More evidence against soon to be impeached President Bush

[dphantom]

Originally posted by: 1EZduzit

Originally posted by: dphantom

Originally posted by: conjur
mmm hmmm

And why not? Are your left-wing/anti-american blogs telling the full story. No they do not. They tell a story slanted to their viewpoint. If you use those, then your opponents are allowed to use equally slanted viewpoints to the opposite.

So your comment above indicates that you cannot argue a case using your own sources effectively against an opposing view. I have provided links, especially Orbat is an excellent source, particularly their paid stuff though it is expensive.

There's nothing wrong with not liking Bush or any other president, polictical offical etc. But your statements are so at odds with what I have seen first hand and from direct contacts that I have to call in question the sources you are using. They all sem to have an anything goes anti-american agenda you repeat.

I wonder why you do that. Is America today so distateful to you and how is it different than the previous administraiton or quite frnakly anyone before?

Reagan will go down as one of the century's greatest presidents, nearly on par with FDR. I do not like FDR's policies but acknowledge him to be arguably are greatest president of the 20th century.

Are you so blinded by hatred of Bush and your virulent anti-americanism that you cannot take an objective look at the question of our war against terrorism and what we must do, with or without the world's good graces.

I personally could care less about France/Germany's approval. My sole concern is the safety and security of American citizens and if that means dealing with Syria, Iran or N Korea next, so be it.

I take it your view is that it's us against the rest of the world and anybody who has the gall to resist that view is anti-american and needs to leave the country. It's OK to not like the Prez as long as you keep it to yourself and do as your told.

What an intersting view of a democracy at work.

Nope, never said that anywhere. Your making an AS*umption that turns out to not be true.

 

[conjur]

Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, calls for impeachment of the Propagandist to restore the credibility of the U.S.

A Reputation in Tatters
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/roberts.cgi

George W. Bush and his gang of neocon warmongers have destroyed America?s reputation. It is likely to stay destroyed, because at this point the only way to restore America?s reputation would be to impeach and convict President Bush for intentionally deceiving Congress and the American people in order to start a war of aggression against a country that posed no threat to the United States.

America can redeem itself only by holding Bush accountable.

As intent as Republicans were to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual affair, they have a blind eye for President Bush?s far more serious lies. Bush?s lies have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, injured and maimed tens of thousands more, devastated a country, destroyed America?s reputation, caused 1 billion Muslims to hate America, ruined our alliances with Europe, created a police state at home, and squandered $300 billion dollars and counting.

America?s reputation is so damaged that not even our puppets can stand the heat. Anti-American riots, which have left Afghan cities and towns in flames and hospitals overflowing with casualties, have forced Bush?s Afghan puppet, ?President? Hamid Karzai, to assert his independence from his U.S. overlords. In a belated act of sovereignty, Karzai asserted authority over heavy-handed U.S. troops whose brutal and stupid ways sparked the devastating riots. Karzai demanded control of U.S. military activities in Afghanistan and called for the return of the Afghan detainees who are being held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Abundant evidence now exists in the public domain to convict George W. Bush of the crime of the century. The secret British government memo (dated July 23, 2002, and available here), leaked to the Sunday Times (which printed it on May 1, 2005), reports that Bush wanted ?to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. . . . But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. . . . The (United Kingdom) attorney general said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defense, humanitarian intervention or UNSC (U.N. Security Council) authorization. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult.?

This memo is the mother of all smoking guns. Why isn?t Bush in the dock?

Has American democracy failed at home?

Bravo, Paul! Bravo!

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: dphantom

Originally posted by: 1EZduzit

Originally posted by: dphantom

Originally posted by: conjur
mmm hmmm

And why not? Are your left-wing/anti-american blogs telling the full story. No they do not. They tell a story slanted to their viewpoint. If you use those, then your opponents are allowed to use equally slanted viewpoints to the opposite.

So your comment above indicates that you cannot argue a case using your own sources effectively against an opposing view. I have provided links, especially Orbat is an excellent source, particularly their paid stuff though it is expensive.

