Palast: Impeachment time: The facts were fixed

[Carolab]

IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED."
Special to BuzzFlash
Thursday, May 5, 2005
By Greg Palast

Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written all over
it.

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



============================================
If you would like to have your e-mail address removed from this mailing list.
Cut and paste the following URL into your browser address bar. This will
automatically remove from the mailing list and you will receive no further
mailings.
http://www.gregpalast.com/emailremove.cfm?id=39090