A Euro Cry for Impeachment

The top-level government memo marked "Secret & Strictly Personal," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "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." Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...."

For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, viewers inevitably ask me, "Isn't this grounds for impeachment?" -- vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a "high crime or misdemeanor."

The memo, uncovered this week by the (London) Times, goes on to describe an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony.

Here's more. "Bush had made up his mind to take military action. 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."Really? But Mr. Bush told us, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."A month ago, the Silberman-Robb Commission issued its report on WMD intelligence before the war, dismissing claims that Bush fixed the facts with this snooty, condescending conclusion written directly to the President, "After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons."

The invasion build-up was then set, says the memo, "beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections." Mission accomplished.
The Republicans impeached Bill Clinton over his cigar and Monica's affections. And the US media could print nothing else. Now, we have the stone, cold evidence of bending intelligence to sell us on death by the thousands, and neither a Republican Congress nor what is laughably called US journalism thought it worth a second look.

Click here and scroll down to view a copy of said memo.

Excerpts taken from an article By Greg Palast, Thursday, May 5, 2005, IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED."

Another extensive piece can be found at AlterNet.

However, it should be said that "While the memo makes observations about U.S. intentions toward Iraq, the document does not specify which Bush administration officials met with Dearlove."
The memo, in which British foreign-policy aide Matthew Rycroft summarized a July 23, 2002, meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair with top security advisers, reports on a U.S. visit by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service.

Taken from the Seattle Times
http://www.alternet.org/story/21976/
CNN