Impeachment evidence is laid out, but ...

By DOLPH HONICKER

“F*** Saddam. We’re taking him out .“

--March 2002, President George W. Bush poking his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice

A foundation for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney has been laid with a strong structure in place. All that’s needed is for courageous congressional carpenters to hammer in the final nails.

An over abundance of impeachable evidence can be found in George W. Bush versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying.

But this 198-page book with 8 and a half pages of endnotes, compiled by the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff with an introduction by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson and a foreword by Rep. John Conyers Jr., will go nowhere.

In a moment, I’ll tell you why.

Let’s go back to Jan. 26, 1998 when the neo-conservative group Project for the New American Century called on President Clinton for “the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.” The neocons, urged the U.S. to go to war alone, denigrating the United Nations. It was signed by 18 people -- ten of them, including Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, became members of the Bush administration.

If you suspected that oil lay at the bottom of it all, you guessed correctly.

In February 2001, White House officials consulted with outsiders on possible replacements for Saddam and means to exploit his oil fields. In a memo titled “Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,” troop requirements, war crimes tribunals and “apportioning Iraq’s oil wealth” are discussed.”

A month later, the Pentagon circulated a document titled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,” listing 30 countries with interests in Iraq’s oil fields.

Moving on, we come to Bush’s first overt violation of the Constitution.

“By the end of July (2002), Bush had approved some 30 projects that would eventually cost $700 million,” documents show, while “. . . Congress, which is supposed to control the purse strings, had no real knowledge or involvement, had not even been notified that the Pentagon wanted to reprogram money” to Iraq that had been appropriated for Afghanistan.

The Downing Street Minutes prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair show that while Bush was gung-ho for war, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin.”

And there was no morning after pill. Or, as British National Security Adviser David Manning put it: “what happens on the morning after?”

Since there was no legal reason for a preemptive invasion of Iraq, Wolfowitz said, “For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction.”

Andrew Card, who was then White House chief of staff, commenting in August 2002 on the formation of the White House Iraq Group (WHG) to market the war, said: “From a marketing point of view . . . you don’t introduce new products in August. Blair went along, telling Parliament, “The optimal times to start action are in the spring.”

The war began March 30, 2003, the first day of spring.

Ah, those damned French!

Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, President Jacques top adviser, warned Rice in January 2003 that unrest would no doubt erupt among Iraq’s many ethnic group with increased terror. Rice pooh-poohed his every objection.

How low would the administration sink to launch a misguided war?

* It wiretapped phone calls and e-mails of U.N. Security Council members, threatening “unpleasant economic consequences of standing up to the U.S.”

* It exposed the identity of a CIA undercover agent, Valarie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Wilson (the I. Scooter Libby trial, an offshoot, is winding up at this writing).

* In April, 2002, the U.S, delegation to the U.N. put the squeeze on Jose Buistani, a Brazilian diplomat and former director of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, for pleading for the conference to decide whether genuine multilateralism “will be replaced by unilateralism in a multilateral disguise.” The U.S. strong-armed delegates by threatening to withhold its dues -- 22 percent of the budget -- and that body caved in. Bustani was let go.

* One of the most egregious acts occurred when Jacques Baute, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, determined that the Nigerian documents alluding to the sale of yellow cake uranium to Iraq were false and delivered his report to IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei who in turn presented the conclusions to the Security Council. Cheney blasted ElBaradei. The latter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

* Meanwhile, there have been three times as many terrorist attacks outside Iraq than in the three years before.

There’s more, much more. But ironclad evidence will go for naught. Why? Blame the 2008 election.

If Bush and Cheney were impeached, Nancy Polosi would become president. And that would screw up all the plans laid by mice and men and a woman.

Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker