posted March 07, 2006 08:03 AM              

The Impeachment of George W. Bush
Elizabeth Holtzman

Finally, it has started. People have begun to speak of impeaching President George W. Bush--not in hushed whispers but openly, in newspapers, on the Internet, in ordinary conversations and even in Congress. As a former member of Congress who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon, I believe they are right to do so.

I can still remember the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach during those proceedings, when it became clear that the President had so systematically abused the powers of the presidency and so threatened the rule of law that he had to be removed from office. As a Democrat who opposed many of President Nixon's policies, I still found voting for his impeachment to be one of the most sobering and unpleasant tasks I ever had to undertake. None of the members of the committee took pleasure in voting for impeachment; after all, Democrat or Republican, Nixon was still our President.

At the time, I hoped that our committee's work would send a strong signal to future Presidents that they had to obey the rule of law. I was wrong.

Like many others, I have been deeply troubled by Bush's breathtaking scorn for our international treaty obligations under the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions. I have also been disturbed by the torture scandals and the violations of US criminal laws at the highest levels of our government they may entail, something I have written about in these pages [see Holtzman, "Torture and Accountability," July 18/25, 2005]. These concerns have been compounded by growing evidence that the President deliberately misled the country into the war in Iraq. But it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)--and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws--that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate.

As a matter of constitutional law, these and other misdeeds constitute grounds for the impeachment of President Bush. A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law--and repeatedly violates the law--thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal from office. A high crime or misdemeanor is an archaic term that means a serious abuse of power, whether or not it is also a crime, that endangers our constitutional system of government.

The framers of our Constitution feared executive power run amok and provided the remedy of impeachment to protect against it. While impeachment is a last resort, and must never be lightly undertaken (a principle ignored during the proceedings against President Bill Clinton), neither can Congress shirk its responsibility to use that tool to safeguard our democracy. No President can be permitted to commit high crimes and misdemeanors with impunity.

posted March 07, 2006 08:05 AM              

On December 17 President Bush acknowledged that he repeatedly authorized wiretaps, without obtaining a warrant, of American citizens engaged in international calls. On the face of it, these warrantless wiretaps violate FISA, which requires court approval for national security wiretaps and sets up a special procedure for obtaining it. Violation of the law is a felony.

While many facts about these wiretaps are unknown, it now appears that thousands of calls were monitored and that the information obtained may have been widely circulated among federal agencies. It also appears that a number of government officials considered the warrantless wiretaps of dubious legality. Reportedly, several people in the National Security Agency refused to participate in them, and a deputy attorney general even declined to sign off on some aspects of these wiretaps. The special FISA court has raised concerns as well, and a judge on that court has resigned, apparently in protest.

FISA was enacted in 1978, against the backdrop of Watergate, to prevent the widespread abuses in domestic surveillance that were disclosed in Congressional hearings. Among his other abuses of power, President Nixon ordered the FBI to conduct warrantless wiretaps of seventeen journalists and White House staffers. Although Nixon claimed the wiretaps were done for national security purposes, they were undertaken for political purposes and were illegal. Just as Bush's warrantless wiretaps grew out of the 9/11 attacks, Nixon's illegal wiretaps grew out of the Vietnam War and the opposition to it. In fact, the first illegal Nixon wiretap was of a reporter who, in 1969, revealed the secret bombing of Cambodia, a program that President Nixon wanted to hide from the American people and Congress. Nixon's illegal wiretaps formed one of the many grounds for the articles of impeachment voted against him by a bipartisan majority of the House Judiciary Committee.

Congress explicitly intended FISA to strike a balance between the legitimate requirements of national security on the one hand and the need both to protect against presidential abuses and to safeguard personal privacy on the other. From Watergate, Congress knew that a President was fully capable of wiretapping under a false claim of national security. That is why the law requires court review of national security wiretaps. Congress understood that because of the huge invasion of privacy involved in wiretaps, there should be checks in place on the executive branch to protect against overzealous and unnecessary wiretapping. At the same time, Congress created special procedures to facilitate obtaining these warrants when justified. Congress also recognized the need for emergency action: The President was given the power to start a wiretap without a warrant as long as court permission was obtained within three days.

