Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense? - Political Discussion

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Learyfan
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Registered: 04/20/01
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Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?

#1639271 - 06/17/03 09:06 AM (22 years, 2 days ago)

cnn.com story

(FindLaw) -- President George W. Bush
has got a very serious problem. Before
asking Congress for a joint resolution
authorizing the use of U.S. military forces
in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal
statements about the reason the United
States needed to pursue the most radical
actions any nation can undertake -- acts of
war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his
statements appear to be false. In the
past, Bush's White House has been
very good at sweeping ugly issues like
this under the carpet, and out of sight.
But it is not clear that they will be able
to make the question of what
happened to Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction
(WMDs) go away -- unless, perhaps,
they start another war.

That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are
answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President
Bush's warmaking.

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held
to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot
stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon
Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down
from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate
forced his resignation.

Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the
story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to
draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.

President Bush's statements on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction

Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about weapons of
mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements
below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and
declarative as I had recalled.

Bush's statements, in chronological order, were:

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used
for the production of biological weapons."

United Nations address, September 12, 2002

"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding
the facilities used to make more of those weapons."

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized
Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons
the dictator tells us he does not have."

Radio address, October 5, 2002

"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological
weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical
agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing
fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to
disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're
concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions
targeting the United States."

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons
program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi
nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his
nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is
rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program
in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum
tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used
to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

Cincinnati, Ohio speech, October 7, 2002

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the
materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX
nerve agent."

State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003

"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."

Address to the nation, March 17, 2003

Should the president get the benefit of the doubt?

When these statements were made, Bush's let-me-mince-no-words posture
was convincing to many Americans. Yet much of the rest of the world, and
many other Americans, doubted them.

As Bush's veracity was being debated at the United Nations, it was also
being debated on campuses -- including those where I happened to be
lecturing at the time.

On several occasions, students asked me the following question: Should they
believe the president of the United States? My answer was that they should
give the President the benefit of the doubt, for several reasons deriving from
the usual procedures that have operated in every modern White House and
that, I assumed, had to be operating in the Bush White House, too.

First, I assured the students that these statements had all been carefully
considered and crafted. Presidential statements are the result of a process,
not a moment's though. White House speechwriters process raw
information, and their statements are passed on to senior aides who have
both substantive knowledge and political insights. And this all occurs before
the statement ever reaches the President for his own review and possible
revision.

Second, I explained that -- at least in every White House and administration
with which I was familiar, from Truman to Clinton -- statements with national
security implications were the most carefully considered of all. The White
House is aware that, in making these statements, the president is speaking
not only to the nation, but also to the world.

Third, I pointed out to the students, these statements are typically corrected
rapidly if they are later found to be false. And in this case, far from
backpedaling from the President's more extreme claims, Bush's press
secretary, Ari Fleischer had actually, at times, been even more emphatic than
the President had. For example, on January 9, 2003, Fleischer stated, during
his press briefing, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

In addition, others in the Bush administration were similarly quick to back the
President up, in some cases with even more unequivocal statements.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed that Saddam had
WMDs -- and even went so far as to claim he knew "where they are; they're
in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."

Finally, I explained to the students that the political risk was so great that, to
me, it was inconceivable that Bush would make these statements if he didn't
have damn solid intelligence to back him up. Presidents do not stick their
necks out only to have them chopped off by political opponents on an issue
as important as this, and if there was any doubt, I suggested, Bush's political
advisers would be telling him to hedge. Rather than stating a matter as fact,
he would be say: "I have been advised," or "Our intelligence reports strongly
suggest," or some such similar hedge. But Bush had not done so.

So what are we now to conclude if Bush's statements are found, indeed, to
be as grossly inaccurate as they currently appear to have been?

After all, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and given Bush's
statements, they should not have been very hard to find -- for they existed in
large quantities, "thousands of tons" of chemical weapons alone. Moreover,
according to the statements, telltale facilities, groups of scientists who could
testify, and production equipment also existed.

So where is all that? And how can we reconcile the White House's
unequivocal statements with the fact that they may not exist?

There are two main possibilities. One, that something is seriously wrong
within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems
difficult to believe. The other is that the president has deliberately misled the
nation, and the world.

A desperate search for WMDs has so far yielded little, if any, fruit

Even before formally declaring war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the
president had dispatched American military special forces into Iraq to search
for weapons of mass destruction, which he knew would provide the primary
justification for Operation Freedom. None were found.

Throughout Operation Freedom's penetration of Iraq and drive toward
Baghdad, the search for WMDs continued. None were found.

As the coalition forces gained control of Iraqi cities and countryside, special
search teams were dispatched to look for WMDs. None were found.

During the past two and a half months, according to reliable news reports,
military patrols have visited over 300 suspected WMD sites throughout Iraq.
None of the prohibited weapons were found there.

British and American press reaction to the missing WMDs

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also under serious attack in England,
which he dragged into the war unwillingly, based on the missing WMDs. In
Britain, the missing WMDs are being treated as scandalous; so far, the
reaction in the U.S. has been milder.

New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, has taken Bush sharply to task,
asserting that it is "long past time for this administration to be held
accountable." "The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat,"
Krugman argued. "If that claim was fraudulent," he continued, "the selling of
the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history -- worse
than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra." But most media outlets have
reserved judgment as the search for WMDs in Iraq continues.

Still, signs do not look good. Last week, the Pentagon announced it was
shifting its search from looking for WMD sites, to looking for people who
can provide leads as to where the missing WMDs might be.

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John
Bolton, while offering no new evidence, assured Congress that WMDs
would indeed be found. And he advised that a new unit called the Iraq
Survey Group, composed of some 1400 experts and technicians from
around the world, is being deployed to assist in the searching.

But, as Time magazine reported, the leads are running out. According to
Time, the Marine general in charge explained that "[w]e've been to virtually
every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad,"
and remarked flatly, "They're simply not there."

Perhaps most troubling, the president has failed to provide any explanation
of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable
to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant
thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos
innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as
he led the world to believe?

The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements and
reality only increases the sense that the President's misstatements may
actually have been intentional lies.

Investigating The Iraqi War intelligence reports

Even now, while the jury is still out as to whether intentional misconduct
occurred, the President has a serious credibility problem. Newsweek
magazine posed the key questions: "If America has entered a new age of
pre-emption ?when it must strike first because it cannot afford to find out
later if terrorists possess nuclear or biological weapons?exact intelligence is
critical. How will the United States take out a mad despot or a nuclear bomb
hidden in a cave if the CIA can't say for sure where they are? And how will
Bush be able to maintain support at home and abroad?"

In an apparent attempt to bolster the President's credibility, and his own,
Secretary Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense Department
investigation into what went wrong with the pre-war intelligence. New York
Times columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort about on par with O.J.'s
looking for his wife's killer. But there may be a difference: Unless the
members of Administration can find someone else to blame -- informants,
surveillance technology, lower-level personnel, you name it -- they may not
escape fault themselves.

Congressional committees are also looking into the pre-war intelligence
collection and evaluation. Senator John Warner, R-Virginia, chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee and the Senate
Intelligence Committee would jointly investigate the situation. And the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence plans an investigation.

These investigations are certainly appropriate, for there is potent evidence of
either a colossal intelligence failure or misconduct -- and either would be a
serious problem. When the best case scenario seems to be mere
incompetence, investigations certainly need to be made.

Sen. Bob Graham -- a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee -- told CNN's Aaron Brown, that while he still hopes they finds
WMDs or at least evidence thereof, he has also contemplated three other
possible alternative scenarios:

One is that [the WMDs] were spirited out of Iraq, which maybe is the worst
of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were trying to avoid,
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could be in the hands of
dozens of groups. Second, that we had bad intelligence. Or third, that the
intelligence was satisfactory but that it was manipulated, so as just to present
to the American people and to the world those things that made the case for
the necessity of war against Iraq.

Sen. Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final
scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN "there's been a
pattern of manipulation by this administration."

Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times,
he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national
intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing
it, Graham requested that the Bush administration declassify the information
before the Senate voted on the administration's resolution requesting use of
the military in Iraq.

But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter
discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only
addressed "findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and
ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham
suggested that the Administration, by cherrypicking only evidence to its own
liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion.

Recent statements by one of the high-level officials privy to the decision
making process that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly suggest manipulation,
if not misuse of the intelligence agencies. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz, during an interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair
magazine, said: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the
U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone
could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason."
More recently, Wolfowitz added what most have believed all along, that the
reason we went after Iraq is that "[t]he country swims on a sea of oil."

Worse than Watergate? A potential huge scandal if WMDs are still
missing

Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three
decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that
could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration
intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to
authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq,
then that would be a monstrous misdeed.

This administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped
being dragged into Enron, which was not, in any event, his doing. But the
war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held
accountable.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based
on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of
national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under
the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal
criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which
renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in
any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to
be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and
FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or
misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of
presidential power.

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political
purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking
might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or
their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically
desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.

Fire the liar

--------------------
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