Installment Three. The Prosecution of George W. Bush for MurderAll analysis is based on Vincent Bugliosi’s The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder,Possible Charges: Murder in the first and second degree and conspiracy to commit murder. (We’ll only look at the Murder One charge)
Jurisdiction: The preferable venue to charge Bush with murder is in the nation’s capital with the prosecutor being the Atty. Gen. However, any state atty. Gen. (or any district attorney in any county of any state) could bring murder charges against Bush for any soldiers from that state or county who lost their lives fighting Bush’s war (every state is in play).
The Charge of Murder: The unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00001111----000-.htmlThe act of killing of a human being by Bush was his ordering his military to invade Iraq with American soldiers, 4000 of whom have died b/c of the war.
The ‘malice aforethought’ is a term of art denoting if the act was performed with the concurrent wrongful state of mind, i.e., intentional, fraudulent, malicious, etc. The necessary intent would be shown if Bush either intended to kill the soldiers by ordering the war or he started the war with reckless and wanton disregard for the consequences and indifference to human life without any lawful excuse or justification. A lawful self-defense of the US from an imminent Iraq attack would negate a valid murder charge.
Analysis: The act is a foregone conclusion. The invasion ordered by Bush and the resulting deaths are matter of history. It becomes a ‘wrongful act’ if Bush ordered the attack with malice aforethought without any lawful excuse. The issues at hand are whether Bush had ‘malice aforethought’ when he ordered the invasion and whether he acted in Self-defense of the US.
Bush absolutely knew that soldiers would die in his war. Unless Bush intended to have a war without any casualties, which is nonsensical on its face, he did in fact, specifically intend to have American soldiers killed.
We have the wrongful act and the wrongful state of mind for a valid murder charge to proceed.
Bush’s Defense: The invasion he ordered was an act of lawful self defense from an imminent Iraqi attack of the US. If Bush either lied when he said Hussein’s alleged WMDs made him an imminent threat to the security of this country or lied when he led Americans to believe that Hussein was involved with 9/11 then his act of ordering the invasion would not be the conduct of a person acting in self defense.
LIE #1. Was Hussein an imminent threat to the USA? No. Bush lied to Congress and the American people when he made that claim so that he could get their support for the invasion of Iraq.
Evidence: 1. Iraq was wasted by the Desert Storm, US sanctions, & Weapons Inspections. 10-15-2001 Colin Powell said, “Iraq is Iraq, a wasted society for 10 years. They’re sad. They’re contained…” Proof of Iraq’s decrepit state was shown in the fact that Iraq fell to Coalition Forces in three weeks.
2. It was Bush that first posited the idea that Iraq was an imminent threat: Iraq could “act on any given day”; that “before the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this danger must be removed”; “Some ask how urgent this danger is to America. The danger is already significant and it only grows worse with time.”; Iraq constituted “a threat of unique urgency”; “Iraq could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as forty-five minutes.” Bush said no less than six times at a press conference on March 6, 2003 that “Saddam is a threat to our Nation” and “Saddam and his weapons are a direct threat to this country.”; “The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now.”
Talk about hyperbole.
3. Bush stopped pursuing Osama Bin Laden to concentrate on Hussein. The president abandoned the pursuit of OBL—the one man most responsible for the 3000 deaths on 9/11, the one he promised to bring back “dead or alive”. That is circumstantial evidence that his passion for invading Iraq was so strong that he would be much more likely to lie to the American people about Hussein being an imminent threat to the US.
4. October 7, 2002 Bush addressed the nation and said that Hussein was “a great danger to our nation”, either by using “unmanned aerial vehicles” with “chemical or biological” payloads “for missions targeting the US” or by providing these weapons to a “terrorist groups or individual terrorists to attack us.”
The day after the speech, George Tenet declassified a letter, signed by John McLaughlin, (deputy director of the CIA) which stated that Iraq was not an imminent threat to the security of the country and would not be unless the US attacked Iraq. That letter predated Bush’s speech by a matter of hours. Since the CIA is an agency of the Executive Branch and the director reports only to the president, it is unthinkable that Bush did not know the contents of the letter stating Iraq was no imminent threat to the US.
Also, the letter simply corroborated the same finding in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate issued by the CIA to Bush on 10-1-2002. The CIA did not consider Hussein an imminent threat.
Bush said, “I’ll be making up my mind (to invade Iraq) based on the latest intelligence.”
When Bush told the nation on 10-7 that Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of the country, he was telling millions of Americans the exact opposite of what his own CIA was telling him. Bush had his minions repeat lies like these in Congressional Briefings.
On 10-4-2002, Bush issued a White Paper RESTATING the information in the 10-01-2002 NIE changing the language to make mere opinions into rock solid facts and to add words showing the US homeland was a target. That’s big-time deception.
Space limitations restrict me from showing all the evidence. But this should be enough to show Bush lied about Iraq’s imminent threat to us.
LIE 2. Was Iraq in league with Al Qaeda? No. Prior to the invasion, Bush and his people claimed through innuendo and implication that Hussein/Iraq was allies with Al Qaeda.
Evidence: 9-20-2001: Bush tells Congress and America “Americans are asking: ‘Who attacked our country?’ The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as Al Qaeda.” Not one word about Hussein and Iraq.
By 2003 about 70% of Americans believed that Iraq/Hussein was behind the attacks of 9/11. A concerted effort to tie Hussein to 9/11 was enacted by the Bush administration. In August of 2006, Bush finally admitted that there was “no evidence” of Hussein being involved with planning/executing the 9/11 attacks. In September of 2006, an amazing 43% of the US people still believed Hussein/Iraq attacked us. A poll of US soldiers in June of 2006 showed that 90% believed Hussein/Iraq was behind 9/11.
Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, studied Bush’s speeches and concluded: “Clearly, he’s using language to imply a connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11. There is specific manipulation of language here to imply a connection,” and that in Iraq “we have gone to war with the terrorists who attacked us.”
Bush’s own words condemn him: “I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack on America.” (March 20, 2006). Bush’s admission that there was no evidence connecting Hussein with 9/11 proves beyond all doubt that every time he suggested thereafter that Hussein was involved, he was deliberately lying to the American people to gain their support for …the war.
More instances: The “Mission Accomplished” speech: “With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the US. And war is what they got.”
2004 State of the Union: “After the chaos and carnage of September 11…the terrorists declared war on the US and war is what they got”
July 4, 2004: The wars we are fighting [Iraq & Afghanistan] came to our shores on September 11…”
02-24-2006: “We’re taking the fight to those that attacked us.”
There’s only one way to interpret those words. Mr. Bush lied about the Hussein/9/11 connection.
Conclusion: It is shown beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Bush ordered the attack of Iraq causing the deaths of over 4000 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis. He did so without any legal justification. He should be found guilty of murder.
Next, Installment Four: Mr. Bush on the Stand.
