THE ABSURD TIMES
THE ABSURD TIMES
Illustration: Another cartoon that is right on target, titled McBush, by Kieth Tucker at www.whatnowtoons.com.
McCain is obviously running for Bush's third term. Is there anything different that you know of? I see nothing now. This is not the McCain of 2000 even.
In memory of Father's Day, I relay an anecdot from when I was young. Someone would come up to my Dad and say "Hey! I've got an idea!"
Dad would say, "Well, treat it kindly -- it's in a strange place."
Anyway, on the title of this weeks edition: vincent Bugliosi was the prosecutor who prosecuted Charles Manson. He has a new book out on trying George Bush for murder, and he appeared on Democracy Now a few days ago. I have to share the interview with you:
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *We now turn to a man considered to be one of the best
prosecutors in this country. In his career at the LA County District
Attorney's office, he successfully prosecuted 105 of 106 felony jury
trials, including twenty-one murder convictions without a single loss.
Alan Dershowitz calls him "as good a prosecutor as there ever was," and
the legendary F. Lee Bailey calls him "the quintessential prosecutor."
His most famous trial, the Charles Manson case, became the basis of his
classic book, /Helter Skelter/, the biggest selling true-crime book in
publishing history. Two of his other books, /And the Sea Will Tell/ and
/Outrage/, also reached number one on the /New York Times/ bestseller list.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Today we're joined by the renowned lawyer and author
Vincent Bugliosi. His latest book is just published; it's called /The
Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder/. He joins us from Los Angeles.
Welcome to /Democracy Now!/
*VINCENT BUGLIOSI: *Amy and Juan, I'm very happy to be on the show. I
was told we'd have about forty, forty-five minutes. Now I'm told twenty
minutes, so I'm going to have to make my answers very, very, very quick,
unfortunately, and I don't think we're going to be able to get into too
much. But I was hoping we'd have a long time to talk about the many issues.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Well, why don't we start off by you just laying out your
case and how you arrived at this, at this argument, decided to write
this book?
*VINCENT BUGLIOSI: *Well, in my book, /The Prosecution of George W. Bush
for Murder/, I set forth an airtight legal case against George Bush that
proves beyond all reasonable doubt that George Bush took this nation to
war under false pretenses, on a lie, in Iraq, and therefore, under the
law, he is guilty of murder for the deaths of over 4,000 young American
soldiers in Iraq fighting his war, not your war or my war or America's
war, but his war.
Interestingly enough, there have been billions of very harsh critical
words written and said about George Bush, none of which he could
possibly care less about. So the words are absolutely meaningless. But
up until now, other than words, no one has done anything at all to
George Bush. No impeachment, no investigation of him.
But this book here, /The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder/, in
it, I put together a case against George Bush that could result-it
absolutely could result in his being prosecuted for first-degree murder
in an American courtroom. I set forth the legal architecture against
him, the overwhelming evidence of his guilt and the jurisdiction to
prosecute him. And I say that if justice means anything at all in
America, and if we're not going to forget about these 4,000 young
American soldiers who are in their cold graves right now as I am talking
to you and who came back from George Bush's war in a box or a jar of
ashes, I say we have no choice but to bring murder charges against the
son of privilege from Crawford, Texas.
I may be sounding presumptuous to you right now, Amy and Juan, but I'm
telling you this: I am going after George Bush. I may not succeed, but
I'm not going to be satisfied until I see him in an American courtroom
being prosecuted for first-degree murder.
In our segment here, I would like to talk about a couple things. You
people are the general, but I'd like to get into some of the evidence
against Bush, and I'd also like to talk about how he's conducted himself
throughout the entire war: having fun, smiling, laughing, enjoying
himself. And you also might be interested in the story behind the story.
What's happened with this book right here, for the first time in my
thirty-year career, the national TV and print media have completely
blacked it out. They haven't succeeded. The book just came out. It's
already this Sunday going to be on the /New York Times/ bestseller list,
but it's all by word of mouth. But those are the three things I'd like
to talk about. But whatever else you want to ask me, go ahead.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Well, let's start off just by giving us some of the key
points in the evidence, especially in the early days of the war, that
you lay out in the book, from the National Intelligence Estimate, his
lying about that, and so forth?
*VINCENT BUGLIOSI: *Yeah, OK. OK, now, there many, many things in the
book, but let's talk about a couple key pieces of evidence.
