The only way to stop Bush is to impeach the muthafucka already

1. Bush Must Go
Only Impeachment Can Stop Him
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS/Counterpunch

When are the American people and their representatives in Congress and the military going to wake up and realize that the US has an insane war criminal in the White House who is destroying all chances for peace in the world and establishing a police state in the US?

Americans don’t have much time to realize this and to act before it is too late. Bush’s “surge” speech last Wednesday night makes it completely clear that his real purpose is to start wars with Iran and Syria before failure in Iraq brings an end to the neoconservative/Israeli plan to establish hegemony over the Middle East.

The “surge” gives Congress, the media, and the foreign policy establishment something to debate and oppose, while Bush sets his plans in motion to orchestrate a war with Iran. Suddenly, we are hearing Bush regime propaganda that there are Iranian networks operating within Iraq that are working with the Iraqi insurgency and killing US troops.

This assertion is a lie and preposterous on its face. Iranian Shi’ites are not going to arm Iraqi Sunnis, who are more focused on killing Iraqi Shi’ites allied with Iran than on killing US troops. If the Iranians wanted to cause the US trouble in Iraq, they would encourage Iraqi Shi’ites to join the insurgency against US forces. An insurgency drawn from 80 per cent of the Iraqi population would overwhelm the US forces.

CBS reports that the news organization has been told by US officials “that American forces have begun an aggressive and mostly secret ground campaign against networks of Iranians that had been operating with virtual impunity inside Iraq.” To manufacture evidence in behalf of this lie to feed to the gullible American public, US forces invaded an Iranian consulate in northern Iraq and kidnapped five consulate officials, claiming the Iranians were part of plans “to kill Americans.” In typical Orwellian fashion, Secretary of State Condi Rice described Bush’s aggression against Iran as designed to confront Tehran’s aggression.

Iraqi government officials in the Kurdish province and the Iraqi foreign minister have refused to go along with Bush’s propaganda ploy. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari announced that the Iranian officials were no threat and were working in a liaison office that had Iraqi government approval and was in the process of being elevated into a consulate.

The Iraqi foreign minister said that US troops tried to seize more innocent people at the Irbil airport but were prevented by Kurdish troops.

The Kurds, of course, have been allies of the US forces, but Bush is willing to alienate the Kurds in the interest of provoking a war with Iran.

If Bush is unable to orchestrate war with Iran directly, he will orchestrate war indirectly by having US troops attack Iraqi Shi’ite militias. Bush has already given orders for US troops to attack the Iraqi Shi’ite militias, who oppose the Sunnis and have not been part of the insurgency. Obviously, once Bush can get US troops in open warfare with Iraqi Shi’ites, the situation for US troops in Iraq will quickly go down hill. Bush will be able to blame Iranian Shi’ites for arming Iraqi Shi’ites that he can say are killing US troops.

Bush has also ordered the Persian Gulf to be congested with TWO US aircraft carrier attack groups. There is no military or diplomatic reason for even one attack group to be in the Persian Gulf. If Bush fails to orchestrate a war with Iran by kidnapping its officials or by attacking Shi’ite militias, he can orchestrate an event like the Tonkin Gulf incident or have the Israelis pull another USS Liberty incident and blame the Iranians.

The Tonkin Gulf incident was used by the Johnson administration to deceive Congress and to involve the US in the Vietnam war. Johnson alleged a North Vietnamese attack on US warships.

In 1967 Israel attacked and destroyed the US intelligence ship Liberty, because Liberty’s crew had picked up proof that Israel had initiated the war with Egypt and intended to attack Syria the next day. Some have speculated that Israelis hoped their attack on the Liberty could be blamed on Egypt and used to draw the US into the war against Egypt.

In 2003 the Moorer Commission, headed by Admiral Tom Moorer, former Chief of Naval Operations and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, concluded:

“That in attacking the USS Liberty, Israel committed acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States.”

“That fearing conflict with Israel, the White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty.”

“The Captain and surviving crew members were later threatened with court-martial, imprisonment or worse if they exposed the truth; and were abandoned by their own government.”

“That due to the influence of Israel’s powerful supporters in the United States, the White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people.”

“That a danger to our national security exists whenever our elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation, and specifically are unwilling to challenge Israel’s interests when they conflict with American interests.”

On the 30th anniversary of Israel’s destruction of the liberty, Admiral Moorer said that Israel attacked the Liberty because Israel knew that the intelligence ship could intercept Israel’s plans to seize the Golan Heights from Syria, an act of Israeli aggression to which the US government was opposed. Admiral Moorer said, “I believe Moshe Dayan concluded that he could prevent Washington from becoming aware of what Israel was up to by destroying the primary source of acquiring that information--the US Liberty. Moorer reports that after a 25 minute air attack “that pounded the Liberty with bombs, rockets, napalm and machine gun fire . . . three Israeli torpedo boats closed in for the kill . . . the torpedo boats’ machine guns also were turned on life rafts that were deployed into the Mediterranean as well as those few on deck that had escaped damage.”

