Book Claims Bush Ordered CIA To Forge Letter to Make Case for Iraq Invasion

The Bush adminstration lied the United States into an invasion and occupation of Iraq.  There were no WMD, no drones capable of reaching the US, no biological weapons, no connection to bin Laden and al-Qaeda while Chalabi and the Iraq National Congress were promoted and aided by the Bushites and the organization's PR and lies invented and marketed by American lobbyists; and the list goes on and on.
 
Now that these lies have cost the US almost a trillion dollars, over 4,000 dead soldiers, five years and counting in the Iraq quagmire, the destruction of Iraq, hundreds of thousands Iraqis killed, a million plus refugees and other horrible consequences, even more evidence is filtering out that this administration committed impeachable offenses associated with the pre-invasion of Iraq.
 
Jason Leopold writes at The Public Record: "An explosive new book by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist alleges President George W. Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to create a forged document showing a link between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda to create a "false pretense" for war.
 
" 'The White House had concocted a fake letter from [the director of the Iraqi intelligence service] to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,'reporter Ron Suskind writes in his new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. 'It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq “ thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President's Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.'

"Furthermore, Suskind alleges that the Bush administration knew Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction nor was the country an imminent threat, which is what the March 2003 invasion was predicated on.
 
"The director of the Iraqi intelligence service informed the White House that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq “intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion."

"They secretly resettled [the intelligence official] in Jordan, paid him $5 million “which one could argue was hush money “and then used his captive status to help deceive the world about one of the era's most crushing truths: that America had gone to war under false pretenses,"Suskind writes says.

"Suskind, who won Pulitzer Prize during his tenure as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, writes in his new book that the plan to use the CIA to create a bogus link between Iraq and al-Qaeda appears to be in direct violation of a statute that prohibits the CIA from conducting cover operations “intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies or media."

"'It is not the sort of offense, such as assault or burglary, that carries specific penalties, for example, a fine or jail time,'  Suskind writes. 'It is much broader than that. It pertains to the White House's knowingly misusing an arm of government, the sort of thing generally taken up in impeachment proceedings.'

"The allegations would appear to back up claims made by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who says Congress has plenty of evidence that Bush deserves impeachment for misleading the nation into war in Iraq, authorizing torture and other grave crimes, and violating the Constitution “and it is now time to act."

"In Suskind's 2004 book, The Price of Loyalty, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda at the first National Security Council There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq’s oil fields would be carved up.

O'Neill said even at that early date, the message from Bush was "find a way to do this," according to O'Neill, a critic of the Iraq invasion who was forced out of his job in December 2002.

"'From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,' O'Neill told Suskind, adding that going after Saddam Hussein was a priority 10 days after the Bush's inauguration and eight months before Sept. 11. As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council.

" 'From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,' Suskind said. 'Day one, these things were laid and sealed.'

Well, what do you say, Nancy?  Is impeachment still off the table?

Posted by Kaz at 8/5/2008 3:07 PM
Categories: Bush, Iraq
 

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