Just what is an impeachable offense?
TOM MAERTENS
If a country is determined to go to war, almost any pretext can be made to work.
A classic case is the War of Jenkins' Ear, named after a British ship captain who had his ear cut off by a Spanish coast guard official. The British seized upon the pretext to declare war against Spain in order to grab some of Spain's colonies in the New World.
The invasion of Iraq is a modern-day parallel, a trumped-up war.
According to author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz, who was hired to ghost write George Bush's autobiography, Bush "was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it.'"
According to Herskowitz, Bush's beliefs were based on a notion popular in the Reagan White House, ascribed in part to Dick Cheney: "Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade."
Seen from this perspective, "Mission Accomplished" was when Bush successfully started a war that would let him play at Top Gun and run for re-election as a war hero.
Unfortunately, Bush miscalculated. His "small war" has turned into a costly quagmire that has served only to inflame radical Islamists against the U.S.
Like the War of Jenkins' Ear, tens of thousands have died in a pointless war conducted under false pretenses.
Bush has also suggested the war was justified because Saddam had tried to "kill my daddy," but Seymour Hersh and others wrote back in 1993 that the assassination "plot" was likely a Kuwaiti fabrication to repay their liberator.
Mickey Herkowitz's information is consistent with other evidence that Bush manipulated public outrage over 9/11 to carry out an attack against Saddam that was foreordained: Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported that Bush expressed a determination to attack Saddam at the first cabinet meeting of his administration.
According to Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, the Bush administration made 104 public references to Saddam in the nine months prior to 9/11 and only one to Osama bin-Laden.
Richard Clark, the former National Counterterrorism Coordinator, has written that Bush and Rumsfeld began focusing on Iraq the day after the attack of Sept. 11, despite Clark's telling them that Saddam had nothing to do with that attack. Leaked British memos revealed that the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq long before it had earlier claimed, and that "the facts and the intelligence were being fixed around the policy."
James Bamford, a noted investigative journalist, has detailed in his book A Pretext for War, how the Bush administration "fixed" the facts. The most egregious is the Big Lie that falsely tied Saddam to bin Laden and 9/11, but the administration also misrepresented the intelligence on Iraq's WMD programs, touted a forged memo to show Iraq was seeking uranium ore from Niger, and fabricated stories about unmanned aerial vehicles with WMD capabilities.
Col. Sam Gardiner, who taught at three U.S. War Colleges, has elaborated further. In his scholarly study Truth From These Podia - available on the Web - he concludes that the administration manufactured or distorted at least 50 stories in order to sell the American people on the Iraq invasion.
Despite the administration's orchestrated campaign of deception, including a major disinformation effort at the United Nations, no congressional investigation has been launched, no special prosecutor or independent counsel has been appointed, and no one has been indicted, fired or impeached.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which promised to conduct an investigation after the election, has now taken a dive for Bush. There will be no investigation into the administration's (mis)use of intelligence.
A highly partisan Republican Congress carried out 16 investigations of Bill Clinton, including for such trivial matters as the firing of White House travel office employees, and eventually impeached him over an affair with an intern. It's clear that lying about consensual sex is an impeachable offense; systematic lying to start a disastrous, costly war apparently is not. In other words, starting a war in order to run for reelection as a War President is okay if your party controls the Congress.
(Reprinted from the Mankato Free Press, August 23rd, 2005.)
If a country is determined to go to war, almost any pretext can be made to work.
A classic case is the War of Jenkins' Ear, named after a British ship captain who had his ear cut off by a Spanish coast guard official. The British seized upon the pretext to declare war against Spain in order to grab some of Spain's colonies in the New World.
The invasion of Iraq is a modern-day parallel, a trumped-up war.
According to author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz, who was hired to ghost write George Bush's autobiography, Bush "was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it.'"
According to Herskowitz, Bush's beliefs were based on a notion popular in the Reagan White House, ascribed in part to Dick Cheney: "Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade."
Seen from this perspective, "Mission Accomplished" was when Bush successfully started a war that would let him play at Top Gun and run for re-election as a war hero.
Unfortunately, Bush miscalculated. His "small war" has turned into a costly quagmire that has served only to inflame radical Islamists against the U.S.
Like the War of Jenkins' Ear, tens of thousands have died in a pointless war conducted under false pretenses.
Bush has also suggested the war was justified because Saddam had tried to "kill my daddy," but Seymour Hersh and others wrote back in 1993 that the assassination "plot" was likely a Kuwaiti fabrication to repay their liberator.
Mickey Herkowitz's information is consistent with other evidence that Bush manipulated public outrage over 9/11 to carry out an attack against Saddam that was foreordained: Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported that Bush expressed a determination to attack Saddam at the first cabinet meeting of his administration.
According to Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, the Bush administration made 104 public references to Saddam in the nine months prior to 9/11 and only one to Osama bin-Laden.
Richard Clark, the former National Counterterrorism Coordinator, has written that Bush and Rumsfeld began focusing on Iraq the day after the attack of Sept. 11, despite Clark's telling them that Saddam had nothing to do with that attack. Leaked British memos revealed that the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq long before it had earlier claimed, and that "the facts and the intelligence were being fixed around the policy."
James Bamford, a noted investigative journalist, has detailed in his book A Pretext for War, how the Bush administration "fixed" the facts. The most egregious is the Big Lie that falsely tied Saddam to bin Laden and 9/11, but the administration also misrepresented the intelligence on Iraq's WMD programs, touted a forged memo to show Iraq was seeking uranium ore from Niger, and fabricated stories about unmanned aerial vehicles with WMD capabilities.
Col. Sam Gardiner, who taught at three U.S. War Colleges, has elaborated further. In his scholarly study Truth From These Podia - available on the Web - he concludes that the administration manufactured or distorted at least 50 stories in order to sell the American people on the Iraq invasion.
Despite the administration's orchestrated campaign of deception, including a major disinformation effort at the United Nations, no congressional investigation has been launched, no special prosecutor or independent counsel has been appointed, and no one has been indicted, fired or impeached.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which promised to conduct an investigation after the election, has now taken a dive for Bush. There will be no investigation into the administration's (mis)use of intelligence.
A highly partisan Republican Congress carried out 16 investigations of Bill Clinton, including for such trivial matters as the firing of White House travel office employees, and eventually impeached him over an affair with an intern. It's clear that lying about consensual sex is an impeachable offense; systematic lying to start a disastrous, costly war apparently is not. In other words, starting a war in order to run for reelection as a War President is okay if your party controls the Congress.
(Reprinted from the Mankato Free Press, August 23rd, 2005.)
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