FISA can scarcely be claimed to create any obstacle to justified national security wiretaps. Since 1978, when the law was enacted, more than 10,000 national security warrants have been approved by the FISA court; only four have been turned down.

Two legal arguments have been offered for the President's right to violate the law, both of which have been seriously questioned by members of Congress of both parties and by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service in a recent analysis. The first--highly dangerous in its sweep and implications--is that the President has the constitutional right as Commander in Chief to break any US law on the grounds of national security. As the CRS analysis points out, the Supreme Court has never upheld the President's right to do this in the area of wiretapping, nor has it ever granted the President a "monopoly over war-powers" or recognized him as "Commander in Chief of the country" as opposed to Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. If the President is permitted to break the law on wiretapping on his own say-so, then a President can break any other law on his own say-so--a formula for dictatorship. This is not a theoretical danger: President Bush has recently claimed the right as Commander in Chief to violate the McCain amendment banning torture and degrading treatment of detainees. Nor is the requirement that national security be at stake any safeguard. We saw in Watergate how President Nixon falsely and cynically used that argument to cover up ordinary crimes and political misdeeds.

posted March 07, 2006 08:11 AM              

Ours is a government of limited power. We learn in elementary school the concept of checks and balances. Those checks do not vanish in wartime; the President's role as Commander in Chief does not swallow up Congress's powers or the Bill of Rights. Given the framers' skepticism about executive power and warmaking--there was no functional standing army at the beginning of the nation, so the President's powers as Commander in Chief depended on Congress's willingness to create and expand an army--it is impossible to find in the Constitution unilateral presidential authority to act against US citizens in a way that violates US laws, even in wartime. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently wrote, "A state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

The second legal argument in defense of Bush's warrantless wiretaps rests on an erroneous statutory interpretation. According to this argument, Congress authorized the Administration to place wiretaps without court approval when it adopted the 2001 resolution authorizing military force against the Taliban and Al Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks. In the first place, the force resolution doesn't mention wiretaps. And given that Congress has traditionally placed so many restrictions on wiretapping because of its extremely intrusive qualities, there would undoubtedly have been vigorous debate if anyone thought the force resolution would roll back FISA. In fact, the legislative history of the force resolution shows that Congress had no intention of broadening the scope of presidential warmaking powers to cover activity in the United States. According to Senator Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader who negotiated the resolution with the White House, the Administration wanted to include language explicitly enlarging the President's warmaking powers to include domestic activity. That language was rejected. Obviously, if the Administration felt it already had the power, it would not have tried to insert the language into the resolution.

What then was the reason for avoiding the FISA court? President Bush suggested that there was no time to get the warrants. But this cannot be true, because FISA permits wiretaps without warrants in emergencies as long as court approval is obtained within three days. Moreover, there is evidence that the President knew the warrantless wiretapping was illegal. In 2004, when the violations had been going on for some time, President Bush told a Buffalo, New York, audience that "a wiretap requires a court order." He went on to say that "when we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

Indeed, the claim that to protect Americans the President needs to be able to avoid court review of his wiretap applications rings hollow. It is unclear why or in what way the existing law, requiring court approval, is not satisfactory. And, if the law is too cumbersome or inapplicable to modern technology, then it is unclear why the President did not seek to revise it instead of disregarding it and thus jeopardizing many otherwise legitimate anti-terrorism prosecutions. His defenders' claim that changing the law would have given away secrets is unacceptable. There are procedures for considering classified information in Congress. Since no good reason has been given for avoiding the FISA court, it is reasonable to suspect that the real reason may have been that the wiretaps, like those President Nixon ordered in Watergate, involved journalists or anti-Bush activists or were improper in other ways and would not have been approved.

