Bringing the "Perps," Bush and Cheney, to Justice

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/com...page/Itemid,1/

Wednesday, 03 January 2007
by Walter C. Uhler

According to President Bush, Saddam Hussein was brought to "justice," when, after being sentenced to die by a kangaroo court, he was taunted before his hanging by petulant Shiite's from Bush's puppet regime inside the Green Zone -- Baghdad's Alamo, where the quislings can cower and nominally rule on behalf of "democratic" Iraq.

Granted, Saddam was evil and his horrendous crimes demanded justice. After all, he gassed Kurds, executed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and launched unprovoked invasions of Iran and Kuwait, in violation of international law. Yet, the indignities and blasphemies attending Saddam's hanging seem certain to inflame the civil war raging outside the Green Zone bubble.

Moreover, it's a shame that Iraqis couldn't overthrow their own tyrant and criminal, just as it's a shame that the puppet regime's "justice" required death - officially sanctioned murder at a time when sectarian murder has become a way of life. As I heard just the other day, an eye for an eye - taken to its logical conclusion - leaves everybody blind. Somebody must call a halt.

It's also a shame that Americans seem equally incapable of bringing their criminals in the Bush regime to justice. Criminals? Yes! As I've argued in an earlier article (http://www.walter-c-uhler.com/Reviews/pelosi.html ), the Bush administration's decision to launch an unprovoked invasion of Iraq violated the United Nations Charter, which, as a treaty signed by the United States, is "the supreme Law of the Land." Unprovoked war is the highest of war crimes under international law.


But, as a former federal prosecutor, Elizabeth de la Vega, demonstrates in her recent book, U.S. v. Bush, prima facie evidence indicates that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, former National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, also broke the law by violating Title 18, United States Code, Section 371.

Title 18, United States Code, Section 371 "prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States." [p. 13] Or, as Ms. de la Vega puts it: "It is still the law of the United States that once politicians become Executive Branch officials, they are legally required to be honest and forthright about public matters." [p. 197]

A "conspiracy" is "an agreement between two or more persons to join together to accomplish some unlawful purpose." [p. 49] Moreover, "a standard jury instruction is that proof of a conspiracy does not require evidence that the defendants explicitly discussed details of the scheme or made some formal agreement." [p. 51]

"Fraud" includes lying, "but it's much more than lying." [p. 53] Under law, "a 'false' or 'fraudulent' representation is one that is: (a) made with knowledge that it is untrue; (b) a half-truth, (c) made without a reasonable basis or with reckless indifference to whether it is, in fact, true or false; or (d) literally true, but intentionally presented in a manner reasonably calculated to deceive a person of ordinary prudence or intelligence. The knowing concealment or omission of information that a reasonable person would consider important in deciding an issue also constitutes fraud." [p. 30]

Moreover, "continuing to assert something as true, even after receiving notice that would cause a reasonable person to inquire further about whether his statement is in fact true, is the same a knowingly and intentionally making a false statement." [p. 54]

Ms. de la Vega claims that Title 18, United States Code, Section 371 (conspiracy to defraud) is as applicable to the Bush administration as it was in securing the convictions of former Enron CEOs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. Which is to say: "As the [Enron] jury was instructed… anyone who makes representations intending that the public will rely on them, has an affirmative obligation to make sure that they are true and accurate. Representations made with reckless indifference to their truth are as false as outright lies." [p. 21]

For example, Mr. Lay "tired to convince his employees to buy stock by telling them that he had bought $4 million in stock that very month. What he didn't mention was that he had also sold $24 million." [p. 58]

Similarly, on August 26, 2002, Vice President Cheney asserted: "Simply stated there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," [p. 173] a claim subsequently proven to be false after the U.S. invaded Iraq and found no such weapons. In support of his claim, Cheney cited evidence provided by Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, who had defected. Yet, in a blatant act of criminal fraud, Cheney failed to mention that the son-in-law also claimed that all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed.

Two examples - among hundreds -- of the Bush administration's criminal indifference to the truth occurred on October 2, 2002 and October 7, 2002, just days before Congress would approve a resolution authorizing him to use force against Iraq. On October 2nd President Bush asserted: "The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency…it has developed weapons of mass destruction." [p. 192] And on October 7th President Bush gave a nationally televised speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, in which he claimed that Iraq "stands alone" as a unique threat.

Yet, just days before the October 7th speech, "a State Department representative was specifically informed by North Korean officials that North Korea already possessed nuclear weapons." [p. 225] Thus, the Bush administration fraudulently concealed information indicating that North Korea stood alone as the "unique" threat until after Congress approved its resolution concerning Iraq.

But, both speeches constituted attempts to defraud Congress and the American public. For, as we now know, the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, testified in February 2004 that "the intelligence community had never informed the President that Saddam Hussein presented an imminent or urgent threat,"[p. 192] let alone a threat that stands alone.

Thus, the October 2nd speech, the concealment of information about North Korea's nuclear weapons and the October 7th speech constitute prima facie evidence of a conspiracy to defraud Congress.

Want more evidence of Bush's criminal violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371? Consider that, in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address, Bush asserted that the "British have recently learned that Iraq was seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Although literally true, Bush's assertion was fraudulent because it was inserted as a way to weasel around the fact that "less than four months earlier, Tenet and the CIA had excised the sentence from the president's speech in Cincinnati because the assertion could not be confirmed and was thought to be shaky." [Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack pp. 294-95]

As Ms. de la Vega notes: "Much has been written regarding what the President knew when he made this statement, but the analysis of whether this statement is fraudulent in a criminal context is very simple." Consider the following: "this President is highly involved in the speech-writing process. At the time of the speech, the public's support for the war was waning and the President wanted specific proof. If he could have phrased this assertion more strongly, he would have. It may have been literally true - the British did acquire this information - but it already had been debunked. Bush's phrasing was an attempt to deceive the American public into believing that he was vouching for the British intelligence information when he knew he could not do so." [p. 231]

End