In George Bush's first speech to the nation on Iraq and Saddam Hussein,
Cincinnati, Ohio, October 7, 2002, he told the nation that Hussein was a
great danger to America either by his attacking us with his weapons of
mass destruction or giving those weapons to some terrorist group to
attack us. And he said this attack could happen, quote, "on any given
day," meaning the threat was imminent.
Unfortunately for George Bush-and I don't know how he could get around
this at his trial-on October the 1st, six days earlier, the CIA sent
George Bush its 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a report from
sixteen US intelligence agencies-there's a strong sound in my ear here,
there's a big rattling sound here. Anyway, he was sent this report
representing the consensus opinion of all sixteen US intelligence
agencies on the issue of whether Hussein was an imminent threat to the
security of this country. There's a lot of noise in my left ear, a
constant rattle; if you can get rid of it, I'd appreciate it. And-well,
it's not stopping. And on page eight of this ninety-one-page report,
page eight, it clearly and unequivocally says-and, by the way, what I'm
about to tell you, to my knowledge, has never appeared in any national
newspaper or magazine in America; it may have, but to my knowledge, I've
never heard this said before in any of the major magazines or newspapers
of America. Page nine-page eight, ninety-one-page report, clearly and
unequivocally says that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the
security of this country, that he would only be a threat if he feared
that America was about to attack him. In other words, he would only be a
threat if he was forced to fight in self-defense.
So we know-not "think," but we know-that when George Bush told the
nation on the evening of October the 7th, 2002, Cincinnati, Ohio, that
Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of this country, he was
telling millions of unsuspecting Americans the exact opposite of what
his own CIA was telling him. So if we had nothing else at all, this
alone shows us that he took this nation to war on a lie, and therefore,
all of the killings in Iraq of American soldiers became unlawful
killings and therefore murder.
But it gets worse. October 4th, three days after the October 1st
classified top-secret report, Bush and his people had the CIA issue an
unclassified summary version of the October 1st classified report, so
that this report could be issued to the American people and to Congress.
And this report came to be known as the "White Paper." And in this White
Paper, the conclusion of US intelligence that Hussein was not an
imminent threat to the security of this country was completely deleted
from the White Paper. Every single one of these all-important words were
taken out. And the question that I have is, how evil, how perverse, how
sick, how criminal can George Bush and his people be? And yet, up to
this point, unbelievably-and there's no other word for it-he's gotten by
with all of this.
I'll touch upon another piece of evidence. January 31st, 2005-2003-by
the way, you've all heard of the Downing Street memo, got a lot of
attention. If I prosecuted Bush, that would be a very insignificant part
of the case, because it's ambiguous. This is the Manning memo that seems
to have gone over the head of everyone. It's a hundred times more
important than the Downing Street memo. January 31st, 2003, George Bush
and Prime Minister Tony Blair met in the Oval Office with six of their
top aides, including Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser for
Bush, and Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, David Manning. Now, two
months later, they go to war, because they say Hussein had weapons of
mass destruction and they had to go in there and disarm Hussein and
these weapons of mass destruction.
After the meeting, Manning prepares a five-page memo stamped "extremely
sensitive," in which he summarizes what was said at the meeting. And
Manning writes that Bush and Blair expressed their doubts that any
weapons of mass destruction would ever be found in Iraq, although two
months later they went there because they said they had the weapons and
we had to disarm them. But it gets much, much, much worse. Manning wrote
that Bush was so worried, so upset, over the failure of the UN
inspectors to find weapons of mass destruction, that he talked about
three ways to, quote, "provoke a confrontation with Hussein," one of
which, Bush said, was to, quote, "fly U2 aircraft, reconnaissance
aircraft, over Iraq, falsely painted in United Nations colors," and Bush
said if Hussein fires upon them, this will be a breach of UN resolutions
and justify war.
So here we have George Bush telling the American people, telling the
world, that Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of this
country, so we had to strike first in self-defense, but behind closed
doors, this very small man was talking about how to provoke Hussein into
a war. The very last person in the world that someone acting in
self-defense would try to provoke is a person who he's in deathly fear
of, the person who's about to kill him. If George Bush actually believed
that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which was the main reason
he went to war, the very thought of provoking Hussein into a war
obviously would never, ever, ever have entered his mind.
Now, I don't know if you're aware, but what I just told you is extremely
powerful evidence of George Bush's guilt. I was on the radio with Dennis
Miller a couple days ago in LA, and I told him about the Manning memo,
and I said, "Now, Dennis, you're representing George Bush. You're his
defense attorney. After you hear Manning testify to the Manning memo on
the witness stand, other than trying to hide beneath the counsel table,
what would your response be?" And Dennis is very quick, very smart. He
gave a good answer: he said, "I would call for a recess." There is no
answer to the Manning memo.