There's nothing wrong with not liking Bush or any other president, polictical offical etc. But your statements are so at odds with what I have seen first hand and from direct contacts that I have to call in question the sources you are using. They all sem to have an anything goes anti-american agenda you repeat.

I wonder why you do that. Is America today so distateful to you and how is it different than the previous administraiton or quite frnakly anyone before?

Reagan will go down as one of the century's greatest presidents, nearly on par with FDR. I do not like FDR's policies but acknowledge him to be arguably are greatest president of the 20th century.

Are you so blinded by hatred of Bush and your virulent anti-americanism that you cannot take an objective look at the question of our war against terrorism and what we must do, with or without the world's good graces.

I personally could care less about France/Germany's approval. My sole concern is the safety and security of American citizens and if that means dealing with Syria, Iran or N Korea next, so be it.

I take it your view is that it's us against the rest of the world and anybody who has the gall to resist that view is anti-american and needs to leave the country. It's OK to not like the Prez as long as you keep it to yourself and do as your told.

What an intersting view of a democracy at work.

Nope, never said that anywhere. Your making an AS*umption that turns out to not be true.

I see, your view is that it's us against everybody that disagrees with us, which just happens to be most of the rest of the world. Me bad. 😀

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: conjur
Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, calls for impeachment of the Propagandist to restore the credibility of the U.S.

A Reputation in Tatters
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/roberts.cgi

George W. Bush and his gang of neocon warmongers have destroyed America?s reputation. It is likely to stay destroyed, because at this point the only way to restore America?s reputation would be to impeach and convict President Bush for intentionally deceiving Congress and the American people in order to start a war of aggression against a country that posed no threat to the United States.

America can redeem itself only by holding Bush accountable.

As intent as Republicans were to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual affair, they have a blind eye for President Bush?s far more serious lies. Bush?s lies have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, injured and maimed tens of thousands more, devastated a country, destroyed America?s reputation, caused 1 billion Muslims to hate America, ruined our alliances with Europe, created a police state at home, and squandered $300 billion dollars and counting.

America?s reputation is so damaged that not even our puppets can stand the heat. Anti-American riots, which have left Afghan cities and towns in flames and hospitals overflowing with casualties, have forced Bush?s Afghan puppet, ?President? Hamid Karzai, to assert his independence from his U.S. overlords. In a belated act of sovereignty, Karzai asserted authority over heavy-handed U.S. troops whose brutal and stupid ways sparked the devastating riots. Karzai demanded control of U.S. military activities in Afghanistan and called for the return of the Afghan detainees who are being held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Abundant evidence now exists in the public domain to convict George W. Bush of the crime of the century. The secret British government memo (dated July 23, 2002, and available here), leaked to the Sunday Times (which printed it on May 1, 2005), reports that Bush wanted ?to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. . . . But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. . . . The (United Kingdom) attorney general said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defense, humanitarian intervention or UNSC (U.N. Security Council) authorization. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult.?

This memo is the mother of all smoking guns. Why isn?t Bush in the dock?

Has American democracy failed at home?

Bravo, Paul! Bravo!

What!! Another disgruntled postal worker?? LMAO

 

[conjur]

Blair faces US probe over secret Iraq invasion plan
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1622378,00.html

SENIOR American congressmen are considering sending a delegation to London to investigate Britain?s role in preparations for the war in Iraq.
Democratic opponents of President George W Bush have seized on a leaked Downing Street memo, first published three weeks ago by The Sunday Times, as evidence that American lawmakers were misled about Bush?s intentions in Iraq.



A group of 89 Democrats from the House of Representatives has written to Bush to ask whether the memo is accurate.

It recounts a discussion between Tony Blair and his military and intelligence advisers about the Bush administration?s views in July 2002, three months before Congress authorised the White House to go to war with Iraq.

The Democrat letter, drafted by Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, said that the memo raised ?troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own administration?.

[...]

