SmileySam's Blog

Bush equals Manson ? Bugliosi's New Book Seems to Think So.

2008-05-28T15:35:28Z

Most of us know Vincent Bugliosi as the man who prosecuted Charlie Manson, Mass Murderer, and as the author of the book Helter Skelter. Tuesday Bugliosi's new book, " The Prosecution Of George W Bush For Murder", was released. The shit should hit the fan shortly if there is still justice in America. I have spent Monday morning reading excerpts, watching video, and digesting the information.

If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he'd still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did. www.huffingtonpost.com/vincent-bugliosi/the-prosecution-of-george_b_102427.

Bugliosi is not just some journalist, he is a accomplished prosecutor with a success record of "105 out of 106 felony jury trials, including 21 murder convictions without a single loss". That is pretty damn impressive. He is also a world renown, best selling writer of "True Crime" books. In his new book he lays out not just the crimes Bush has committed, but all the evidence, the complete prosecution plans right down to the questions he would ask Bush if he choose to take the stand. The book promises to raise many a eyebrow if not much more like swatting a hornet nest. We can only hope it hits the New York Times Best Sellers list quickly, making it impossible of the media to ignore.

Bugliosi does not write this as a partisan Democrat, but as someone with a eye toward justice, the kind of justice that criminal prosecutors across our country pursue daily here in America. He uses the real evidence not the impassioned claims of a zealot. In a article at Commondreams.org he lays out that evidence. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/09/8834/

According to the October 1, 2002 NIE, “Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [chemical and biological warfare] against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war.” The report concluded that Hussein was not planning to use any weapons of mass destruction; further, Hussein would only use weapons of mass destruction he was believed to have if he were first attacked, that is, he would only use them in self-defense.

Preparing its declassified version of the NIE for Congress, which became known as the White Paper, the Bush administration edited the classified NIE document in ways that significantly changed its inference and meaning, making the threat seem imminent and ominous.

On January 31, 2003, Bush met in the Oval Office with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In a memo summarizing the meeting discussion, Blair’s chief foreign policy advisor David Manning wrote that Bush and Blair expressed their doubts that any chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons would ever be found in Iraq, and that there was tension between Bush and Blair over finding some justification for the war that would be acceptable to other nations. Bush was so worried about the failure of the UN inspectors to find hard evidence against Hussein that he talked about three possible ways, Manning wrote, to “provoke a confrontation” with Hussein. One way, Bush said, was to fly “U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, [falsely] painted in UN colors. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach” of UN resolutions and that would justify war Bush was calculating to create a war, not prevent one.

Bugliosi goes on to talk about Hans Blix, the United Nation’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq and his message that Saddam and Iraq "had capitulated to all demands for professional, no-notice weapons inspections all over Iraq and agreed to increased aerial surveillance by the U.S. over the “no-fly” zones." and much, much more. Because of the Fair Use rules here at dkos you should follow the link and read the details for your self. The titles of a next couple paragraphs of evidence include "Hussein Disarms, so Bush ... Goes to War", "The Niger Allegation" and "The 9/11 Lie".

This is the kind of book that had to be done, and done by someone of Bugliosi's standing. Will it be the clarion call we have been waiting for ? Only time will tell, but if we buy enough copies it Will be noticed. The time has come for a book like this to hit the streets. Americans have never thought so little of a sitting President as the polls show, there is a reason for that and it could be that deep under their skin Americans know what Bush has done. Bugliosi points out over and over how both journalists and politicians will over and over point out what Bush has done, yet never call for the consequences of those actions.

Perhaps the most amazing thing to me about the belief of many that George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns. Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That's almost too self-evident to state. But he deserves much more than impeachment. I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That's just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he'd still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.

Let's look at the way some of the leading liberal lights (and, of course, the rest of the entire nation with the exception of those few recommending impeachment) have treated the issue of punishment for Bush's cardinal sins. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote about "the false selling of the Iraq War. We were railroaded into an unnecessary war." Fine, I agree. Now what? Krugman just goes on to the next paragraph. But if Bush falsely railroaded the nation into a war where over 100,000 people died, including 4,000 American soldiers, how can you go on to the next paragraph as if you had been writing that Bush spent the weekend at Camp David with his wife? For doing what Krugman believes Bush did, doesn't Bush have to be punished commensurately in some way? Are there no consequences for committing a crime of colossal proportions?

It all comes down to this final question and what we are going to do about it. "Are there no consequences for committing a crime of colossal proportions?"
You can both view a video of or listen Bugliosi at his website and I highly recommend both. I will honor our fallen Heroes by buying my copy of this book and by urging you to do the same. They deserve no less.
Bugliosi's website http://www.prosecutionofbush.com/index.php

Col. Davis " We can no longer say we "don’t do stuff like that"

2008-02-17T11:25:11Z

Colonel Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor in the Defense Department’s Office of Military Commissions, has seen the light of truth and switched sides. At one time Col. Morris was writng OpEds in praise of the treatment and proccesses that those held at Gitmo were to under go. During that time he wrote things like this:

Many critics disapprove of the potential admissibility of evidence obtained by coercion and hearsay. Any statement by a person whose freedom is restrained by someone in a position of authority can be viewed as the product of some degree of coercion. Deciding how far is too far is the challenge. I make the final decision on the evidence the prosecution will introduce. The defense may challenge this evidence and the military judge decides whether it is admitted. If it is admitted, both sides can argue how much weight, if any, the evidence deserves. If a conviction results, the accused has the assistance of counsel in four stages of post-trial appellate review. These are clearly robust safeguards.