It is also curious that President Bush seems so concerned with the imaginary dangers to Americans posed by US courts but remains so apparently unconcerned about fixing some of the real holes in our security. For example, FBI computers--which were unable to search two words at once, like "flight schools," a defect that impaired the Bureau's ability to identify the 9/11 attackers beforehand--still haven't been brought into the twenty-first century. Given Vice President Cheney's longstanding ambition to throw off the constraints on executive power imposed in response to Watergate and the Vietnam War, it may well be that the warrantless wiretap program has had much more to do with restoring the trappings of the Nixon imperial presidency than it ever had to do with protecting national security.

Con't

posted March 07, 2006 08:13 AM              

Subverting Our Democracy

A President can commit no more serious crime against our democracy than lying to Congress and the American people to get them to support a military action or war. It is not just that it is cowardly and abhorrent to trick others into giving their lives for a nonexistent threat, or even that making false statements might in some circumstances be a crime. It is that the decision to go to war is the gravest decision a nation can make, and in a democracy the people and their elected representatives, when there is no imminent attack on the United States to repel, have the right to make it. Given that the consequences can be death for hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of people--as well as the diversion of vast sums of money to the war effort--the fraud cannot be tolerated. That both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were guilty of misleading the nation into military action and neither was impeached for it makes it more, not less, important to hold Bush accountable.

Once it was clear that no weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, President Bush tried to blame "bad intelligence" for the decision to go to war, apparently to show that the WMD claim was not a deliberate deception. But bad intelligence had little or nothing to do with the main arguments used to win popular support for the invasion of Iraq.

First, there was no serious intelligence--good or bad--to support the Administration's suggestion that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were in cahoots. Nonetheless, the Administration repeatedly tried to claim the connection to show that the invasion was a justified response to 9/11 (like the declaration of war against Japan for Pearl Harbor). The claim was a sheer fabrication.

Second, there was no reliable intelligence to support the Administration's claim that Saddam was about to acquire nuclear weapons capability. The specter of the "mushroom cloud," which frightened many Americans into believing that the invasion of Iraq was necessary for our self-defense, was made up out of whole cloth. As for the biological and chemical weapons, even if, as reported, the CIA director told the President that these existed in Iraq, the Administration still had plenty of information suggesting the contrary.

The deliberateness of the deception has also been confirmed by a British source: the Downing Street memo, the official record of Prime Minister Tony Blair's July 2002 meeting with his top Cabinet officials. At the meeting the chief of British intelligence, who had just returned from the United States, reported that "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." In other words, the Bush Administration was reported to be in the process of cooking up fake intelligence and facts to justify going to war in Iraq.

During the Nixon impeachment proceedings, I drafted the resolution of impeachment to hold President Nixon accountable for concealing from Congress the bombing of Cambodia he initiated. But the committee did not approve it, probably because it might appear political--in other words, stemming from opposition to the war instead of to the President's abuse of his warmaking powers.

posted March 07, 2006 08:17 AM              

Upon assuming the presidency, Bush took an oath of office in which he swore to take care that the laws would be faithfully executed. Impeachment cannot be used to remove a President for maladministration, as the debates on ratifying the Constitution show. But President Bush has been guilty of such gross incompetence or reckless indifference to his obligation to execute the laws faithfully as to call into question whether he takes his oath seriously or is capable of doing so.

The most egregious example is the conduct of the war in Iraq. Unconscionably and unaccountably, the Administration failed to provide US soldiers with bulletproof vests or appropriately armored vehicles. A recent Pentagon study disclosed that proper bulletproof vests would have saved hundreds of lives. Why wasn't the commencement of hostilities postponed until the troops were properly outfitted? There are numerous suggestions that the timing was prompted by political, not military, concerns. The United States was under no imminent threat of attack by Saddam Hussein, and the Administration knew it. They delayed the marketing of the war until Americans finished their summer vacations because "you don't introduce new products in August." As the Downing Street memo revealed, the timeline for the war was set to start thirty days before the 2002 Congressional elections.