By sending investigators to London, Conyers hopes to stir the US media into re-examining a story largely ignored in America since Bush?s re-election victory in November.

?I deplore the fact that our media have been so reticent on the question of whether there was a secret planning of a war for which neither the Congress nor the American people had given permission,? Conyers said.

?We have The Sunday Times to thank for this very important activity. It reminds me of Watergate, which started off as a tiny little incident reported in The Washington Post. I think that the interest of many citizens is picking up.?

It's not about the crime, it's about the cover up.

Follow the intel/lies, in this case. Oh, and the money, too (to Chalabi and his thugs) and to/from the AIPAC.

 

[conjur]

Another MINUTE from Downing Street
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/23/23541/7755

They knew it was an illegal war of aggression. Who forced Goldsmith to change his opinion? What happened when Goldsmith was worked over by Gonzales and Ashcroft? One woman refused to take part in the crime. Her name is Elizabeth Wilmshurst.

The passage in Wilmshurst's resignation letter was so damning to the Blair government, that one passage was "scrubbed" out of it. The damning revelation is contained in the resignation letter of Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a legal adviser at the Foreign Office, in which she said the war would be a "crime of aggression". She quit the day after Lord Goldsmith's ruling was made public, three days before the war began in March 2003. The following has that passage put back in, in italics.

A Minute, dated March 18, 2003

Annex:
A minute dated 18 March 2003 from Elizabeth Wilmshurst (Deputy Legal Adviser) to Michael Wood (The Legal Adviser), copied to the Private Secretary, the Private Secretary to the Permanent Under-Secretary, Alan Charlton (Director Personnel) and Andrew Patrick (Press Office):

I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution to revive the authorisation given in SCR 678. I do not need to set out my reasoning; you are aware of it. My views accord with the advice that has been given consistently in this office before and after the adoption of UN security council resolution 1441 and with what the attorney general gave us to understand was his view prior to his letter of 7 March. (The view expressed in that letter has of course changed again into what is now the official line.) I cannot in conscience go along with advice - within the Office or to the public or Parliament - which asserts the legitimacy of military action without such a resolution, particularly since an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances which are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law.

I therefore need to leave the Office: my views on the legitimacy of the action in Iraq would not make it possible for me to continue my role as a Deputy Legal Adviser or my work more generally. For example in the context of the International Criminal Court, negotiations on the crime of aggression begin again this year. I am therefore discussing with Alan Charlton whether I may take approved early retirement. In case that is not possible this letter should be taken as constituting notice of my resignation.

I joined the Office in 1974. It has been a privilege to work here. I leave with very great sadness.

Elizabeth Wilmshurst
Deputy Legal Advisor to the Foreign Office
March 18, 2003

The "scrubbed" version of this letter at: http://www.fco.gov.uk/Files/kfile/Wilmshurst%20resignation%20letter,0.pdf
BBC released complete version; March 24, 2005
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4377469.stm BBC WORLD NEWS SERVICE -- THE NEWS AGENCE THAT EMPLOYED GEORGE ORWELL !!

Parliament Discusses the Deletion of Damning Passage of Wilmhurst letter; March, 2005:
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-of.../pa/cm200405/cmhansrd/cm050324/debtext

Suppressed passage suggests that attorney general still believed invasion was illegal less than two weeks before the troops went in
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1444455,00.html
The Guardian; Thursday March 24, 2005

Smoking Gun? UK Foreign Office Official's Resignation Letter
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0324-02.htm

 

[conjur]

Veteran Democrat raises worries on civil liberties, 2002 Iraq attack plan
http://rawstory.com/exclusives/alexandrovna/conyers_memo_iraq_interview_524

In an interview with RAW STORY, Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) raised concerns about a document which suggests President Bush may have knowingly misled the country into war and expressed serious worries about the ebbing of civil liberties.

