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Our
President is a Criminal
July
16, 2003
By Daniel Patrick Welch
It's well past time to say it. Despite the weaseling and
finger-pointing - in fact, because of it - the forged Niger
letter is indeed the smoking gun, and the chips have yet to
stop falling. Who wrote the damn thing, and on whose orders?
Who cares whether Tenet, his job on the line, acquiesced to
including a literal truth that actually amounts to one of
the great frauds of the century? The sheer audacity and cynicism
of this coterie of hacks and hustlers is simply astounding.
As a teacher, I won't let six-year-olds get away with such
transparent sophistry. The bottom line is that Bush knew the
information was bogus, and used it anyway to convince millions
to go along with his phony war.
The criminal enterprise called the Bush administration is
(Helen Thomas was right) the worst ever. Their campaign in
furtherance of the conspiracy to defraud the public into buying
the Iraq war is one of the the most cynical abuses of power
in U.S. history. It deserves to be treated as such.
Alarmist? You bet. This guy already thinks (and occasionally
tells foreign leaders) that he gets his orders from God. If
these radical extremists can get away with this, then the
dumbing down of America will be complete, and the stage will
be set for the next wave of the nascent fascism. La Cosa Bush
(apologies to the mafia) is, like all crime families, violent,
arrogant, and beyond the reach of the law - so far. Bush's
handlers no longer even have the decency, courage or self-restraint
to prevent his criminally stupid comments from wreaking havoc
around the globe. Was last week's pseudo-macho invitation
to "Bring 'em on" even a mistake? Or was it another calculated
ploy to make him look "tough" to the American people, playing
to the ugliest side of the American psyche while once again
enraging thinking people the world over. No matter - he must
be stopped. This cabal has been lying, cheating, and manipulating
national tragedy to force their right wing agenda down our
throats long enough.
And half-measures won't do any more. None of this vague
safe rhetoric about "misleading" or cautious calls for those
who "know who they are" to step down. We know who they
are, the junta that has hijacked our government and our national
agenda. The cartel must go: Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld,
Wolfowitz, Perle should all resign, be fired or impeached
immediately, before their conspiracy of lies and their mutual
pact of self-protection is allowed to further endanger the
country and the world. Cornered criminals, especially stupid
ones, are a dangerous lot, and there is no telling to what
lengths they will go to cover their own behinds.
On a mission from God, installed by a viciously partisan
Supreme Court, the skids are greased for a further slide into
misadventure, bankruptcy and ruin. With the addition of Congress
on their side, they are acting with particularly reckless
abandon - and impeachment is not in the cards as long as the
GOP circles the wagons. None will have the courage or integrity
Goldwater showed when he told Nixon the jig was up. Power
corrupts, and the Republicans are so drunk with it they won't
turn on their Lord Fauntleroy until he robs a bank on camera
in broad daylight.
But that is no reason not to tell the truth: whatever their
chances, some of the braver souls in congress should introduce
impeachment legislation immediately: Conyers, Kucinich, Lee,
Paul? The media has already shown they will not help; moneyed
interests overwhelmingly favor the right. A campaign based
on the old game of raising oodles of money and buying ads
is a sure failure. The only thing that can save us now is
a grassroots, velvet revolution, the principled, impassioned
movement calling for these people's heads.
And maybe, just maybe, this one isn't an impeachable offense,
but I'm just plain getting sick of Rumsfeld's smug, arrogant
grin on the tube. What the hell is he smiling at all the time?
Is it funny, somehow, that he is responsible for the deaths
of thousands of people? It is ironic, admittedly, another
fraud, to be sure - but hardly amusing. Maybe it's just part
of what you do when you think you can get away with anything.
Senate Intelligence Chair Pat Roberts foreshadowed just
how twisted the logic is going to get when he said that what
concerns him most "is what appears to be a campaign of press
leaks by the CIA in an effort to discredit the president,"
Yeah, right. The black bag set, whose penchant for secrecy
and service verges on pathology, are the real problem here
- not the curious fact that even some of them have finally
decided that things are so bad that someone, somewhere has
to speak out.
It's time to close the curtain on this Bizarro World. Saddam
loyalists - not nationalist resistance to occupation - are
the real problem in Iraq. Protesters are terrorists, but we
are fighting for our freedoms. Bush's popularity remains robust,
yet huge shows of force and repressive rules on free speech
are needed to keep the viewing public from seeing that he
is dogged by prostest at every turn. War is peace, freedom
is slavery, and some animals are more equal than others. The
lies won't stop until we fire the liars.
Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, USA, with
his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The
Greenhouse School. He has appeared on radio [interview
available here]
Past articles, translations are available at danielpwelch.com.
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