Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Kucinich vs. The Establishment: Impeachment Hearing On Friday

 


From http://www.prisonplanet.com/kucinich-vs-the-establishment-impeachment-hearing-on-friday.html


Kucinich vs. The Establishment: Impeachment Hearing On Friday





Congressman, supported by majority of American people, bravely out to ensure Bush goes down in history as liar and war criminal as Democrats rally to his defense


Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Wednesday, July 23, 2008


Congressman Dennis Kucinich will this Friday present his single article of impeachment concerning the Bush administration’s deliberate and unconstitutional lies that led us to war in Iraq, putting him in tandem with the majority of the American people, yet in the cross hairs of both Neo-Cons and Democrats who have tried to block his efforts at every turn.


Kucinich should be commended for his brave and restless pursuit of impeachment. Whether Bush had a few months left in office or a few years doesn’t matter one iota - the Congressman’s efforts are aimed squarely at ensuring Bush rightly goes down in history as the most flagrantly criminal and anti-American president in history, while also making sure that a repeat of the debacle we have witnessed over the past eight years is not allowed to happen again.


In a preamble posted on You Tube, Kucinich explains the foundation of his single article of impeachment, the deliberate behind-closed doors scheming and lies that were told in anticipation of the pre-planned invasion of Iraq, while the charade of UN weapons inspectors and diplomacy played out in public.


(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)








Watch the clip.




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Democrat elitists like Pelosi and Conyers are desperately trying to downplay Kucinich’s efforts and insist that impeachment is “off the table”.


When Kucinich spent four hours in June reading 35 articles of impeachment and demanding hearings, the Democrat controlled House almost instantly dispatched them for burial to the Judiciary Committee.


According to an Associated Press report, when Kucinich tried to introduce similar articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney last November, “Republicans, seeing a chance to force Democrats into an embarrassing debate, voted to bring up the resolution. Democrats countered by pushing through a motion to scuttle the bill from the floor.”


The bullshit they are trying to make us swallow is that Democrats are shunning Kucinich because they think a debate about impeachment would harm their chances of winning the presidency.


In reality, as far back as November 2005, polls showed that the majority of Americans supported impeachment on the basis of Bush lying about the invasion of Iraq, which is specifically what Kucinich’s single article of impeachment that he will present on Friday addresses.


Likewise, latest polls show that almost 70% of Americans oppose the war in Iraq, with anti-war sentiment swelling the longer the occupation drags on.


Support for a withdrawal from Iraq and the impeachment of George W. Bush is wildly popular with the majority of the electorate that will vote in November, so why are top Democrats doing everything in their power to prevent Kucinich from drawing attention to the matter?


Because they are nothing more than political whores for the same power structure served by the Neo-Cons, and want to advance the same agenda of pax-Americana, imperial bloodletting and domination demanded by the new world order and the Israeli AIPAC lobby, to which Pelosi and Conyers have pledged their full subservience.


Kucinich’s full article of impeachment concerning the lies that led us to war appears below.


———————————————————————-


CREATING A SECRET PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN TO MANUFACTURE A FALSE CASE FOR WAR AGAINST IRAQ


In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed”, has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, illegally spent public dollars on a secret propaganda program to manufacture a false cause for war against Iraq.


The Department of Defense (DOD) has engaged in a years-long secret domestic propaganda campaign to promote the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This secret program was defended by the White House Press Secretary following its exposure. This program follows the pattern of crimes detailed in Article I, II, IV and VIII.. The mission of this program placed it within the field controlled by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a White House task-force formed in August 2002 to market an invasion of Iraq to the American people. The group included Karl Rove, I. Lewis Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Stephen Hadley, Nicholas E. Calio, and James R. Wilkinson.


The WHIG produced white papers detailing so-called intelligence of Iraq’s nuclear threat that later proved to be false. This supposed intelligence included the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger as well as the claim that the high strength aluminum tubes Iraq purchased from China were to be used for the sole purpose of building centrifuges to enrich uranium. Unlike the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, the WHIG’s white papers provided “gripping images and stories” and used “literary license” with intelligence. The WHIG’s white papers were written at the same time and by the same people as speeches and talking points prepared for President Bush and some of his top officials.


The WHIG also organized a media blitz in which, between September 7-8, 2002, President Bush and his top advisers appeared on numerous interviews and all provided similarly gripping images about the possibility of nuclear attack by Iraq. The timing was no coincidence, as Andrew Card explained in an interview regarding waiting until after Labor Day to try to sell the American people on military action against Iraq, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”


September 7-8, 2002:
NBC’s “Meet the Press: Vice President Cheney accused Saddam of moving aggressively to develop nuclear weapons over the past 14 months to add to his stockpile of chemical and biological arms. CNN: Then-National Security Adviser Rice said, regarding the likelihood of Iraq obtaining a nuclear weapon, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”


CBS: President Bush declared that Saddam was “six months away from developing a weapon,” and cited satellite photos of construction in Iraq where weapons inspectors once visited as evidence that Saddam was trying to develop nuclear arms.


The Pentagon military analyst propaganda program was revealed in an April 20, 2002, New York Times article. The program illegally involved “covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recruited 75 retired military officers and gave them talking points to deliver on Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and MSNBC, and according to the New York Times report, which has not been disputed by the Pentagon or the White House, “Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.”


According to the Pentagon’s own internal documents, the military analysts were considered “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who would deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.” In fact, they did deliver the themes and the messages but did not reveal that the Pentagon had provided them with their talking points. Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and Fox News military analyst described this as follows: “It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’”


Congress has restricted annual appropriations bills since 1951 with this language: “No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress.”


A March 21, 2005, report by the Congressional Research Service states that “publicity or propaganda is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) selfaggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) “covert propaganda.”


These concerns about “covert propaganda” were also the basis for the GAO’s standard for determining when government-funded video news releases are illegal:


“The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the viewing audience to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the information. The prepackaged news stories are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public. When the television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual — the essential fact of attribution is missing.”


The White House’s own Office of Legal Council stated in a memorandum written in 2005 following the controversy over the Armstrong Williams scandal: “Over the years, GAO has interpreted ‘publicity or propaganda’ restrictions to preclude use of appropriated funds for, among other things, so-called ‘covert propaganda.’ … Consistent with that view, the OLC determined in 1988 that a statutory prohibition on using appropriated funds for ‘publicity or propaganda’ precluded undisclosed agency funding of advocacy by third-party groups. We stated that ‘covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties’ would run afoul of restrictions on using appropriated funds for ‘propaganda.’”


Asked about the Pentagon’s propaganda program at White House press briefing in April 2008, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino defended it, not by arguing that it was legal but by suggesting that it “should” be: “Look, I didn’t know look, I think that you guys should take a step back and look at this look, DOD has made a decision, they’ve decided to stop this program. But I would say that one of the things that we try to do in the administration is get information out to a variety of people so that everybody else can call them and ask their opinion about something. And I don’t think that that should be against the law. And I think that it’s absolutely appropriate to provide information to people who are seeking it and are going to be providing their opinions on it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that all of those military analysts ever agreed with the administration. I think you can go back and look and think that a lot of their analysis was pretty tough on the administration. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t talk to
people.”


In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and Commander in Chief, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.


Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

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