?There?s a dictatorial flavor that comes into this matter,? Conyers said, speaking of efforts of the current Bush Administration. ?This chipping away from what we thought we had and what was in stone: the Civil Rights Act, the Voter Rights Act, the ability of states to process their own judicial cases without federal intervention?all of these things mean we?re not where we were; we?re slipping back and what we?re slipping back into in the cumulative sense is something a little bit scary.?

Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is the second-longest serving Democrat in the House. Elected in 1964, he has been at the vanguard of protecting civil rights and has fought from the progressive left of the Democratic caucus.

?Most of my career has been spent making more specific the guarantees and the rights and the privileges of citizens and the limitations of government power,? the congressman said. ?We?re doing the reverse now. We?re having the executive branch [wade] more willy nilly into judicial matters, frequently into legislative matters, and there?s a certain arrogance that goes along with it.?

The Michigan Democrat also weighed in on his push for an inquiry into whether the president had quietly decided to invade Iraq in 2002, even while telling the nation he was seeking to ?disarm? Saddam Hussein.

Conyers says some have called upon him to push for impeachment, but he avoided the term in conversation with RAW STORY. The congressman was a member of the Judiciary Committee in its 1974 hearings on the Nixon?s impeachment; he suggested that details of the Iraq deal might trickle out as they did with Watergate under President Nixon.

?For the president to be at one time misleading the Congress about his intentions, and at the same time working carefully with Prime Minister Blair and many in his cabinet as the declassified memos now reveal, as far as eight months before the war started, we don?t just have deception,? Conyers remarked.

?This is a constitutional abuse of power, and what we want to do, is first deal with this media silence,? he continued, and spoke briefly about the forum he is holding today on media bias. ?We want to get to why the media approaches this with such reluctance? [it] begins to unfold something like Watergate did; it appeared in page A35 of the Washington Post as a three sentence story and of course it kept going on.?

Conyers demurred to say if he was considering a resolution of inquiry, the first step in any impeachment process.

?Right now, we?re just trying to build up more supportive evidence around the stories that have come from the Sunday London Times,? the congressman said. ?A resolution of inquiry is possible. Some have suggested censory mechanisms. But we don?t know where all that is going.?

On the issue of civil liberties, RAW STORY raised a question some readers have asked, whether the congressman thought it was a reach to imagine the turn by the current Administration to infringe about personal privacy could result in something as drastic as martial law.

?I?m not so sure that there?s a lot of reaching necessary,? he remarked. ?In totality, we?re moving into a different kind of country under different kind of law. For a president who has won each of his two elections by two states and each time the state that provided him with the margin had the most violations and irregularities of voting procedure of any other state in each election ? obviously Florida and Ohio ? he?s acting as if he had a mandate.?

Conyers also spoke briefly about the fracas surrounding a Newsweek article that alleged U.S. investigators had found American troops flushed a copy of the Quran down the toilet. He called the bluster from the White House a ?public relations diversion,? which ?takes the heat off? torture scandals at the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons.

The ranking Judiciary Democrat has called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether the United States violated the War Crimes or Anti-Torture Acts at prisons abroad. To date, he has received no reply.

?It?s like if you don?t get an answer and you keep knocking at the door,? he remarked. ?Maybe you?ll go away if we just don?t say anything. We?ll just pretend we don?t hear you and we?re not there ? [But] we think this is very important American history that deserves its day in court, whether we?re right or whether we?re wrong but we will not be ignored.?

A COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT OF RAW STORY'S INTERVIEW WILL BE AVAILABLE LATE TONIGHT OR TOMORROW... DEVELOPING...

Keep at it, Conyers!!

 

[wchou]

If bush was impeachable all this illegal stock trading wouldn't happen after year 2k
America would be back to where it was, as in year 1999. He has done more harm to this country then any other president in history, we want him out and we want him out now.

 

[conjur]

Udall signs letter that seeks truth about Iraq
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/14096.html


Another Rep. on board.