And there was no serious plan for the aftermath of the war, a fact also noted in the Downing Street memo. The President's failure as Commander in Chief to protect the troops by arming them properly, and his failure to plan for the occupation, cost dearly in lives and taxpayer dollars. This was not mere negligence or oversight--in other words, maladministration--but reflected a reckless and grotesque disregard for the welfare of the troops and an utter indifference to the need for proper governance of a country after occupation. As such, these failures violated the requirements of the President's oath of office. If they are proven to be the product of political objectives, they could constitute impeachable offenses on those grounds alone.

Torture and Other Abuses of Power

President Bush recently proclaimed, "We do not torture." In view of the revelations of the CIA's secret jails and practice of rendition, not to mention the Abu Ghraib scandal, the statement borders on the absurd, recalling Nixon's famous claim, "I am not a crook." It has been well documented that abuse (including torture) of detainees by US personnel in connection with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has been systemic and widespread. Under the War Crimes Act of 1996 it is a crime for any US national to order or engage in the murder, torture or inhuman treatment of a detainee. (When a detainee death results, the act imposes the death penalty.) In addition, anyone in the chain of command who condones the abuse rather than stopping it could also be in violation of the act. The act simply implements the Geneva Conventions, which are the law of the land.

The evidence before us now suggests that the President himself may have authorized detainee abuse. In January 2002, after the Afghanistan war had begun, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush in writing that US mistreatment of detainees might be criminally prosecutable under the War Crimes Act. Rather than order the possibly criminal behavior to stop, which under the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes Act the President was obligated to do, Bush authorized an "opt-out" of the Geneva Conventions to try to shield the Americans who were abusing detainees from prosecution. In other words, the President's response to reports of detainee abuse was to prevent prosecution of the abusers, thereby implicitly condoning the abuse and authorizing its continuation. If torture or inhuman treatment of prisoners took place as a result of the President's conduct, then he himself may have violated the War Crimes Act, along with those who actually inflicted the abuse.

There are many other indications that the President has knowingly condoned detainee abuse. For example, he never removed Defense Secretary Rumsfeld from office or disciplined him, even though Rumsfeld accepted responsibility for the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, admitted hiding a detainee from the Red Cross--a violation of the Geneva Conventions and possibly the War Crimes Act, if the detainee was being abused--and issued orders (later withdrawn) for Guantánamo interrogations that violated the Geneva Conventions and possibly the War Crimes Act.

More recently, the President opposed the McCain Amendment barring torture when it was first proposed, and he tacitly supported Vice President Cheney's efforts to get language into the bill that would allow the CIA to torture or degrade detainees. Now, in his signing statement, the President announced that he has the right to violate the new law, claiming once again the right as Commander in Chief to break laws when it suits him.

Furthermore, despite the horrors of the Abu Ghraib scandal, no higher-ups have been held accountable. Only one officer of any significant rank has been punished. It is as though the Watergate inquiry stopped with the burglars, as the Nixon coverup tried and failed to accomplish. President Bush has made no serious effort to insure that the full scope of the scandal is uncovered or to hold any higher-ups responsible, perhaps because responsibility goes right to the White House.

It is imperative that a full investigation be undertaken of Bush's role in the systemic torture and abuse of detainees. Violating his oath of office, the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes Act would constitute impeachable offenses.

posted March 07, 2006 08:45 AM              

quote:

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Liberals are left of center Cardinalgal. I love liberals, like to talk to them, see their points, approve their goals, which are the same goals as conservatives. We differ on how to bring those goals into reality.

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posted March 07, 2006 10:04 AM            

However, none of what this leftist has said is going to stick because it's a pack of lies.

