Impeachment Daily - Article 2: 9/11: Fraudulent Justification for War in Iraq

[mikelewis]

ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the
following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:
Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in
the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its
impeachment against President George W. Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors.
In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional
oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability,
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional
duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the following abuses of power.



Previous Articles I


Article II
FALSELY, SYSTEMATICALLY, AND WITH CRIMINAL INTENT CONFLATING THE ATTACKS
OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 WITH MISREPRESENTATION OF IRAQ AS AN IMMINENT
SECURITY THREAT AS PART OF A FRAUDULENT JUSTIFICATION FOR A WAR OF
AGGRESSION.

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional
oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability,
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional
duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed",
has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President,
executed a calculated and wide-ranging strategy to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United
States into believing that there was and is a connection between Iraq and Saddam Hussein on the one
hand, and the attacks of September 11, 2001 and al Qaeda, on the other hand, so as to falsely justify the
use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner that is damaging to the
national security interests of the United States, as well as to fraudulently obtain and maintain
congressional authorization and funding for the use of such military force against Iraq, thereby
interfering with and obstructing Congress's lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs and declaring
war.

The means used to implement this deception were and continue to be, first, allowing, authorizing and
sanctioning the manipulation of intelligence analysis by those under his direction and control, including
the Vice President and the Vice President's agents, and second, personally making, or causing,
authorizing and allowing to be made through highly-placed subordinates, including the President's
Chief of Staff, the White House Press Secretary and other White House spokespersons, the Secretaries
of State and Defense, the National Security Advisor, and their deputies and spokespersons, false and
fraudulent representations to the citizens of the United States and Congress regarding an alleged
connection between Saddam Hussein and Iraq, on the one hand, and the September 11th attacks and al
Qaeda, on the other hand, that were half-true, literally true but misleading, and/or made without a
reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to their truth, as well as omitting to state facts necessary
to present an accurate picture of the truth as follows:

(A) On or about September 12, 2001, former terrorism advisor Richard Clarke personally informed the
President that neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq was responsible for the September 11th attacks. On
September 18, Clarke submitted to the President's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice a
memo he had written in response to George W. Bush's specific request that stated: (1) the case for
linking Hussein to the September 11th attacks was weak; (2) only anecdotal evidence linked Hussein to
al Qaeda; (3) Osama Bin Laden resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein; and (4) there was no
confirmed reporting of Saddam Hussein cooperating with Bin Laden on unconventional weapons.


(B) Ten days after the September 11th attacks the President received a President's Daily Briefing
which indicated that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the
September 11th attacks and that there was "scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant
collaborative ties with Al Qaeda."


(C) In Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary No. 044-02, issued in February 2002, the United
States Defense Intelligence Agency cast significant doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein- Al
Qaeda conspiracy: "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary
movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."


(D) The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate gave a "Low Confidence" rating to the notion of
whether "in desperation Saddam would share chemical or biological weapons with Al Qaeda." The
CIA never informed the President that there was an operational relationship between Al Qaeda and
Saddam Hussein; on the contrary, its most "aggressive" analysis contained in Iraq and al-Qaeda-
Interpreting a Murky Relationship" dated June 21, 2002 was that Iraq had had "sporadic, wary contacts
with al Qaeda since the mid-1990s rather than a relationship with al Qaeda that has developed over
time."


(E) Notwithstanding his knowledge that neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq was in any way connected to
the September 11th attacks, the President allowed and authorized those acting under his direction and
control, including Vice President Richard B. Cheney and Lewis Libby, who reported directly to both
the President and the Vice President, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, among others, to
pressure intelligence analysts to alter their assessments and to create special units outside of, and
unknown to, the intelligence community in order to secretly obtain unreliable information, to
manufacture intelligence or reinterpret raw data in ways that would further the Bush administration's
goal of fraudulently establishing a relationship not only between Iraq and al Qaeda, but between Iraq
and the attacks of September 11th.