 

[conjur]

Coalition of citizen groups seek formal inquiry into whether Bush acted illegally in push for Iraq war
http://rawstory.com/exclusives/alexandr...lition_inquiry_downing_street_memo_526

A coalition of citizen activist groups running the gamut of social and political issues will ask Congress to file a Resolution of Inquiry, the first necessary legal step to determine whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in misleading the country about his decision to go to war in Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

The formal Resolution of Inquiry request, written by Boston Constitutional attorney John C. Bonifaz, cites the Downing Street Memo and issues surrounding the planning and execution of the Iraq war. A resolution of inquiry would force relevant House committees to vote on the record as to whether to support an investigation.

The Downing Street Memo, official minutes of a 2002 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair, members of British intelligence MI-6 and various members of the Bush administration, notes that MI-6 director Richard Dearlove said, ?Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.?

Bonifaz says the minutes were the impetus for his request.

?The recent release of the Downing Street Memo provides new and compelling evidence that the President of the United States has been actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people,? Bonifaz wrote in a memo to the ranking House Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI), outlining the case (see attached).

Blair and other British officials have not questioned the minutes? veracity.

In response to the revelations in the Downing Street memo, Conyers and eighty-eight other members of Congress issued a letter to the White House on May 5 requesting an explanation and answers to questions about whether the President misled Congress into voting for the Iraq war.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan waived off the letter, saying he had ?no need to respond,? according to the New York Times.

Frustrated by the media?s silence, save a few articles buried in major American newspapers and pieces in the alternative media such as Air America Radio, the Ed Schultz Show, Salon and RAW STORY, a grassroots progressive movement has pushed the story forward, culminating in a formal request for a Resolution of Inquiry.

Bonifaz wrote the request and outlined the case on behalf of a joint effort by several groups, including: Veterans for Peace, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), 911Citizens Watch, Democracy Rising, Code Pink, Global Exchange, Democrats.com, Velvet Revolution, and Gold Star Families for Peace.

?The president, among other alleged crimes, may have also violated federal criminal law if the evidence from the Downing Street memo is proven to be true, including the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996,? Bonifaz wrote.

Some have criticized the media?s coverage of the memo.

"To me it's kind of the smoking gun, or maybe the latest in a number of smoking guns,? Editor and Publisher senior editor Dave Astor told RAW RADIO Saturday. ?And the fact that the media either didn't cover it or buried the coverage or poo-pooed it is appalling.?

?It goes back to the fact of who owns the media and the media being intimidated by this administration,? he added. ?I think that memo indicates an impeachable offense, personally. If we had a Congress that had some spine, and was maybe Democratic-controlled, it could be an impeachable offense.?

Coalition member Medea Benjamin, founding director of Global Exchange, said she supports legal proceedings.

?When a president so callously distorts the facts, manipulates the public and is responsible for so much needless death and destruction, he must be held accountable,? Benjamin told RAW STORY.

Other members of the coalition, loosely titled ?After Downing Street,? concur.

?We will be organizing the grassroots to demand Congress move forward with a Resolution of Inquiry,? PDA director Tim Carpenter stated.

As part of Congressional approval for H.R.Res. 114; Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, the administration was required to report to Congress that diplomatic options had been exhausted before or within 48 hours after military action had started.

In a conversation with RAW STORY, Bonifaz expressed the disappointment of many who put their faith in the President.

?Within 48 hours after the attack on Iraq, the president wrote a letter to Congress indicating that Iraq posed a serious and imminent threat to national security and if he knew that was not true at the time he submitted that letter it is a clear violation of the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996,? Bonifaz said.

Under this Act, amending 18 U.S.C. § 1001, it is a crime knowingly and willfully (1) to falsify, conceal or cover up a material fact by trick, scheme or device; (2) to make any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) to make or use any false writing or document knowing it to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; with respect to matters within the jurisdiction of the legislative, executive, or judicial branch.

He goes on to discuss the other statutes and laws that may have been violated, including but not limited to the Federal Anti-Conspiracy Statute (more per above link).

When asked if the Inquiry of Resolution would apply to others involved in the alleged effort to mislead the public into war, Bonifaz explained that the procedure requires that a full inquiry begin from the top of the chain of command.

