Posted on 20-6-2003
Impeachable
Offense
by Geov Parrish, Seattle Weekly, Wednesday 18 June 2003
FINALLY, AND FAR too late, national
media are discovering that the Bush administration's case for
invading Iraq was a combination of willfully gross exaggerations
and flat-out lies.
For weeks, various recently leaked or released documents have
confirmed that there has never been much, if any, evidence in
American and British files that even plausibly pointed to an
Iraqi threat of either nuclear or other banned weapons, or Iraqi
links to Al Qaeda. Intelligence analysts in both governments
did not believe such threats existed.
The new revelations, combined with an utter
lack of post-invasion evidence (weather-balloon trailers notwithstanding)
that such claims were ever true, are an enormous political scandal
in Britain. However, their content merely confirms what opponents
of the proposed invasion claimed since last summer: that most
of the endless variety of Bush assertions "proving"
either Iraqi WMDs or links to Al Qaeda were, on their face,
preposterous.
This wasn't simply an abstract policy debate;
it was a matter of the Bush administration's swearing to Congress,
America, and the world that the threat to U.S. securitythe sole
legal justification for invading, conquering, and occupying
Iraqwas based on evidence that did not, in fact, exist. The
Bush administration made such assertions repeatedly, for more
than half a year, and it continues to do so. Such assertions
are not simply a typically appalling campaign of Bush administration
lies. They are an impeachable offense.
For months, various, mostly liberal and progressive
critics of Bush have been whipping up impeachment calls. Such
calls have been delusional, boiling down, essentially, to the
fact that Bush's critics hate a number of his policies. There
were no pending or existing corruption indictments; no evidence
of criminal wrongdoing; and no conceivable political route by
which the votes for impeachment could be mustered. It was a
nonstarter.
Until now.
SHOULD THE EVIDENCE hold upand it
willthe Bush administration's lies constitute either an unwitting
or witting effort to put American soldiers in harm's way, guaranteeing
the deaths of some. America's military was deployed for reasons
Bush and his entire foreign-policy apparatus either knew or
should have known were false.
They did so to launch a war whose unprovoked
nature was a sharp departure from international law and norms.
Bush claimed the legal authority for his invasion was last October's
congressional vote. On the eve of that vote, in a major speech
aimed at Congress, Bush claimed satellite photos gave irrefutable
evidence that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear-weapons program.
He intoned, mere days after his intelligence agencies put the
date at 2010, that Iraq would be able to use such weapons within
a year. "Facing clear evidence of peril," Bush told
Congress, America, and the world, "we cannot wait for the
final proof that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
Plenty of the administration's own experts
had told the White House this was nonsense. From August to March,
Bush and his team insisted, first, that they had evidence which
actually did not exist. Then they presented evidence that was
either long out-dated or simply invented. In doing so, Bush
and his top officials caused the unnecessary deaths of a lot
of U.S. soldiers.
The outrage thus far is coming from the media
and from the British example. With a few honorable exceptions,
such as Sen. Robert Byrd and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, it is not
coming from congressional Democrats. Given Democratic spinelessness,
no attack on the fitness of George W. Bush and his band of neocon
zealots can take hold without widespread public anger, including
that of independents and at least some Republicans.
The use of duplicity to lead soldiers to
their graves should inspire exactly such outrage. The unprovoked
invasion, conquest, and occupation of Iraq should never have
happened. Instead, the White House claimed that Bush spent several
months agonizing over whether to launch an invasion, one he
had already approved.
BEFORE AND AFTER his secret decision,
his administration's claims were largely false. Bush used those
claims to sacrifice the lives of American soldiersalong with
other coalition soldiers and countless Iraqis, soldier and civilian
alike. And he continues his lies.
Iraq is half the size of South Africa, whose
banned weapons were found instantly when apartheid ended. Iraq
is not, as Bush protests, "a big country"; in two
months, American soldiers have exhausted search possibilities.
Nor have Iraq's weapons fled the country. Or been found. They
have not existed for years. But soldiers died because George
W. Bush said they did.
For this egregious abuse of his oath of office,
he should be impeached.
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