*AMY GOODMAN: *And that's what we have to do for just one minute.
Vincent Bugliosi is our guest, the renowned attorney, the man who put
Charles Manson behind bars, has written a book, a new book called /The
Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder/. We'll be back with him in a
minute.
[break]
*AMY GOODMAN: *Our guest is the renowned prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. He
has written the new book /The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder/.
He is laying out his case. You begin your book, Vincent Bugliosi, by
just telling us the stories of young soldiers who have died, more than
4,000 now. What about Iraqi civilians? How do they weigh into your case
as you build it against the President?
*VINCENT BUGLIOSI: *Well, that's not going to prove guilt-guilty or not
guilty-but if he's convicted of first-degree murder by an American jury
and it gets into the penalty phase and the prosecutor seeks the death
penalty, all of this evidence of how Bush responded to this horror in
Iraq could be introduced in aggravation, just like the defense can offer
evidence in mitigation.
One of the underlying emotions behind this whole thing that prompted me
to do this book-well, the main thing is that he took this nation to war
under false pretenses. But throughout this hell on earth that George
Bush created, the evidence is very, very clear that with over 100,000
innocent Iraqi men, women and children and babies and 4,000 American
soldiers dying horrible violent deaths and hundreds of thousands of
their survivors crying out hysterically and having no way to cope with
the unspeakable horror of it all and having nightmares over what
happened, George Bush-the evidence is very, very clear-smiled through it
all. In fact, you look at a photograph of Bush and six or seven other
people-they're all smiling-who has the biggest smile on his face? George
Bush.
The evidence is very clear that while young American soldiers, who never
even had a chance to live out their dreams, were being blown to pieces
by roadside bombs in Iraq, George Bush was having fun and living life,
enjoying life to the very fullest. I'm talking about running, bicycling,
joking with friends, slapping backs, dancing and swiveling his hips like
Elvis to blaring music, eating his hot dogs and blueberry pies, almost
always seeming to be in the very best of good spirits.
And you don't have to take my word for this. I have the photographs in
the book and everything. But you don't have to take my word for this.
George Bush himself has had no hesitancy in saying things like this, and
as I quote George Bush, I want you to think of two things: number one,
the incredible horror and savagery and mutilation of bodies and
beheadings and the sea of blood and the screams going on at the time
he's making this remark, and try to think, if you can, of Presidents
Roosevelt, Truman, LBJ, Nixon, during their respective wars, saying
things like this. Here's George Bush right in the middle of all this
horror: "Laura and I are having the time of our lives. It's going to be
a great-it's going to be a perfect day. I'm in a great mood." As
recently as December 2007, "I'm feeling pretty good about life."
Now, Amy and Juan, even if George Bush was only guilty of making an
innocent mistake in taking this nation to war-not murder, as I firmly
believe-with all of the death and the horror and the suffering he has
caused, what type of a monstrous individual is it who could literally be
happy with his life? And that's part of the emotional underpinning for
this book.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Well, Vincent Bugliosi, the other main line of evidence
that you present in the book is his repeated attempts to connect Saddam
Hussein to al-Qaeda and to the attacks of 9/11. Could you summarize
those arguments?
*VINCENT BUGLIOSI: *Yeah, very, very quickly. He tried to convince the
American people that Hussein was involved in 9/11. Now, right after
9/11, a poll of the American people, open-ended poll, showed that only
three percent of the American public believed that Hussein and Iraq were
involved in 9/11. And yet, within months, that number went up to 70
percent of the American people thought Hussein was involved in 9/11.
Now, if it wasn't George Bush and his people who were responsible for
it, then who was it? You? I? Danny DeVito?
Here's what he did. Here's what he did. He'd constantly-because what he
was doing, he was trying to convince the American people of Hussein's
involvement in 9/11 by unmistakable innuendo and implication. And under
the law, that's the same thing as doing it expressly. One way he did it,
he constantly talked about Hussein being an imminent threat to the
security of this country, and in the same speech, sometimes the same
breath, he kept talking about 9/11. Well, here's the American people,
not accustomed to a president who's taking them to war under false
pretenses, that thought's not even entering their mind, they're not
parsing his words. They hear 9/11, and they hear Hussein being an
imminent threat, and they came to the conclusion that Hussein must have
been involved with al-Qaeda in 9/11.