(F) Further, despite his full awareness that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had no relationship to the
September 11th attacks, the President, and those acting under his direction and control have, since at
least 2002 and continuing to the present, repeatedly issued public statements deliberately worded to
mislead, words calculated in their implication to bring unrelated actors and circumstances into an
artificially contrived reality thereby facilitating the systematic deception of Congress and the American
people. Thus the public and some members of Congress, came to believe, falsely, that there was a
connection between Iraq and the attacks of 911. This was accomplished through well-publicized
statements by the Bush Administration which contrived to continually tie Iraq and 911 in the same
statements of grave concern without making an explicit charge:

(1) " Iraq regimes continues to defy us, and the world, we will move deliberately, yet
decisively, to hold Iraq to account…It's a new world we're in. We used to think two oceans could
separate us from an enemy. On that tragic day, September the 11th, 2001, we found out that's not the
case. We found out this great land of liberty and of freedom and of justice is vulnerable. And therefore
we must do everything we can -- everything we can -- to secure the homeland, to make us safe."
Speech of President Bush in Iowa on September 16, 2002.

(2) "With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons,
our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply
these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September 11th would be a prelude to far greater
horrors." March 6, 2003, Statement of President Bush in National Press Conference.

(3) "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still
goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America
and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that
September the 11th would be the 'beginning of the end of America.' By seeking to turn our cities into
killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force
our retreat from the world. They have failed." May 1, 2003, Speech of President Bush on U.S.S.
Abraham Lincoln.

(4) "Now we're in a new and unprecedented war against violent Islamic extremists. This is an
ideological conflict we face against murderers and killers who try to impose their will. These are the
people that attacked us on September the 11th and killed nearly 3,000 people. The stakes are high, and
once again, we have had to change our strategic thinking. The major battleground in this war is Iraq."
June 28, 2007, Speech of President Bush at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.


(G) Notwithstanding his knowledge that there was no credible evidence of a working relationship
between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda and that the intelligence community had specifically assessed
that there was no such operational relationship, the President, both personally and through his
subordinates and agents, has repeatedly falsely represented, both explicitly and implicitly, and through
the misleading use of selectively-chosen facts, to the citizens of the United States and to the Congress
that there was and is such an ongoing operational relationship, to wit:

(1) "We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al
Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who
received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for
chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making
and poisons and deadly gases." September 28, 2002, Weekly Radio Address of President Bush to the
Nation.

(2) "e we need to think about Saddam Hussein using al Qaeda to do his dirty work, to not leave
fingerprints behind." October 14, 2002, Remarks by President Bush in Michigan.

(3) "We know he's got ties with al Qaeda." November 1, 2002, Speech of President Bush in New
Hampshire.

(4) "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in
custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.
Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help
them develop their own." January 28, 2003, President Bush's State of the Union Address.

(5) "hat I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between
Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and
modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network…" February 5, 2003, Speech
of Former Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations.

(6) "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 — and
still goes on. . . . he liberation of Iraq . . . removed an ally of al Qaeda." May 1, 2003, Speech of
President Bush on U.S. S. Abraham Lincoln


(H) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq
By U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated By Intelligence Information, which was released on
June 5, 2008, concluded that:

(1) "Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-
Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not
substantiated by the intelligence."

(2) "The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer
in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed."
Through his participation and instance in the breathtaking scope of this deception, the President has
used the highest office of trust to wage of campaign of deception of such sophistication as to
deliberately subvert the national security interests of the United States. His dishonesty set the stage for
the loss of more than 4000 United States service members; injuries to tens of thousands of soldiers, the
loss of more than 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi citizens since the United States invasion; the loss of
approximately $527 billion in war costs which has increased our Federal debt and the ultimate
expenditure of three to five trillion dollars for all costs covering the war; the loss of military readiness
within the United States Armed Services due to overextension, the lack of training and lack of
equipment; the loss of United States credibility in world affairs; and the decades of likely blowback
created by the invasion of Iraq.

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President and Commander in Chief, and subversive of constitutional government, to the
prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting
removal from office.

[mikelewis]

1. Link to full document listing all articles of Impeachment...

http://chun.afterdowningstreet.org/amomentoftruth.pdf