?Provisions in U.S. Constitution guarantee that when a President abuses power, engages in excesses, and subverts the constitution, the people have a recourse through their elected officials in congress,? he said.

Other member groups behind this coalition want that recourse.

?We support this resolution of inquiry because we stand for truth and accountability,? said co-founder of 911Citizenswatch Kyle Hence. ?It's more important than ever as whistleblowers stand up and documents emerge that point to potential crimes in high places all too often of late veiled by government secrecy and cover-up.?

Brad Friedman, co-founder of Velvet Revolution, agrees with the need for transparency.

"We believe that a proper inquiry into the facts underlying the Downing Street memo are vital to our constitutional democracy because only Congress can declare war, and a President and his appointed officials cannot be allowed to run the country if indeed they have misled and lied about the basis for the Iraq war,? said Friedman.

Bonifaz hopes the groups, which boast a total membership of several million, are just the beginning of the grassroots groundswell.

The others agree.

?It is time for Congress to do its duty and ask: ?Did the administration mislead us into war by manipulating and misstating intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction, suppressing contrary intelligence ?and exaggerated the danger Iraq posed to the United States and its neighbors?? said Kevin Zeese, founder of Democracy Rising.

Bonifaz and others ask that citizens of all party affiliations and backgrounds help support his request by writing to their Congressional leaders. They are also seeking other groups to sign on.

More information will be up shortly at: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org.

Sweet. Go get 'em!

 

[conjur]

59,000 signatures over the weekend!
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/59000_conyers_downing_street_letter_531

 

[Steeplerot]

Originally posted by: conjur
59,000 signatures over the weekend!
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/59000_conyers_downing_street_letter_531

make that 59,001, thanks for the link!
Edit: add 3 more from people sitting here with me enjoying this fine new york evening hoping for a better future.

 

[conjur]

The Other Bomb Drops
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20050601/cm_thenation/20050613scahill

It was a huge air assault: Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace. At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war.

But there was a catch: The war hadn't started yet, at least not officially. This was September 2002--a month before Congress had voted to give President Bush the authority he used to invade Iraq, two months before the United Nations brought the matter to a vote and more than six months before "shock and awe" officially began.

At the time, the Bush Administration publicly played down the extent of the air strikes, claiming the United States was just defending the so-called no-fly zones. But new information that has come out in response to the Downing Street memo reveals that, by this time, the war was already a foregone conclusion and attacks were no less than the undeclared beginning of the invasion of Iraq.

The Sunday Times of London recently reported on new evidence showing that "The RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war." The paper cites newly released statistics from the British Defense Ministry showing that "the Allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001" and that "a full air offensive" was under way months before the invasion had officially begun.

The implications of this information for US lawmakers are profound. It was already well known in Washington and international diplomatic circles that the real aim of the US attacks in the no-fly zones was not to protect Shiites and Kurds. But the new disclosures prove that while Congress debated whether to grant Bush the authority to go to war, while Hans Blix had his UN weapons-inspection teams scrutinizing Iraq and while international diplomats scurried to broker an eleventh-hour peace deal, the Bush Administration was already in full combat mode--not just building the dossier of manipulated intelligence, as the Downing Street memo demonstrated, but acting on it by beginning the war itself. And according to the Sunday Times article, the Administration even hoped the attacks would push Saddam into a response that could be used to justify a war the Administration was struggling to sell.

On the eve of the official invasion, on March 8, 2003, Bush said in his national radio address: "We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force." Bush said this after nearly a year of systematic, aggressive bombings of Iraq, during which Iraq was already being disarmed by force, in preparation for the invasion to come. By the Pentagon's own admission, it carried out seventy-eight individual, offensive airstrikes against Iraq in 2002 alone.