The Iraqi War is in no way an illegal war, does not in any way violate UN treaties. In fact, it upholds UN Resolution 687 and 1441 where the UN called on all member states to go to the aid of Kuwait. We did and Saddam signed a CEASEFIRE AGREEMENT which is not a peace agreement but a temporary halt to hostilities while Saddam was given time to correct a long list of things he agreed to do. He didn't do any of it. During this period, a STATE OF WAR WAS STILL IN EFFECT held in abeyance only by the ceasefire which is of a temporary nature.

If attempts were made to impeach Bush on that charge..violation of international law...or violation of treaties, the entire Congress of the United States...save a few would have to undergo a similar process because Congress authorized the war.

If attempts were made to impeach Bush for misleading the nation into war, that charge would fail and fall under it's own weight. Bush did not lie about WMD, did not lie about Saddam seeking yellow cake from Niger and in fact, the case for taking Saddam out based on intelligence briefings, was stronger than Bush actually made.

We have learned from the British that Saddam Hussein has sought uranium from Africa. An entirely true statement..and one the British stand behind to this day.

So, that argument goes up in smoke.

As for all the caterwauling about a domestic spy program..i.e., spying on little old grannies, that's just utter BS. As for bypassing the FISA court, that isn't going to fly either. The United States Supreme Court has ruled on several occasions the President has inherent authority..and it's extraordinary authority to wage war when authorized by Congress. Carter and Clinton both signed Executive Orders permitting warrantless searches...searches, wiretaps and monitoring without first obtaining a court order...and such warrantless searches were carried out during their administrations. Further, the specific language of the authorization to use military force includes this wording.

"Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

Whereas the President and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;"

The use of intelligence...gathered by wiretap, by monitoring of email or other means IS both appropriate...and necessary and is, by definition, authorized. That charge is going no where. If Congress attempted to impeach and convict the president on that charge, Congress would find itself out on their @sses in the next election.

Now Cardinalgal, these dreary rants from the leftists don't serve a better purpose than to make leftists look foolish, look desperate, look like they're bodering on insanity. These are not issues of fine lines of distinction between legal and illegal. The president is clearly authorized by the Constitution, by statute and also, the courts have upheld the president's inherent power to monitor phone conversations without a warrant. I've cited the cases here before and the court said the president has the inherent authority...and went on to say the court would not/could not infringe on the president's inherent authority.

So, perhaps this makes powerless leftists feel better, makes leftists feel more powerful as they rant, rave and accuse the president with lying rhetoric they can't prove and lying rhetoric which is already disproved, so be it. Expect some more lying leftists to hit the unemployment lines after the next election.

I always know when I see a leftist whine about Clinton being impeached that I'm in the presence of a true leftist Kool-Aid drinker.

Clinton was impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. Clinton committed perjury in a court of law...under oath to tell the truth. That's also obstruction of justice. Both are felonies in the United States and both perfectly fit the term "high crimes". It's made much worse because Commander Corruption was an attorney and knew his actions were both illegal and impeachable offenses..when he committed them.

posted March 07, 2006 10:47 AM              

quote:

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none of what this leftist has said is going to stick because it's a pack of lies

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I thought we established she's a Liberal jwhop, and you were the one who cited the difference between Leftists and Liberals I believe

quote:

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The Iraqi War is in no way an illegal war, does not in any way violate UN treaties.

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We went to 'war' without waiting for a 2nd UN resolution. The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter. Resolution 1441 – the resolution which pressured Iraq into resuming weapons inspections – does not by itself authorize military intervention. UK lawyer Phil Shiner said in 2003 whilst the controversy was headline news,

"If the Security Council mean to authorize force they will do so using clear words; it's the phrase ‘all necessary means'. Now, the UK and the US thought about including that phrase in resolution 1441 in November, and again in this draft, and they backed off on both occasions, because they know they would not get an authorization passed by the Security Council." The interview went on to say that "Mr Shiner points out that when resolution 1441 was presented to the Council, both Washington and Downing Street insisted there were no hidden triggers for war in the text. The draft wording of a new resolution being pushed by the US and UK does not indicate any change from this position.

