Maddow/Pelosi:"I say it's off doesn't mean, if the evidence is there, something wouldn't go forward"

omega minimo

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Fri Mar-12-10 03:59 AM
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Maddow/Pelosi:"I say it's off doesn't mean, if the evidence is there, something wouldn't go forward"

"Just because I say it's off doesn't mean, if the evidence is there, something wouldn't go forward."

With all due respect, Mydamn Speaker: Fu&# you.

The evidence was there. You know it. You knew it. Do not now pretend that "Just because I say it's off doesn't mean, if the evidence is there, something wouldn't go forward." Is that what you actually believe? Is that how you sleep at night? How does that cognitive dissonance -- the power to take this most crucial matter "off the table" and the pretense that your action doesn't really mean "something wouldn't go forward" -- how do those clattering contradictions comingle inside your head? The cacaphony of craziness must be deafening.

The American people are not that crazy and not that stupid, except for the one's that bought into your mealy mouthed strategery, which you now claim wasn't really all that meaningful or effective at the time that you inflicted it on the public, on the nation and on our history.

With all due respect, it's difficult to withstand the insult of this latest most absurd round of patronizing and patently false poo poo being flung at good Americans, without realizing that the Bush administration was fellated -- and unimpeached -- in the Oval Office by this treasonous mind game, which you were the face of.

Good night.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow - Speaker Pelosi & BushCo accountability: still 'unclear'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69BnZgEl6gg

Torture. Warrantless wiretapping. The hijacking of the Justice Department for partisan political purposes. Lies being told to the American people about what the intelligence that we had as a country indicated about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

So, on all of those issues, while we can talk comfortably about them and they are not at the heart of political discourse right now, there is a sense that nobody was ever held accountable for those things. Does that trouble you, and should we ever expect as a country that people will be held accountable for those crimes?"

PELOSI: "Well, the President has wanted to go forward, to move on and go forward. There were those of us who were supportive of a commission to review some of those activities, but the President has decided to move on ...
...............

MADDOW: "Do you regret having the issue of impeachment off the table in terms of talking about the President, the way the President communicated about that issue to the country?"

PELOSI: "No. no. The, um... I believe that the impeach... if there was evidence... if we could have the evidence to impeach the President, then that could come forward. Just because I say it's off (the table) doesn't mean, if the evidence is there, that something wouldn't go forward. It's not a question of not knowing where the culpability is, it's what you can demonstrate and what you can prove.

AfterDowningStreet.org

"Historic Downing Street' Hearings Adjourn!"
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=1472

http://blog.buzzflash.com/interviews/044

Elizabeth de la Vega: Let me just step back a little bit about what I did here. It’s a hypothetical grand jury presentation that sets forth the evidence that relates to one crime -- one specific crime -- which is conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C., section 371. I drafted a hypothetical indictment. It’s not a real document.

I gathered all the evidence that I could find in the public record, which is considerable, about statements that these individuals made publicly, versus the information they had there behind the scenes. Then I set all that out. All of the facts that are alleged in this testimony are absolutely true. The reader is left to decide whatever decision the reader wants to make.

Elizabeth de la Vega, Indicting Bush
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/143205/elizabeth_de_la_vega_indicting_bush

Think of it as a Tomdispatch.com milestone. This is now the first website to "indict" the President, the Vice President, and their colleagues for defrauding us into war in Iraq. I put that "indict" in quotes because what follows, as former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega makes clear in her new book United States v. George W. Bush et al., is "not an actual indictment." It can't be, of course; but consider it the second best thing.

De la Vega has, in her career as a prosecutor, prepared numerous fraud indictments and, as she argued in the first excerpt from her book posted at Tomdispatch earlier this week, "A Fraud Worse than Enron," what George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their senior officials committed was a crime, not just in the colloquial sense of the word, but in the legal sense too (and not a victimless crime either). While their crime was of a magnitude that puts even Enron, no less run-of-the-mill fraud cases, to shame, it also has all the elements of a typical, small-time scam.

The Conspiracy to Defraud the United States

16. Beginning on or about a date unknown, but no later than August of 2002, and continuing to the present, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the defendants,

GEORGE W. BUSH,
RICHARD B. CHENEY,
CONDOLEEZZA RICE,
DONALD M. RUMSFELD, and
COLIN M. POWELL,

and others known and unknown, did knowingly and intentionally conspire to defraud the United States by using deceit, craft, trickery, dishonest means, false and fraudulent representations, including ones made without a reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to their truth or falsity, and omitting to state material facts necessary to make their representations truthful, fair and accurate, while knowing and intending that their false and fraudulent representations would influence the public and the deliberations of Congress with regard to authorization of a preventive war against Iraq, thereby defeating, obstructing, impairing, and interfering with Congress' lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs and making appropriations.

17. The Early Months of the Bush-Cheney Administration: Prior to January of 2001, BUSH, CHENEY, and RUMSFELD each demonstrated a predisposition to employ U.S. military force to invade the Middle East, including, specifically, to forcibly remove Saddam Hussein.

18. Since 1992, CHENEY has endorsed a "bold foreign policy" that includes using military force to "punish" or "threaten to punish" possible aggressors in order to protect the United States's access to Persian Gulf oil and to halt proliferation of weapons of mass destruction ("WMD"), a term that is customarily used to describe chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

19. On or about January 26, 1998, RUMSFELD and seven other future BUSH-CHENEY administration appointees signed a letter sent by a conservative policy institute named "Project for a New American Century" ("PNAC") to then President William Clinton, which called for U.S. military action to forcibly remove Saddam Hussein from power.

20. In January 1999, BUSH named RICE and her future Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley ("Hadley"), as his presidential-campaign foreign-policy advisers, along with future Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz ("Wolfowitz") and four others who had publicly advocated forcibly removing Saddam Hussein.

Cheney's Crimes and Confessions
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/cheneycrimes
• Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2010-02-17 20:22. Criminal Prosecution and Accountability Evidence

Dick Cheney's statutory crimes are notable for their severity, their number, and his public confessions to them. Torture is the least of it.
We can start with the crimes found in the three articles of impeachment contained in H Res 333 in the 110th Congress:

1. "Cheney has purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests, to wit:" (H Res 333 goes on to list evidence).

2. "Cheney purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in order to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests, to wit" (H Res 333 goes on to list evidence).

3. "Cheney has openly threatened aggression against the Republic of Iran absent any real threat to the United States, and done so with the United States proven capability to carry out such threats, thus undermining the national security of the United States, to wit:" (H Res 333 lists evidence, or rather, absolute proof, since this act was completely and by definition public. It was also repeated in later instances than those documented).

H Res 333 does not mention, but it is also relevant, that post-invasion Cheney clung to the idea that Iraq had WMDs, continuing to state the same lies even after near-universal admission by the U.S. corporate media that they were false.

H Res 333 also does not include much explanation of how we know that Cheney knew he was lying. Congressman Henry Waxman posted a searchable database of lies (since deleted when the Oversight Committee was effectively disbanded to accomodate the new president). It included (and I'm sure it still exists somewhere) 51 Cheney WMD and al Qaeda lies, and explained how we know in each case that he was lying.