasion would create an Al Qaeda recruitment bonanza. In the prophetic words of George Bush senior, "Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different – and perhaps barren – outcome." George W. didn't listen to his father, and Cheney ignored his own advice from 1994. Yet the President and VP continue to escape prosecution.

US military sources say outsiders make up a very small percentage of insurgents, and before the invasion there were no records of suicide attacks in Iraq. So rather than eliminating terrorism, George Bush (through his idiotic policies) has dramatically increased terroris -- as predicted.

 

The cost of President Bush's war in money, suffering, and slaughter (as of 5/13/08)

4,076 US GIs killed (70/month for over 5 years) plus over 12,000 Iraqi security forces and over 300 foreign coalition forces. During that time over 60,000 US GIs have been wounded -- averaging over 500/month (figures that are undercounted since they do not in include the psychologically disabled). Another 145 US soldiers have committed suicide -- the highest suicide rate for GIs since record keeping began -- yet both of these facts are largely ignored.

600,000 to over 1,000,000 estimated Iraqi deaths, the vast majority killed in US raids -- making Bush's war the deadliest international conflict of the 21st century. Since the surge of 2007, civilians have been dying at over 10,000 a month – far worse than 25 years of Saddam's rule & amounting to more than three 9/11s every month.

Over a million excess post-invastion deaths is not a war on terror – it is terrorism. The number of wounded Iraqis is undoubtedly in the millions. Although there are over 2 million Iraqi refugees and an additional 2.5 million homeless Iraqis in Iraq, the US announced plans to accept a meaningless 59 refugees, to eventually reach only 7000. Meanwhile, many female Iraqi refugees in Syria have turned to prostitution to survive. Since our occupation began, women's rights in Iraq have plummeted, but this too is largely ignored by mass media. Since the US invaded, the lives of Iraqi women have never been so threatened. The homeless Iraqi children are now prey to extremists, creating a ticking time bomb.

Cost of the Iraq war exceeds $600 billion -- ranking 2nd only to WWII and 10x the cost predicted by the Bush Administration. Yet the cost will more than quadrupal. Imagine what could be done with that money. Instead, Geore Bush mortgages our children's future while war profiteers get richer and international violence increases. As they profit from the carnage (and will continue to for decades if we don't stop them) our troops are dying for a president so removed from reality that he imagines war to be "romantic" and said with false bravado "Bring 'em on" to any who wished to harm our troops. Since that statement, 3,790 US troops lost their lives in Iraq and untold numbers of civilians. The romance of his fantasy of war might fade if his daughters were fighting in Iraq.

 

A select few of the endless litany of White House lies

• "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building" said candidate Bush in 2000.
• "Hopefully we can do this without any military action" said Bush to Congress 2 months after the Downing Street Memo affirmed he'd already decided to attack Iraq. Then he lied about it again in retrospect.
• Iraq poses an immanent threat to the US which Bush's people later claim they never said that.
• Bush's 3/18/03 letter to Congressional leaders argued he could attack Iraq because of its ties to 9/11, but 6 months after the invasion he admitted "we have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved..."
• Bush claimed Saddam was working with Al Qaida in his 1/28/03 State of the Union, repeated 3/17/03, etc.  But the Senate Intelligence report showed that too was a lie.
• "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon" said then deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz on 3/27/03. He has since been removed from the World Bank presidency for corruption.
• "For those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."  In fact, only trailers were found which did not contain, nor had they ever produced, weapons.
• The invasion and occupation that was ostensibly to stop terrorism has in fact spawned terrorism, as predicted.
• Bush's "Mission accomplished" celebration on May 2nd, 2003, provided 2 lies: 1) it wasn't accomplished, and 2) Bush claimed the USS Abraham Lincoln celebration was put on by the crew, but he later had to admit it was orchestrated entirely by his own PR team -- propaganda charged to us taxpayers.
• "I love freedom of speech" says the leader of the most secretive and dishonest White House since Nixon.
• "They hate our freedoms" is a great propagandist's sound-bite for the simple-minded, but it is a lie.  What they hate is our control.
• "We're a peaceful nation." Thanks to President Bush, this too is a lie.
•  "There are some who feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring'm on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."  Like his broken English and intellect, Bush's honesty is broken as well.
• "We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." The death count since that spectacular lie made on July 3rd, 2003, is more than 4,300 coalition troops, 12,000 Iraqi security forces, and more than half a million Iraqi civilians, as well as the discplacement of over 4.5 million Iraqis from their homes.
  

 

Now who do you think hates your freedom? President Bush lies openly and chronically because few will risk challenging him publicly.  Whenever his crimes and unethical procedures are revealed (for example, lies about WMDs, Iraq's phony nuclear program, warrantless spying on citizens, secret Soviet-style gulags, leaked classified info for political gain), the White House reactions are predictable – deny, cover up, attack the whistle-blower, then find a fall-guy. Admissions only come when Bush is forced to make them, and then he claims it was necessary and legal. Like Joseph McCarthy, he attacks the whistleblowers and critics, claiming they support terrorists. Just as in McCarthy's day, few Congressional representatives have the guts and moral will to challenge him (their fear of failing to be reelected is greater than their love for their country). Major media outlets avoid news critical of Bush's policies for fear of losing sponsors. And too many of us citizens don't challenge him because we fear our neighbors will call us un-American and claim we don't support our troops. But in this war, the biggest threats to our troops are the dishonest and immoral White House leadership and the complacent and univolved citizenry.

So demand that your senators and representatives end Bush's war that has killed more of our own GIs than were killed on 9/11 & over 10,000 civilians a month (over three 9/11s a month!). How many lives have been wasted because we left impeachment "off the table" -- and how many more will die if we leave it off? Will you allow your representatives to sit back while the Bush Cabal invades Iran? Leaving war criminals in power is America's continuing failure.

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