Admiral Moorer says, “What is so chilling and cold-blooded, of course, is that they [Israel] could kill as many Americans as they did in confidence that Washington would cooperate in quelling any public outcry.” The US invasion of Iraq and the looming US attack on Iran are proof that Israel has even more power over the White House today.

Bush has many ways to widen his war in the Middle East. His brutal aggression against Somalia has largely escaped criticism for the war crime that it is. On January 11 the US National Intelligence Director told Congress that Hezbollah in Lebanon may be the next US threat. Just as he lied to the entire world about Saddam Hussein and Iraq, Bush is lying about Iran. Bush and the neoconservatives are frantic for war with Iran to get underway before the US Congress forces a US withdrawal from the failed adventure in Iraq.

Bush’s entire “war on terror” is based on lies. The Bush Regime, desperate to keep its lies covered up, is now trying to prevent American law firms from defending the Guantanamo detainees. The Bush Regime is fearful that Americans will learn that the detainees are not terrorists but props in the regime’s orchestrated “terror war.”

On January 13 a New York Times (editorial) said that “Cully Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, tried to rally American corporations to stop doing business with law firms that represent inmates of the Guantanamo internment camp.” Stimson alleged that it was “shocking” that American law firms were “representing detainees down there.” He suggested that when corporate America got word of if, “those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms. We want to watch that play out.”

The only reason for the Bush Regime’s policy of indefinite detention without charges is that it has no charges to bring. The detainees are not terrorists. They are the Bush Regime’s props in a fake war that serves as cover for the Regime’s hegemonic policy in the Middle East.

The only action that can stop Bush is for both the Democratic and Republican leadership of the House and Senate to call on the White House, tell Bush they know what he is up to and that they will not fall for it a second time. The congressional leadership must tell Bush that if he does not immediately desist, he will be impeached and convicted before the week is out. Can a congressional leadership that lives in fear of the Israel Lobby perform this task?

All the rest is penny-ante. Revoking the Iraqi War Resolution as Rep. Sam Farr has proposed or requiring Bush to obtain congressional authorization prior to any US attack on Iran simply lets Bush and his Federalist Society apologists for executive dictatorship claim he has commander-in-chief powers and proceed with his planned aggression. Cutting off funding is not itself enough as Bush can raid other budgets. Non-binding resolutions of disapproval are meaningless to a president who doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.

Nothing can stop the criminal Bush from instituting wider war in the Middle East that could become a catastrophic world war except an unequivocal statement from Congress that he will be impeached.

Bush has made the US into a colony of Israel. The US is incurring massive debt and loss of both life and reputation in order to silence Muslim opposition to Israel’s theft of Palestine and the Golan Heights. That is what the “war on terror” is about.

(Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com)


2. Mistakes Were Made, but There Is No Mistaker -- by Beth Quinn/ Times Herald-Record (Middletown, New York)

My, my. Such a great big mess, such a small little space in which to write about it.

I speak of George Bush's new Iraq plan, of course, and his speech last Wednesday night. My mouth was so long agape as he proclaimed one bizarre thing after the next that I fear I began drooling on myself.

And here I find myself struggling to wrestle it all into one coherent bit of commentary. A column should be about only one thing, and I've had to go through a painful process of elimination to zero in on just one thing to write about.

It is for that reason that I'm not going to write about the president's absolute contempt for the American people. Never mind that we made it clear in November that we want our troops out of Iraq. And never mind that the Iraq Study Group recommended that we fold up our tents and come home.

Never mind that. Not only did Bush announce that he'd be staying in Iraq against our wishes and against all common sense, but he's going to send more troops over — 21,500 more.

But I'm not going to write about that. Or about how this escalation of his is not actually a new plan at all but just the same old disaster, only bigger. Nope. I'm not going to write about any of that.

Instead, I've decided to write about grammar.

That's right. I am zeroing in only one sentence from his speech. And that sentence is:

Mistakes have been made.

For those who have forgotten their high school English, this is called "passive" voice. It places the emphasis on the object of the sentence, not the subject. There is no telling who did what — only that something somehow happened.

Saying Mistakes have been made is like saying The house caught fire. It's as though the house is somehow to blame for burning up. See? And the mistakes in Bush's Iraq policy are somehow at fault for having occurred.

