Busheney's High Crimes and Misdemeanors? No Question!

But Vincent Bugliosi says the nation is just moving on to the next paragraph.

Because my time is extremely limited, I missed all in Friday's Judiciary Committee, presided over by the genteel and befuddled Chairman Conyers. I especially wanted to review the Q&A's by Congressman Robert Wexler, and found them at MWC News. IMHO, Wexler deserves the assignment of making the keynote address to this years's Democratic National Convention. I expected Wexler to be exemplary. But the surprise for me was the tumult occasioned by Vincent Bugliosi's incendiary testimony.

All through the hearings Conyers was struggling to keep pro-impeachers in the audience calm and quiet, but the Republicans, looking over his shoulders, were complaining about audible cheers and jeers as well as the signs in front of cameras. But when Vincent Bugliosi read his opening statement, outlining his case that the Justice Department should bring first degree murder charges against the president for illegally invading Iraq, the room erupted. Conyers decided not to boot the boisterous activists from the room, but he did remind the entire audience to refrain from any demonstrations of approval or disapproval of the proceedings.

That seemed to work more or less until fired up the crowd again during Q & A. It went something like this:

Bugliosi:

By taking this nation into war on a lie, all of the killings of American soldiers in Iraq became unlawful killings, and therefore murders.

Cindy Sheehan (in the hearing room audience):

Thank you, Vince!!!

Conyers:

Some members are urging me to take more action than merely reminding our audience to maintain decorum.

Sheehan,

I urge you to take SOME action!

Conyers:

OK then, Sheehan, you're out.

Pandemonium.

I haven't been able to find Bugliosi's statement in HTML, but here's an excerpt from his book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, in which he's more harsh on Busheney's enablers than the dual evil doers themselves.

Perhaps the most amazing thing to me about the belief of many that George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns. Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That's almost too self-evident to state.

But he deserves much more than impeachment. I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That's just common sense.

If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he'd still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.

Let's look at the way some of the leading liberal lights (and, of course, the rest of the entire nation with the exception of those few recommending impeachment) have treated the issue of punishment for Bush's cardinal sins.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote about "the false selling of the Iraq War. We were railroaded into an unnecessary war." Fine, I agree. Now what? Krugman just goes on to the next paragraph. But if Bush falsely railroaded the nation into a war where over 100,000 people died, including 4,000 American soldiers, how can you go on to the next paragraph as if you had been writing that Bush spent the weekend at Camp David with his wife? .... Are there no consequences for committing a crime of colossal proportions?

Al Franken on the David Letterman show said, "Bush lied to us to take us to war" and quickly went on to another subject, as if he was saying "Bush lied to us in his budget."

Senator Edward Kennedy, condemning Bush, said that "Bush's distortions misled Congress in its war vote" and "No President of the United States should employ distortion of truth to take the nation to war." But, Senator Kennedy, if a president does this, as you believe Bush did, then what? ..... why, Senator Kennedy, do you, like everyone else, want to give Bush this complete free ride?

The New York Times, in a June 17, 2004, editorial, said that in selling this nation on the war in Iraq, "the Bush administration convinced a substantial majority of Americans before the war that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to 9/11, . . . inexcusably selling the false Iraq-Al Qaeda claim to Americans." But gentlemen, if this is so, then what? The New York Times didn't say anything, but went on to the next paragraph like everyone else talking about something else.

In a November 15, 2005, editorial, the New York Times said that "the president and his top advisers . . . did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It's obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his terrorist connections." But if it's "obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans" in taking them to a war that tens of thousands of people have paid for with their lives, now what? No punishment? If not, under what theory? Again, you're just going to go on to the next paragraph?

I'm not going to go on to the next unrelated paragraph.

In early December of 2005, a New York Times-CBS nationwide poll showed that the majority of Americans believed Bush "intentionally misled" the nation to promote a war in Iraq. A December 11, 2005, article in the Los Angeles Times, after citing this national poll, went on to say that because so many Americans believed this, it might be difficult for Bush to get the continuing support of Americans for the war. In other words, the fact that most Americans believed Bush had deliberately misled them into war was of no consequence in and of itself. Its only consequence was that it might hurt his efforts to get support for the war thereafter. So the article was reporting on the effect of the poll findings as if it was reporting on the popularity, or lack thereof, of Bush's position on global warming or immigration. Didn't the author of the article know that Bush taking the nation to war on a lie (if such be the case) is the equivalent of saying he is responsible for well over 100,000 deaths? One would never know this by reading the article......

For my money, Vicent Bugliosi was the most profound witnesses heard in Friday's show farce of an impeachment hearing. He's calling Congress into the docket along with Bush and Cheney, et. al. Small wonder that they just want to move on to the next paragraph.