- It's getting more difficult day by day to determine whether
the Bush organized crime family is getting better at spinning events and
blowing smoke at the media and Democrats, or whether the latter are just
becoming more gullible and stupider in geometrically progressive leaps
and bounds.
-
- Observe the billowing smoke and steam now spewing forth
from the boiled-over Rove pot. Once again, truth and facts are supplanted
by word engineering, spin and poliatrics. And of course, the subservient
unemployables in our "free and independent" press are relieved
by the abundance of word distractions obviating the application of professional
journalistic standards.
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- It all begins with Article II, Section 3 of the United
States Constitution: "He shall from time to time give to the Congress
Information of the State of the Union." Thus, Bush is required by
law to address the representatives of the American people in the Congress
and report on the State of the Union - it is a requirement of law, as well
as his duty for which he was sworn into office. It is not a duty which
should be taken lightly by Mr. Bush! It is not a political speech or "show"
as Limbaugh used to denigrate those SOTU addresses of Clinton.
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- In his SOTU address of January 28, 2003, Bush issued
his infamous 16-word lie concerning Niger yellowcake; but before exploring
this further, let's first look again at the actual words that comprise
the minutes of a meeting in British Prime Minister Tony Blair's office
on July 23, 2002.
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- Predating Bush's 16 words are these from the Downing
Street Memo: "C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There
was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable.
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. The NSC had no patience with the UN route,
and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record.
There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military
action." And then further down in the memo: "The Defence Secretary
said that the US had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure
on the regime."
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- The "spikes of activity" refer to the massive
bombings of Iraq by US and British air force units to provoke Saddam Hussein
to retaliate, thereby justifying the invasion of Iraq. Clearly, Saddam
did not take the bait! And please note, that if these attacks are being
referred to as activities that had already taken place as of the date of
the Downing Memo of July 23, 2002, this means Bush had already started
an illegal war before that date and way before asking Congress for war
powers, and more than SIX months BEFORE his State of the Union Address!
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- Returning now to a discussion of the lies and fraud in
President George W. Bush's January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address
required by the United States Constitution, here are Bush's famous 16 words:
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The Downing Street
Memo clearly indicates that it was the Bush administration that was taking
the lead position against Saddam, not the British government. And the
"evidence" in terms of documentation that Bush had been "relying"
upon was identified and revealed inside the White House to be clearly flimsy
evidence as well as a clumsy forgery at best!
-
- The point being made is that Bush knew the evidence backing
his now infamous 16 words were a lie - how could he not? And then-CIA
Director George Tenet advised him beforehand not to use it in his SOTU
address.
-
- The two most enduring characteristics of the Bush Big
House are 1) loyalty and 2) vindictiveness. So when former Ambassador
to Iraq, Joseph Wilson journeyed to Niger to confirm an intelligence report
regarding yellowcake uranium, he summarized his findings in an Op-Ed piece
he wrote for The New York Times totally discrediting Bush's 16-word SOTU
lie. As offered in the July 13th Times article by David Sanger entitled,
"Rove Case May Test Bush's Loyalty to His Closest Aides," Sanger
offers: "No one has been closer to the president longer, or bailed
him out of more tight spots, than Karl Rove, his chief political adviser."
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- Rove is Bush's number one advisor. It is impossible
to conceive of virtually any policy emerging from the White House without
his knowledge. And of those Bush advisors associated with the "16
words," just look and see who is conspicuous by his very absence.
Sanger writes: "Mr. Rove can take heart in one fact: so far every
other senior official caught up by the cascading series of questions that
were touched off by 16 words in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address
has survived, even prospered. Three of Mr. Bush's closest advisers were
involved."
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- Sanger continues: "The most senior of them, Condoleezza
Rice, the national security adviser at the time, accused the Central Intelligence
Agency of feeding bad information to the White House. In an interview
earlier this year, she said that 'I was the national security adviser and
the president said something that probably shouldn't have been in the speech,
and it was as much my responsibility' as anyone else's. Mr. Bush not only
stuck by her, he made her secretary of state.
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- Stephen P. Hadley, Ms. Rice's deputy, stepped into the
Oval Office in August of that summer to tell the president that he, not
Ms. Rice, was the one responsible for letting the language into the speech,
and by several accounts he offered to resign. Mr. Bush refused, and gave
him Ms. Rice's old job late last year.
-
- And George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence,
who had been sent a copy of the speech but did not read it before it was
delivered, reluctantly issued a statement two years ago this week saying
that 'These 16 words should never have been included in the text written
for the president.' He later resigned, for unrelated reasons. Last December
Mr. Bush rewarded him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom."
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- The obvious missing Bush insider was his number one advisor,
who it can be assumed was surely on board with the 16-word inclusion in
SOTU!