Common sense would dictate that someone made those mistakes, but the person who did so is missing from the sentence. Obviously, then, that person is not to blame.

Most sentences are much clearer when they're written in active voice, not passive. For example, an active version of that sentence would be, I made some mistakes. That way, it's clear that George Bush his very own self is to blame. And maybe he could also say, Donald made some mistakes, too.

But no. We just have some vague acknowledgment on the part of The Decider (who apparently is not The Mistaker) that somehow — who knows how, really — our Iraq policy has been less than stellar.

Here are some more examples of passive voice, offered so I can stick to my one point and really drive that point home:

The chicken had his head cut off. (It was the chicken's fault, it would seem — perhaps he brought this on himself by straying into the path of the farmer's hatchet.)

The gun went off. (As I'm sure you know, guns do this on their own all the time.)

Bristly hair surrounded Linda's head. (Well, this isn't so much a matter of culpability as it is a fashion mess — although there is some mild implication that the hair is at fault for failing to control itself.)

And one more, taken from an incident at the White House a few years ago: The pretzel lodged in President Bush's throat. (Clearly, it was the pretzel's fault for getting stuck where it was unwelcome.)

By saying Mistakes have been made, the president also implies that those mistakes occurred only in the past tense and that he is now ordering the mistakes to stop happening in the future tense.

Actually, if I may wander over into math class for a moment, 3,018 mistakes were made in the past if you count up the dead American soldiers (2,881 since Mission Accomplished!). If you also count wounded Americans, add another 22,714 mistakes. If you include dead Iraqi civilians (not the president's favorite group!), add another 655,000 mistakes. And if you count the money, add $350 billion more mistakes.

But sending another 21,500 soldiers to Iraq in the future — that, of course, would not be a mistake. Sending more troops to Iraq would FIX all the past mistakes made by someone — who knows who? — that just kind of somehow happened.

Ain't grammar grand, though? It's like magic. Nothing is anyone's fault in the well-built sentence!

(Beth's column appears on Mondays.)


3. Chris Wallace Softballs Dick Cheney -- by Matthew Rothschild/ The Progressive

It always gets a little cozy when Dick Cheney goes on Fox News.

There he was on Sunday, with Chris Wallace, who introduced the topic of Scooter Libby by mentioning that both Libby and Wallace himself had been invited to the Cheney Christmas Party.

Hard to be aggressive with a guy who is serving you pigs in a blanket, Swedish meatballs, and reindeer cutouts.

In the best Fox fashion, Chris Wallace asked Cheney whether members of Congress who are trying to block the Administration’s policy in Iraq are, in Wallace’s words, “undercutting the troops.”

Responded Cheney: “Well, I think they are.”

And he softballed Cheney with: “Ultimately, will the U.S. do whatever it takes to win?”

Cheney: “I believe we will.”

To the extent that Chris Wallace played tough, it was only to ask Cheney to attack Iran.

“Can you pledge that, before you and the President leave office, you will take care of the threat of Iran?”

And Cheney responded, “I think we’re working right now, today, as we speak, on key elements of that problem.”

Cheney said, “Iran is fishing in troubled waters,” adding that “The threat that Iran represents is growing, it’s multi-dimensional, and it is, in fact, of concern to everybody in the region.”

And Cheney twice mentioned the previously unmentionable word oil, raising the specter of a “nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy.”

Cheney thus made it clear that by the time Chris Wallace comes back to the Cheney household next Christmas or the year after, the U.S. will be at war with Iran.

(Matthew Rothschild has been with The Progressive since 1983. His McCarthyism Watch web column has chronicled more than 150 incidents of repression since 9/11.)


4. Bush's New Iran Policy - War Plan or Propaganda?
Analysis by Gareth Porter/ Inter Press Service News Agency

President George W. Bush's seemingly aggressive Iran policy of taking direct action against alleged Iranian "networks" involved in attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, combined with the deployment of a second carrier group off Iran's coast, triggered speculation that it is related to a plan for an attack.

But the revelation by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the campaign against Iranian officials had already been in effect for several months before Bush's speech last Wednesday indicates that the new rhetoric is aimed at serving the desperate need of the White House to shift the blame for its failure in Iraq to Iran, and to appear to be taking tough action.

Rice told the New York Times in an interview Friday that Bush had ordered the U.S. military to target Iranian officials in Iraq allegedly linked to attacks on U.S. forces some time last fall. Bush and Rice had previously created the impression that the administration had launched a new initiative against Iran in connection with its proposed increase in troop strength in Iraq.

The Bush speech coincided with an attack by an unidentified U.S. military unit on the building used by Iranian consular officials in Erbil and the seizure of six Iranian officials in the compound. But all indications are that the U.S. military has no real intelligence on any Iranian direct involvement in supplying lethal weapons to insurgents.

