How to Impeach Bush

When the US Congress abdicated its warmaking powers to the White House (the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002), it retained as a meagre figleaf for its institutional nakedness the requirement that the President issue a Determination stating why we were going to war.

That determination was duly issued on March 19, with an attached report.

Think of it as the stained blue dress, impregnated with the unique, unmistakable, and unremovable DNA of the Bush campaign of deception.

Think of it also as a how-to manual for impeaching George Bush.

The determination had to state that force was against Iraq justified by 1) the national security of the United States and other countries against Iraq’s development and use of WMDs 2) and in order to compel Iraq’s compliance with UN resolutions. In addition, the president was supposed to satisfy Congress that Iraq adventure was consistent with the international “War on Terror”, and not a distraction.

The report stated grandiosely that the US had not only the authority but “indeed… the duty” to invade Iraq, adding as a lagniappe that the “use of military force to remove the Iraqi regime is therefore not only consistent with, but is a vital part of, the international war on terrorism”. (Report In Connection With Presidential Determination Under Public Law 107-243, 19 March 2003).

The weakness of Bush’s writers for the seductive, intensifying clause may come back to haunt them.

The argument for all three has collapsed.

Key factor is the inability to find WMDs (not WMD programs, Mr. Bush; that argument is irrelevant). No clear and present danger to the US from big, bad Iraq.

And none of the WMDs claims in the Powell report to the UN have proven out.

It looks like Iraq was complying with the UN, but the Bush administration simply refused to acknowledge it.

With the absence of WMDs, Bush can’t claim he was just carrying the UN load in enforcing its resolutions against Iraq in breach. Now the burden of proof is on him to justify his usurpation of the UN mandate.

As for consistent focus on the war on terror, the Bush administration’s citation of the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed inadvertently reveals the weakness of the terror connection in the case of Iraq.

Leaving aside the fact that his capture quite possibly occurred in 2002 but was only announced in 2003 to serve up a much-needed success in Bush’s campaign against the al Qaeda boogyman (a suitable topic for investigation in itself, see www.complete911timeline.org/main/essayksmcapture.html), “KS” reputedly stated in his interrogation that al Qaeda had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. Another al Qaeda top honcho in custody, Abu Zubaydah, made the same assertion last year, certainly before the determination report was written. (No links to Saddam, al-Qaeda pair claim, Sidney Morning Herald, June 10, 2003)

No, Bush did not drop the ball on the war on terror. He dropped it and then kicked it aside in his eager pursuit of Saddam Hussein and whatever else we were looking for in oily, dusty Iraq. The result was bombings in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and, the Egyptians tell us, the creation of “thousands of bin-Ladens” out of the rubble of Iraq that previously harbored not terrorists, but the vicious but locally-minded thugs of a police state.

Bush is feeling the heat.

He’s on the hook for an illegal war of choice.

One way out is to claim he was misled by faulty intelligence. In other words, let the CIA take the fall. That’s why George Tenet is now shopping for the most appropriate instrument of self-immolation at Swords ‘R’ Us.

Investigate away and try to pin this one on the CIA. White House and Cheney/Wolfowitz fingerprints are probably all over the intel, and disgruntled spooks are already leaking the news.

The second is to claim that even if the WMD pretext was spurious, the Bush administration was on safe ground by claiming it was enforcing UN resolutions, and 1440 had declared Iraq was in breach. In other words, treat the Determination like a Chinese menu. If a justification from Column A, WMD, doesn’t work, try one from Column B, UN resolutions.

However, the case for UN resolutions is inextricably linked to the WMD assertion. The supposed breach we were responding to defined by Powell in his Feb. 5 presentation — rejected by Iraq — that it had not satisfactorily accounted for its WMDs and was not only misleading the inspectors but engaged in an active WMD program.

If the UN was misled in its deliberations by false US evidence, not only to the Security Council but to UNMOVIC, the issue of whether or not the deception was deliberate may not be relevant — the UN justification is irrevocably tainted in either case.

America’s failure to seek a second UN vote in favor of invasion now becomes a suitable topic not only of speculation but also investigation. Did we avoid a vote because we “wanted to avoid the embarrassment”? Or did we already know that the WMD case was so shaky that a UN vote against force would leave the US without a single viable legal pretext for the war under the Congressional authorization?

That’s the nub, since Bush’s final line of defense will be that it was an honest mistake — that in good faith the Administration took the safest, most conservative take on the mare’s nest of intel it was handed.

And that brings us to the wonderful issue of intent. Did Bush’s desire to remove Saddam predate the intelligence?

I think everyone knows the answer to that one. But proving it takes us down a long and interesting path, by demonstrating the Bush administration was committed to regime change in Iraq before the UN process began.

Delving into George Bush’s statesmanlike utterances on Iraq, we can investigate the provenance and accuracy of statements attributed to him such is March 2002’s “Fuck Saddam — we’re going to take him out”.

And the closest thing to a smoking gun boring old Hans Blix might reveal in the whole Iraq mess might be Congressional testimony along the lines of his interview with El Pais in April 2003:

In a nutshell, a bad-faith effort in order to mislead the world, the UN, Congress, and the American people by selective and deceptive presentation of intelligence data in the service of a pre-existing policy of regime change in Iraq.

Imagine what a partisan, Ken Starr type prosecutor would make of this, with a brief to make the case as damning as possible.

Imagine what a bipartisan investigation would do.

Now consider what the Republican-controlled Congress is planning to do — zip.

The Bush administration wants to repackage the Iraq war as a noble war of choice. But that’s not how they sold it. Billions of dollars and thousands of lives were consumed based upon the determination stating that this was a war of necessity, to protect America and the world from a regime armed with WMDs.

The road to Bush’s impeachment is open. All we need to do is follow it.