None of this is any longer the truth. Colonel Davis has since given up that job and it appears the rules he set up have been changed.

In Dec. of last year Col. Morris wrote a OpEd in the LATimes. In it he revealed what he had once been gagged by the DOD from talking about, the reasons for his resignation.

I was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until Oct. 4, the day I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system. I resigned on that day because I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively or responsibly.

Finally, I resigned because of two memos signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England that placed the chief prosecutor -- that was me -- in a chain of command under Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes.( aka Waterboard Willie ) Haynes was a controversial nominee for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but his nomination died in January 2007, in part because of his role in authorizing the use of the aggressive interrogation techniques some call torture. AWOL Military Justice

There was much written about both the OpEd Col. Morris wrote. Now he has written one more OpEd, this time it's in the New York Times. His concern this time is about the use of evidence waterboarded, beaten, shocked, or otherwise tortured out of the Defendant or others. Titled "Unforgivable Behavior, Inadmissible Evidence", once again takes on the powers he once served honorably. It is my hope that you, the readers, will make this OpEd the topic of emails and blogs going across the world in the next couple days. With all the news of the FISA fiasco this issue is barely being noted by the world. When men like the Col. break ranks and speak out it behooves us to listen well to what they have to say.

The 1st two paragraphs of the newest OpEd lays out how Bush has changed or country for the worse. For those of us who lived through the Iranian Kidnapping Incident, it may strike you even deeper as it did me.

TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, in the final days of the Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A.’s Tehran station chief, Tom Ahern, faced his principal interrogator for the last time. The interrogator said the abuse Mr. Ahern had suffered was inconsistent with his own personal values and with the values of Islam and, as if to wipe the slate clean, he offered Mr. Ahern a chance to abuse him just as he had abused the hostages. Mr. Ahern looked the interrogator in the eyes and said, “We don’t do stuff like that.”

Today, Tom Ahern might have to say: “We don’t do stuff like that very often.” Or, “We generally don’t do stuff like that.” That is a shame. Virtues requiring caveats are not virtues. Saying a man is honest is a compliment. Saying a man is “generally” honest or honest “quite often” means he lies. The mistreatment of detainees, like honesty, is all or nothing: We either do stuff like that or we do not. It is in our national interest to restore our reputation for the latter. (All opinions here are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Air Force or Defense Department.)Unforgivable Behavior, Inadmissible Evidence

While I wish I could just cut and paste the whole thing here for all to read, I can't but the next paragraph in the article is just as important as the first two. Please read it closely and then go ahead and read the whole thing. Pay close attention to how Col. Davis ponders the costs using Torture. His look back at Iran and how it will affect us going forward should read into the Congressional Record so those that study history later will know some of us were aware of those costs, while other ignored them out of fear.

Some accounts of detainee abuse in the war on terrorism are overblown, but others are not. After humiliating prisoners at Abu Ghraib by forcing them to strip naked and lie in a pile like a stack of firewood or simulating the drowning of detainees to persuade them to talk, we can no longer say we “don’t do stuff like that” — and we do not have to look far to see the damage. The disclosure last month of a manual for Canadian diplomats listing the United States as a country where prisoners might face torture, referring specifically to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was an embarrassment on both sides of the border.

The Website Jurist had this to say after Col. Davis resigned last year.

For the majority of the prisoners at Guantánamo, the value of Davis’s resignation is that it may finally signal to the American public that politics rather than principle reigns at Guantánamo, and that decisions about the administration of justice at the camp are being made – largely outside of public view and without accountability – by political actors for nakedly political reasons. How else, for example, are we to explain the fact that every European who was dragged to Guantánamo has been returned to his home country, but that nearly ninety percent of the Yemenis who have been detained at the naval base remain there today – even though a number of them have actually been cleared for release by the military? http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/20...

Lastly I will leave you with a video of Colonel Davis taped in Dec. of last year. This is just part 1 of 2.

Part 2

For those interested in a more intellectual discussion Torture, Scott Horton has a recent review of a book called "Torture and Democracy" that I highly recommend.It ties together the Iranian Kidnapping, and what could end up as our future in a odd sort of way.

Another point: Everyone forgets that the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979 was the revolution against torture. When the Shah criticized Khomayni as a blackrobed Islamic medieval throwback, Khomayni replied, look who is talking, the man who tortures. This was powerful rhetoric for recruiting people, then as it is now. People joined the revolutionary opposition because of the Shah’s brutality, and they remembered who installed him. If anyone wants to know why Iranians hated the US so, all they have to do is ask what America’s role was in promoting torture in Iran. Torture not only shaped the revolution, it was the factor that has deeply poisoned the relationship of Iran with the West. So why trust the West again? And the Iranian leadership doesn’t.

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/h...