"It reminded me of a boxing match in which one of the boxers is told not to move while the other is allowed to punch and only stop when he is convinced that he has weakened his opponent to the point where he is defeated before the fight begins," says former UN Assistant Secretary General Hans Von Sponeck, a thirty-year career diplomat who was the top UN official in Iraq from 1998 to 2000. During both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Washington has consistently and falsely claimed these attacks were mandated by UN Resolution 688, passed after the Gulf War, which called for an end to the Iraqi government's repression in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south. Von Sponeck dismissed this justification as a "total misnomer." In an interview with The Nation, Von Sponeck said that the new information "belatedly confirms" what he has long argued: "The no-fly zones had little to do with protecting ethnic and religious groups from Saddam Hussein's brutality" but were in fact an "illegal establishment...for bilateral interests of the US and the UK."

These attacks were barely covered in the press and Von Sponeck says that as far back as 1999, the United States and Britain pressured the UN not to call attention to them. During his time in Iraq, Von Sponeck began documenting each of the airstrikes, showing "regular attacks on civilian installations including food warehouses, residences, mosques, roads and people." These reports, he said, were "welcomed" by Secretary General Kofi Annan, but "the US and UK governments strongly objected to this reporting." Von Sponeck says that he was pressured to end the practice, with a senior British diplomat telling him, "All you are doing is putting a UN stamp of approval on Iraqi propaganda." But Von Sponeck continued documenting the damage and visited many attack sites. In 1999 alone, he confirmed the death of 144 civilians and more than 400 wounded by the US/UK bombings.

After September 11, there was a major change in attitude within the Bush Administration toward the attacks. Gone was any pretext that they were about protecting Shiites and Kurds--this was a plan to systematically degrade Iraq's ability to defend itself from a foreign attack: bombing Iraq's air defenses, striking command facilities, destroying communication and radar infrastructure. As an Associated Press report noted in November 2002, "Those costly, hard-to-repair facilities are essential to Iraq's air defense."

Rear Admiral David Gove, former deputy director of global operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on November 20, 2002, that US and British pilots were "essentially flying combat missions." On October 3, 2002, the New York Times reported that US pilots were using southern Iraq for "practice runs, mock strikes and real attacks" against a variety of targets. But the full significance of this dramatic change in policy toward Iraq only became clear last month, with the release of the Downing Street memo. In it, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon is reported to have said in 2002, after meeting with US officials, that "the US had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime," a reference to the stepped-up airstrikes. Now the Sunday Times of London has revealed that these spikes "had become a full air offensive"--in other words, a war.

Michigan Democratic Representative John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) has called the latest revelations about these attacks "the smoking bullet in the smoking gun," irrefutable proof that President Bush misled Congress before the vote on Iraq. When Bush asked Congress to authorize the use of force in Iraq, he also said he would use it only as a last resort, after all other avenues had been exhausted. But the Downing Street memo reveals that the Administration had already decided to topple Saddam by force and was manipulating intelligence to justify the decision. That information puts the increase in unprovoked air attacks in the year prior to the war in an entirely new light: The Bush Administration was not only determined to wage war on Iraq, regardless of the evidence; it had already started that war months before it was put to a vote in Congress.

It only takes one member of Congress to begin an impeachment process, and Conyers is said to be considering the option. The process would certainly be revealing. Congress could subpoena Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Gen. Richard Myers, Gen.Tommy Franks and all of the military commanders and pilots involved with the no-fly zone bombings going back into the late 1990s. What were their orders, both given and received? In those answers might lie a case for impeachment.

But another question looms, particularly for Democrats who voted for the war and now say they were misled: Why weren't these unprovoked and unauthorized attacks investigated when they were happening, when it might have had a real impact on the Administration's drive to war? Perhaps that's why the growing grassroots campaign to use the Downing Street memo to impeach Bush can't get a hearing on Capitol Hill. A real probing of this "smoking gun" would not be uncomfortable only for Republicans. The truth is that Bush, like President Bill Clinton before him, oversaw the longest sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam against a sovereign country with no international or US mandate. That gun is probably too hot for either party to touch.

It's a gun that needs to be picked up and fired, though. This country deserves a government that will no longer lie to its people.