"As this resolution does no more than recall 1441 and the background, and notes that Iraq has had its final opportunity, it's outrageous for the UK and US to try and persuade us all that somehow they have got an authorization of force, when they haven't."

"What they [the UK and US] are trying, really, is a confidence trick. They hope that by talking about the need for a second resolution, that the public will not ask themselves the question, ‘yes, but what's in the second resolution'. It doesn't matter whether it's the second or the 102nd, the question is have they got an authorization of force, and the answer is clearly not."

quote:

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Bush did not lie about WMD,

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Once again, where are they then?

quote:

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did not lie about Saddam seeking yellow cake from Niger

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quote:

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We have learned from the British that Saddam Hussein has sought uranium from Africa. An entirely true statement..and one the British stand behind to this day.

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Well subsequent investigations have provided this information; I'll post the article as a whole separately for you.

"A row has broken out between France and Italy over whose intelligence service is to blame for the Niger uranium controversy, which led to Britain and America claiming wrongly that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy material for nuclear bombs."

"American intelligence officials were further misled over Saddam's supposed attempt to buy uranium when France - which effectively controls mining in Niger - told Washington that it had reason to believe that Iraq was trying to do so. "Only later did Paris inform Washington that its belief had been based on the same documents that had tricked the Americans and the British," an Italian diplomat said."

So in your words jwhop, there goes that argument up in smoke!

Cont'

posted March 07, 2006 10:48 AM              

quote:

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As for all the caterwauling about a domestic spy program..i.e., spying on little old grannies, that's just utter BS.

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Prove it. Several other sources have, it would appear, gathered hard evidence to the contrary.

quote:

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Now Cardinalgal, these dreary rants from the leftists don't serve a better purpose than to make leftists look foolish, look desperate, look like they're bodering on insanity.

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It would appear though that these 'dreary rants' have you Republicans somewhat rattled I believe he can monitor phone conversations without a warrant... but only

quote:

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as long as court permission was obtained within three days.

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quote:

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I always know when I see a leftist whine about Clinton being impeached that I'm in the presence of a true leftist Kool-Aid drinker

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posted March 07, 2006 10:48 AM              

A row has broken out between France and Italy over whose intelligence service is to blame for the Niger uranium controversy, which led to Britain and America claiming wrongly that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy material for nuclear bombs.

Italian diplomats say that France was behind forged documents which at first appeared to prove that Iraq was seeking "yellow-cake" uranium in Niger - evidence used by Britain and America to promote the case for last year's Gulf war.

They say that France's intelligence services used an Italian-born middle-man to circulate a mixture of genuine and bogus documents to "trap" the two leading proponents of war with Saddam into making unsupportable claims.

They have passed to The Sunday Telegraph a photograph which they claim shows the Italian go-between, sometimes known as "Giacomo" - who cannot be identified for legal reasons - meeting a senior French intelligence officer based in Brussels. "The French hoped that the bulk of the documents would be exposed as false, since many of them obviously were," an Italian official said.

"Their aim was to make the allies look ridiculous in order to undermine their case for war."

According to an account given to The Sunday Telegraph, France was driven by "a cold desire to protect their privileged, dominant trading relationship with Saddam, which in the case of war would have been at risk".

The allegation, which has infuriated French officials, follows reports last month that "Giacomo" claimed to have been unwittingly used by Sismi, Italy's foreign intelligence service, to circulate the false documents.

The papers found their way to the CIA and to MI6, and in September 2002 Tony Blair accused Saddam of seeking "significant quantities" of uranium from an undisclosed African country - in fact, Niger. President George W Bush made a similar claim in his State of the Union address to Congress four months later, using information passed to him by MI6.

The International Atomic Energy Agency expressed doubts over the documents' authenticity, however, and in March 2003 declared them false.

The suggestion that Italy, driven by its government's support for America, had forged the documents to help to justify the war in Iraq, has caused a furore and has now led to the revelation of new information about "Giacomo".