And then he just flat out lied, by suggesting-by asserting that Hussein
and al-Qaeda had terrorist connections. He'd say things like this: when
you're talking about the war on terror, you cannot distinguish between
al-Qaeda and Hussein. He said that Hussein was training al-Qaeda in bomb
making and the use of poisons and deadly gases. Now, the average
American infers from that-I mean, it's not too much of a leap of
logic-that if Hussein and al-Qaeda have these terrorist connections and
Hussein is training al-Qaeda, that Hussein must have been involved with
al-Qaeda in 9/11. That was what he did by implication.
But by implication, in the law, he can't take the witness stand and say,
"Well, I never said it." No, you didn't say it directly, but you said it
indirectly. Let's see how far he would get in front of a competent
prosecutor by saying, "I never expressly said it." He said it by
unmistakable implication. As late as August of 2006, over 90 percent of
the troops in Iraq thought that it was payback time, that Hussein was
involved in 9/11 and they were getting even for the American public for
what Hussein and Iraq did to 9/11.
Wherever you look-and I've got so much more evidence in this book. The
evidence is overwhelming that this guy is guilty. And if we get a
competent prosecutor, he's going to end up getting convicted of first-
degree murder. And by the way, by the way, within a very short period of
time, perhaps a week, I'm going to be reaching out to the prosecutors of
America-there's close to a thousand out there-looking for a courageous
prosecutor, a state attorney general, a DA-I don't have any clout
anymore. I've got the clout of an emaciated moth. I'm not in law
enforcement. But I'm going to be reaching out to prosecutors who do have
clout, who do have the authority, to go against George Bush. I'm sending
them a copy of my book with a cover letter telling them to read the
book, and if they agree with me that the evidence of Bush's guilt is
clear and they feel that they have jurisdiction-and I've spent hundreds
of hours at the law library establishing this all-important point of
jurisdiction-then I'm going to tell them to proceed forward, and I'm
going to offer my help in any way that they see fit, which could range
all the way from being a consultant to being appointed a special
prosecutor.
I want to tell you just one little interesting story. There's a lawyer
back East. I spoke to him two days ago. He said, "Vince, I'm your
biggest fan. I'm selling this book to everyone. I had a bet with Ralph
Nader. Nader said, 'This book will never get out; they're going to black
it out.'" And he said, "No, it's going to become a bestseller." It has
become a bestseller now, so he won the bet with Nader. I don't know how
much they bet. In any event, he said, "Vince, I live in a county, and no
citizen of this county has died so far in this war. But if a citizen of
this county dies, I'm telling you, Vince, I'm going to run for district
attorney. And if I become district attorney, I'm going to go after
George Bush, I'm going to prosecute him." You can extrapolate that to
thousands of prosecutors around this country and maybe some law student
who is hearing me talk right now and says, "You know, when I get out,
I'm going to become a DA or state attorney general, and I'm going to go
after George Bush."
You've got to realize, there's no statute of limitations for the crime
of murder. So this could very well happen. At this stage of my life, I
cannot engage in fanciful reveries. This is a very real thing that we're
talking about here. I've established jurisdiction on a federal and state
level for the prosecution of Bush for two crimes: conspiracy to commit
murder and murder. On a federal level, we're really only talking about
the Attorney General in Washington, D.C., operating through his
Department of Justice. But on a state level, I've established
jurisdiction for the attorney general in each of the fifty states, plus
the hundreds of district attorneys in counties within those states, to
prosecute George Bush for the murder of any soldier or soldiers from
their state or county who died fighting his war in Iraq. And with all
those prosecutors-
*AMY GOODMAN: *Vincent Bugliosi-
*VINCENT BUGLIOSI: *Yes.
*AMY GOODMAN: *You have thirty seconds, and if you were the man who was
trying this case and you were told you now have thirty seconds to sum up
before the jury, what would those last words be?
*VINCENT BUGLIOSI: *Oh, that's an impossible situation, except to say
that the evidence is overwhelming that George Bush took this nation to
war on a lie, under false pretenses, and therefore, under the law, he's
guilty of murder. And if justice means anything in America, I want you
to come back with a verdict of guilty. If we're going to become a great
nation again, we cannot become a great nation-we used to be-we cannot
become a great nation unless we take the first step of bringing those
responsible for the war in Iraq to justice.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Vincent Bugliosi, we want to thank you for being with us.
His book is called /The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder/.
Vincent Bugliosi himself has tried twenty-one murder cases; he's gotten
a conviction in every one.
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