-
- Considering one offered resignation, one humiliating
apology, and one actual resignation on the part of Bush's inner circle,
the potential of political dynamite constituting this 16-word issue was
apparent back then. When now augmented by the threatened jailing of Newsweek
reporter Matthew Cooper, along with the recent imprisonment of New York
Times reporter Judith Miller, both considered "liberal" elements
of the "news" media, the Robert Novak skating "ice capades"
have brought an unpredicted focus on the entire affair. Why has no effort
been made to prosecute Novak? If one follows the partisan "blame
game bilge," as one writer describes partisan politics and political
labeling, the answer becomes obvious.
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- How important to the Bush regime were those 16 words?
Here's the answer as documented by Christopher Marquis, first published
in The New York Times on July 20, 2003, and entitled, "How
Powerful Can 16 Words Be?" and carried on the Common Dreams website:
"Few speeches are as pored over as the State of the Union address.
Delivered with all the pomp a no-nonsense capital can muster, it gives
the president the chance to share his vision for the nation and the world.
The best addresses go beyond bland budgeteering to become a rallying cry
for a scattered people."
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- Marquis continues: "On Jan. 28, President Bush by
most accounts gave a humdinger. He was telling the American people why
they needed to fear Saddam Hussein and why he had to be replaced. It was
a case for war: the most momentous and fearsome decision a president can
make. Mr. Bush portrayed the United States as under an imminent threat
from Iraq."
-
- Marquis quotes the 16-word lie firmly uttered by Bush,
and then concludes, "A nuclear Iraq? That carried so much freight
with ordinary Americans. Concerns about biological or chemical weapons,
the possibility of a Baghdad alliance with Al Qaeda - these worries paled
when compared with the prospect that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear
program and might share weapons with terrorists. 'That was a very scary
thing for the administration to be saying,' said David Wise, an intelligence
historian. 'If it now turns out that was based on forged documents and
bad intelligence, that's very disturbing.'" And now we know that
it is much worse than that. This reinforces the plotting and connivance
of the Bush/Blair conspiracy and Bush neocon cabal of warmongers as exposed
by the Downing Street Memo all the more!
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- Bush sycophant and propagangster, Rush Limbaugh, on his
Wednesday July 13th blab radio show, blustered that the Joseph Wilson trip
to Niger was "nepotism" in that Valerie Plame had picked her
husband for that boondoggle to beautiful, exotic Niger. Never mind that
her husband was a former ambassador to Iraq, and never mind that her CIA
function was the coordination of WMD intelligence. Limbaugh boomed that
Wilson had no reason to go to Niger parroting the same prepared poppycock
now being offered as the reason for Rove's involvement with reporter Matt
Cooper.
-
- Didn't Bush initiate the lie of Niger yellowcake? Wasn't
Wilson involved with Iraq, and his wife an intelligence operative investigating
WMD? Didn't the criminal Bush regime open these doors first? Now we're
being told that Rove didn't know Wilson's wife's name! Really? But how
then did "conservative" reporter Robert Novak make Valerie Plame's
identity and CIA involvement public when he admitted that no one in the
White House had informed him directly?
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- What difference does it make who finalized the information
on the outing momentum initiated by Rove from his sheer anger and vindictiveness
directed at the man who shot massive holes through the most important and
motivating aspect of the Bush regime's nuclear fright scenario fingering
Saddam? Wasn't the outcome exactly the same as if it would have been had
it been Rove who actually named Plame?
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- When the story first began to air back in 2003, an article
in The New York Times entitled, "Inquiry Into Leak About C.I.A. Officer
Is Said to Widen," written by David Stout on October 2, 2003, offers:
"The White House has asserted that the Justice Department under Attorney
General John Ashcroft, whom Mr. Bush nominated for the post, can do a professional
and thorough inquiry. But Capitol Hill Democrats have said an outside
counsel is necessary to avoid conflicts of interest."
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- The article goes on, "The name and occupation of
the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame, was disclosed in a July 14 column by
Robert Novak shortly after her husband, the former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson
IV, publicly questioned the value of intelligence that the Bush administration
had cited to justify the military campaign against Iraq." It goes
on, "Critics of the administration have asserted that someone leaked
the information about Ms. Plame to get back at her husband. Mr. Wilson
himself suggested early on that Karl Rove, the president's top political
strategist, was behind the leak, but the White House dismissed that notion
as 'ridiculous.'" Please keep in mind that the Stout article was written
in October, 2003.
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- Right from the beginning of this Bush-Rove fiasco, Wilson
stated that "Rove was behind it." How could he not be as the
president's "top political strategist?" How could he not know
of the fraudulent cite in Bush's baloney-bending State of the Union message
to lie and trick US into war? Relate these conspiratorial plots to the
Downing Street Memo, and the magnitude of the Bush administration lies
begin to clearly emerge.
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- Now, think of our dead soldiers. Think of those in our
military that have been maimed, crippled and dismembered. Think of how
this criminal regime has poisoned our military, abolished the Bill of Rights,
suspended the Geneva Conventions, and turned the entire world against US.
Impeachment is looking better every day!
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- Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.
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