The Sunday Telegraph has been told that the man draws a monthly salary of €4,000 (£2,715) from the DGSE - the French equivalent of MI6 - for which he is said to have worked for the past five years.

He had an expense account and received bonuses in return for carrying out orders allegedly given him by the head of the French services' operations in Belgium.

"Giacomo" could not be reached for comment on the claims last week at either his home in Formello, a suburb on the northern edge of Rome, or at his second home in Luxembourg.

He is said to be wanted for questioning over the Niger affair by Italian investigating magistrates, and is believed to be in the United States.

"Giacomo" was allegedly first engaged by the French secret service to investigate genuine fears of illicit trafficking in uranium from Niger. He collected a dossier of documents - some real, some forged by a diplomat - by offering large sums of money to Niger officials.

American intelligence officials were further misled over Saddam's supposed attempt to buy uranium when France - which effectively controls mining in Niger - told Washington that it had reason to believe that Iraq was trying to do so. "Only later did Paris inform Washington that its belief had been based on the same documents that had tricked the Americans and the British," an Italian diplomat said.

"This was la grande trappola [the big trap]. The Americans were now convinced by the French that Saddam really was trying to buy uranium. They thought the French must be right, since not even a gram of uranium in Niger could be shifted without their knowledge."

British officials still say that the claim about Iraqi uranium purchases rested on a second source, not just the now-discredited documents. Intelligence officials from some other Western countries now believe, however, that the second source was also France - part of a "sinister trap" for Mr Blair.

posted March 07, 2006 10:50 AM              

CIA man denies Niger-Iraq uranium link
By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 07/07/2003)

American and British accusations that Iraq recently tried to buy uranium in the African nation of Niger were challenged yesterday by a senior CIA envoy sent to investigate the claim.

Breaking his silence, Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador, said he travelled to Niger on CIA orders in February 2002 and returned convinced that talk of Iraqi uranium purchases was false.

The mission was organised by the CIA at the bidding of the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, a leading hawk on Iraq. Mr Wilson said he believed that his conclusions would have been automatically shared with British officials.

In January he was surprised when, 11 months after his investigative visit to Niger, President George W Bush accused Iraq in his State of the Union address of seeking uranium in Africa and cited British intelligence as a basis his claim.

"Most certainly, after we went and checked this out, the gist of those reports will have been shared with counterpart officials in the British Government," said Mr Wilson.

He called an administration contact after the president's address to note that, if Mr Bush was referring to Niger, his conclusion was "not borne out by the facts as I understood them".

His contact speculated that Mr Bush was perhaps referring to South Africa, Gabon or Namibia, which also produce uranium.

Earlier yesterday, Mr Wilson, a former US envoy to Iraq and head of Africa policy in Bill Clinton's national security council, accused the Bush administration of "deselecting" his information about Niger and exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq.

"I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons programme was twisted," Mr Wilson wrote in an editorial for the New York Times.

The Africa connection is now the focus of multiple investigations in Washington after key documents appearing to originate from Niger were found to be crude forgeries.

The Niger allegation came from a "third service", not from British or American intelligence, Mr Wilson said. He would not confirm reports that it came from Italian intelligence.

posted March 07, 2006 10:52 AM              

CIA 'failed to correct false claim on arms'
By Toby Harnden in Washington
(Filed: 13/06/2003)

The CIA was accused yesterday of withholding evidence regarding weapons of mass destruction that was "inconvenient" to the case for war against Iraq.

Senior intelligence officials from outside the agency said the CIA failed to pass on its conclusions that allegations of Iraq attempting to buy uranium in Niger were false.

During his State of the Union speech in January, President George W Bush said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." It is now accepted that this claim was based on fabricated evidence.

One senior intelligence official told The Washington Post that the CIA was guilty of "extremely sloppy" handling of a crucial piece of evidence.

A senior CIA analyst said the Niger case was "indicative of larger problems" in handling intelligence on Iraq. "Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded" and politically useful material was not properly scrutinised.