The statement issued by the U.S. military but clearly written in the White House said the detainees, who were not identified as Iranians, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraqi and coalition forces". That statement shows that the seizure was not based on any prior evidence of the officials' complicity in insurgent attacks. U.S. troops also seized documents and computers, indicating that the attack was really nothing more than an intelligence operation, launched in the hope of finding some evidence that could be used against Iran.

The only other such U.S. military raid came in late December and targeted four Iranian officials visiting Baghdad at the invitation of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. That operation bore similar evidence of being a fishing expedition against Iranians, based on nothing more than the "suspicion" that they were connected with the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Contrary to the impression conveyed by the administration, therefore, it is not targeting those who it knows to be involved in supplying insurgents with weapons but is still trying to find some evidence to justify its tough rhetoric against Iran.

The initial rhetoric from Bush suggesting a possible intention to expand the Iraq war into Iran or Syria in response to alleged Iranian and Syrian support for anti-coalition insurgents had been followed by clarifications and new details that point to a very carefully calibrated propaganda offensive aimed at rallying his own political base.

Bush's identification in his Jan. 10 speech of Iran and Syria as "allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq" and the more specific reference to Iran as "providing material support for attacks on American troops" seemed to hint at such a plan to expand the war across the board into Iran.

Rice seemed to be dropping even more pointed hints of such a plan in television interviews on Thursday. On the NBC Today show, Rice vowed, on behalf of Bush, "[W]e are going to make certain that we disrupt activities that are endangering and killing our troops and that are destabilising Iraq." And when asked if that meant "attacks inside Iran and Syria" were "on the table", she responded that Bush "is not going to take options off the table..."

Rice went on to declare, "The Iranians need to know, and the Syrians need to know, that the United States is not finding it acceptable and is not going to simply tolerate their activities to try and harm our forces or to destabilise Iraq."

Asked in an interview with "Fox and Friends" whether Bush's speech could mean "going over the border to chase down those who are providing the technology and possibly the training", Rice coyly replied, "Well, I don't want to speculate on what kinds of operations the United States may be engaged in," as if to leave that possibility open. Then she added, "But I think you will see that the United States is not going to simply stand idly by and let these activities continue."

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, Rice refused to answer a question from Chairman Joe Biden on whether the president has the authority to conduct military missions in Iran without congressional approval. That provoked expressions of alarm from both Democratic and Republic senators. Sen. Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, said this ambiguity reminded him of the Richard Nixon administration's policy toward Cambodia in 1970 during the Vietnam War.

Some analysts viewed Rice's rhetoric as evidence of an administration plan to justify an air offensive against Iran on the basis of alleged Iranian complicity in attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, rather than on the more abstract threat of Iranian progress toward a possible nuclear weapons capability.

But the careful wording used and the explicit caveats issued by administration officials belied the impression of menace against Iran that Bush and Rice had clearly sought to convey. Bush's reference to the issue in his Wednesday night speech avoided any actual threat to Iran. Instead he said, "We will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq." That formulation was carefully chosen to limit the scope of U.S. actions.

The next day, even though Rice was provoking Congressional fears of a wider war, the whole Bush team was qualifying that rhetoric in remarks to reporters by specifying that U.S. actions to stop the alleged Iranian interference in Iraq will be confined to Iraq itself.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is considered a full member of the Bush administration team, limited the threatened aggressive U.S. actions to "those who are physically present trying to do harm to our troops..."

He concluded, "We can take care of the security of our troops by doing the business we need to do inside of Iraq."

And spokesman for the National Security Council Gordon Johndroe, after repeating the new line that the administration would "not tolerate outside interference in Iraq", went on to say that the actions would be taken only inside Iraq, not across the border.. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates also said on Friday the United States had no intention of going into Iranian territory.

The contrast between the general impression of steely resolve toward Iran conveyed by Bush and the unusual clarity about the limited geographical scope of the response points to a sophisticated two-level communications strategy prepared by the White House. For those who get their news from television, the message conveyed by Rice was one of effective action against the Iranians supposedly causing harm to U.S. troops; for the Congress and the media, the message conveyed to reporters was much more cautious.

The two-level communications strategy suggests, in turn, that the White House was acutely aware that a single message of menace toward Iran could have triggered a negative Congressional response that would have defeated the purpose of the tough rhetorical line.

Ironically, therefore, the net effect of the new tough line toward Iran may actually have been to force the administration to admit, if only tacitly, that it is not free under present circumstances even to threaten to go to war against Iran.

(Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in June 2005.
This article is the first of a two-part series on the escalation of hostile rhetoric and actions toward Iran by the Bush administration.)