Here’s a
little something to kick off the work week after the Fourth of July, when
editorial pages from Alabama to Dallas and Seattle are beginning to write that
while a timetable for withdrawal may be ill advised, a realistic exit strategy
is long overdue. In the second
half of this, reflect on the recent Zogby Poll (see below) that indicated 42%
of the public would support articles of impeachment “if” it is proven Bush
lied. That 42% included
Republicans and independents. - KwC
The Alternative Speech
By Robert Parry, Consortiumnews.com, June 28, 2005 It is hard to even imagine what George W. Bush would have to say if he
were serious about “leveling with the American people” over the Iraq War. Here
is a draft that would surely not get past the White House speechwriters: “My fellow Americans, let me
explain to you what really went wrong with the Iraq policy and why so many
young Americans have died in what looks like a futile war without end. “First, you must
know that I have long obsessed about getting rid of Saddam Hussein, taking care
of some unfinished business from my dad’s presidency. There’s also a lot of oil
there and my neoconservative advisers wanted to project American power into the
Middle East. “So when the Sept.
11 attacks occurred, I saw my chance. Vice President Dick Cheney and I began
merging references to al-Qaeda and Iraq. That way, the casual listener would
start associating Iraq with Sept. 11 subliminally, even if there was no real
evidence to support that connection. “We also decided to
exaggerate the shaky intelligence we had about Iraq’s WMD because we knew that
would scare the American people into supporting a war against a country that
wasn’t threatening us. “Next, I got rid of
officials, like Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Gen. Eric Shinseki, who had
doubts about the Iraq War plans. To keep British Prime Minister Tony Blair on
board, we agreed to go to the United Nations, but only because we hoped that
Saddam would reject a demand for U.N. inspections and give us a better pretext
for war. “When Saddam crossed
us up by letting the inspectors in, we started a war hysteria inside the United
States. When the French wanted more time for the inspections to work, we turned
‘France’ into a dirty word, even renaming French toast and French fries into
‘freedom toast’ and ‘freedom fries.’ “Before it sank into
the American people that the U.N. inspectors weren’t finding any WMD, I forced
the inspectors to leave. Later, after the war was over, when your memories were
getting a little fuzzy, I pretended that Hussein had never let the inspectors
in and had shown ‘defiance,’ leaving me no choice but to invade as a ‘last
resort.’ For details on how I pulled off that sleight of hand, see
Consortiumnews.com’s ‘President Bush, With the
Candlestick…’ “In the first days
of the Iraq War, when we realized ‘shock and awe’ didn’t have quite the effect
we hoped, I had the U.S. military bomb civilian targets, such as a residential
restaurant which we obliterated because of some sketchy information that Saddam
might be eating there. We did this even though we knew that civilians would be
killed. We were right about the civilians getting killed, but Saddam turned out
not to be there. “All these acts that
I’ve described to you tonight might well be considered war crimes, but I really
don’t care much about international law. Remember when I reacted to one
question about international law by joking, ‘International law? I better call
my lawyer.’ That’s just the way I feel about treaties and other things that try
to tie me down. “Some of my critics
might say that I’ve been a dissembler, which means someone who doesn’t tell the
truth. But that’s just politics. “Well, so now that
I’ve leveled with you about how we got into this mess, I’m sure you feel you
can trust me to continue protecting the American people and leading our great
nation to victory in Iraq. “As I actually did
say in my radio address on June 18, ‘I’ll continue to act to keep our people
safe from harm and our future bright. Together we will do what Americans have
always done: build a better and more peaceful world for our children and
grandchildren.’” Robert
Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated
Press and Newsweek. Article found at http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0629-27.htm Original at http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/062805a.html Part 2
of War or Impeachment by Robert Parry, Consortiumnews.com, June 29, 2005 Two
Choices The second hard truth is that the American people have only two
choices on what to do next: they can continue to send their young soldiers into
the Iraqi death trap for at least the next several years and hope for the best,
or they can build a movement for impeaching George W. Bush and other
administration officials – and then try to make the best of a bad situation in
Iraq. Although the realistic prospects
for electing a Congress in 2006 that would act against Bush may appear slim, an
impeachment movement would create at least a focus for a national political
campaign, much like the Republicans used the Contract with America to gain
their congressional majorities in 1994. An impeachment strategy would
have two other benefits: it would create the framework for an official
investigation into the deceptions that led the nation to war in 2002-2003 (as
well as into the incompetence with which the war was fought) and it would offer
a legal structure for achieving some accountability. No accountability means that a precedent has been set for
future presidents misleading the nation into other aggressive wars of choice
and paying no price. While many liberals and
Democrats reject an impeachment strategy – fearing that it would be too
confrontational and carry too many political risks – there are dangers, too, in
again trying to finesse the Iraq War, as Democrats did in the disastrous
elections of 2002 and 2004. …these two “hard truths” – the recognition that the Iraq War fails any reasonable cost-benefit
analysis and the realization that only extraordinary political courage can
force a change of course – are
sure not to be part of Bush’s new PR push on Iraq, even as the politicians and
the pundits say they’re finally “leveling” with the American people. http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0629-27.htm Zogby: No Bounce from
Speech; 42%
favor Impeachment if Bush Lied about the War; Americans are tired of partisan bickering. http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1007 Note: this poll was taken before
O’Connor’s announcement and we began to see articles titled Court Fight May
cost $100 Million and Church Groups Set to Launch Massive Campaigns… Mail Scanned by NAV |
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