CIA officials have suggested that Vice-President Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, and others put pressure on the agency for intelligence to justify military action.

posted March 07, 2006 11:11 AM            

Do you actually think I would take a leftists word as to where they fall into the political spectrum? Let me spell it out for you.

Far left radicals have been using the term "liberal" for a very long time to give themselves cover for what they really are; far left radicals. Aided by the press who would call Joseph Stalin, Ho, Mao, Fidel and Hugo liberals and not communists, these radicals, who are not liberals in any sense have been getting a free ride on the backs of true liberals.

So, we have established nothing at all, or at least not what you imply.

Now, spare me the dreary reading through a rant of supposition, innuendo, gossip, rumor and outright lies and simply list the impeachable offenses you think Bush committed. I don't need to read a dissertation of nonsense written by far left writers. Just spell it out, plainly and straight.

Here, I'll help you get started.

Example

posted March 07, 2006 11:14 AM              

Can't believe everything you read..even all the books I have read in my time..are fill with mistakes..we are all walking around looking for answers everyWhere..

pssst. go within..that's where the Truth is..and God..

and I know alot of you are sick of hearing me..but really..strap yourSelves in and get ready for the ride..brought to you by US..in compliance with our ego..from the beginning of betrayal..and perhaps that's the way you want it to end..

posted March 07, 2006 11:25 AM              

"Holtzman was a steadfast liberal in Congress," Steve Clemons.

Now in what way is my mind wandering jwhop? There are 2 sources for a start that describe her as a Liberal not a Leftist. So you don't have to "take a leftists word as to where they fall into the political spectrum". Perhaps it's your mind that's wandering; or more likely AWOL!

What do you term as a " true liberal" then jwhop? I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for that explanation!

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Now, spare me the dreary reading through a rant of supposition, innuendo, gossip, rumor and outright lies and simply list the impeachable offenses you think Bush committed. I don't need to read a dissertation of nonsense. Just spell it out, plainly and straight.

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You mean, spare you the dreary task of having to read an argument that picks holes in yours The posts I've made do spell it out plain and straight - if you can read And if you read back over them, you'll see that I've already discussed WMD's.

posted March 07, 2006 11:27 AM              

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pssst. go within..that's where the Truth is..and God..

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posted March 07, 2006 11:29 AM              

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Cardingal..Do you believe everything you read?

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posted March 07, 2006 11:37 AM              

or we could start right now..on an individual basis..each person undertaking to do all they do in a day with Love and compassion and tolerance..and heaps of patience..
that simple act, would make the frequencies higher and help enlightment..

think about it..if everybody woke up tomorrow..with the big picture..we are all one and the same..and we can only do what each of us can do..no more..God does not ask more of you than you can give..

posted March 07, 2006 11:41 AM              

here's that word..

ACCEPTANCE

the Serenity prayer..having the wisdom to know what you can change, and what you can't..

posted March 07, 2006 11:50 AM              

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and extract the truth..and then I reply..so much of it is BS..and that saddens me..

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Yep Lotus but unless you can prove things categorically with supporting evidence, it is firmly a matter of opinion as to which parts you find to be accurate/inaccurate. So what I was asking was, which parts do you see as true/untrue?

People having differing opinions on politics and expressing them to each other on a forum is surely not the end of acceptance or serenity is it? I can accept that jwhop for example has a different opinion and a different frame of reference to me because he has different political and ideological beliefs. That's fine. Why is it wrong to discuss and present evidence to one another in support of those beliefs/conclusions? He and I (I'm sure he will admit) rather enjoy the back-and-for of it all - it's fun to debate and I don't take offence to his remarks to me, just as I'm fairly sure he doesn't get upset at mine. If he did I would expect that he would say so.

posted March 07, 2006 11:55 AM            

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I hope people do go and read the entire threads...to get a better perspective of what was being discussed and read the dialogue in it's context.

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Me too!