July 4, 2005: Headlines: COS - Thailand: Speaking Out: Presidents - Bush: : Iraq: Law: Democracy Rising: Thailand RPCV Francis T. Mandanici says investigation of Bush Uranium Lies could lead to impeachment

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Thailand: Peace Corps Thailand: The Peace Corps in Thailand: July 4, 2005: Headlines: COS - Thailand: Speaking Out: Presidents - Bush: : Iraq: Law: Democracy Rising: Thailand RPCV Francis T. Mandanici says investigation of Bush Uranium Lies could lead to impeachment

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Thailand RPCV Francis T. Mandanici says investigation of Bush Uranium Lies could lead to impeachment

Thailand RPCV Francis T. Mandanici says investigation of Bush Uranium Lies could lead to impeachment

Some have observed that the Bush Administration's claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction were not just good faith mistakes but actual lies. Some have even recently compared President Bush's false claims about Iraq to the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon's resignation.

Thailand RPCV Francis T. Mandanici says investigation of Bush Uranium Lies could lead to impeachment

Bush Uranium Lies: Case For Special Prosecutor Could Lead To Impeachment
Posted: 07/04
From: Democracy Rising

by Francis T. Mandanici

[Excerpt]

Some have observed that the Bush Administration's claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction were not just good faith mistakes but actual lies. Some have even recently compared President Bush's false claims about Iraq to the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon's resignation. See Truth And Deceit by Bob Herbert and Don't Follow the Money by Frank Rich in The New York Times, June 2, 12, 2005. Some, such as the organizations AfterDowningStreet and DemocracyRising.US, have even called for the initiation of impeachment proceedings based in part on the Downing Street Memo that revealed that according to a British intelligence official the Bush Administration prior to the war against Iraq fixed the intelligence and facts to justify the war.[1]

In response to press reports on the Downing Street Memo, Congressman John Conyers and 90 other Congressional Democrats in a May 5 letter to President Bush asked him if there was a coordinated effort to fix the intelligence and facts to justify the war.[2] Congressman Conyers and other Congressional Democrats on June 16 held an unofficial hearing concerning the Downing Street Memo that resembled an impeachment inquiry.

Although the Downing Street Memo clearly raises serious questions about President Bush's honesty about Iraq and some claim it to be a smoking gun, it pales in comparison to the public record that already exists concerning his specific claim that Iraq had sought uranium for a nuclear weapon, which he presented as a key reason to justify the war rather than wait for United Nations weapons inspectors to finish their work. When the dots in the public record are connected on that matter, including a close analysis of Congressional investigative reports and resolutions, there is a strong case that President Bush and senior members of his Administration made fraudulent claims to Congress. Since criminal statutes prohibit making fraudulent statements to Congress and obstructing its functions, the Justice Department should pursuant to its regulations appoint an outside special counsel. A specific motive for the uranium claims that the Administration made would have been to thwart the efforts of Congress and the UN to delay the start of the war. The current public record is as strong as the Starr Report that commenced the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton and is surely strong enough to require the initial appointment of a special counsel to conduct a criminal investigation. Such a special counsel investigation could then lead to impeachment proceedings, as well as expand to cover other possible fraudulent claims.

President Bush and his senior officials made five uranium claims, which along with other claims were catalogued and analyzed in the report Iraq On The Record (IR) that was prepared by the Minority Staff of the House Committee On Government Reform and released on March 16, 2004.[3]

[Excerpt]

Prior to the independent counsel law, the Nixon Administration felt enough pressure to appoint Archibald Cox as an outside special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate scandal. Prior to the reenactment of the independent counsel law under which courts appointed independent counsels such as Kenneth Starr, then Attorney General Janet Reno felt enough pressure to appoint under the above Justice Department regulation Robert Fiske as an outside special counsel to investigate the Whitewater matter. Although the independent counsel law has now expired, the Bush Justice Department felt enough pressure to appoint a current United States Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, as a type of special prosecutor to investigate the leak of the name of a CIA agent, who happened to be the wife of Joseph Wilson who in an op-ed article published in The New York Times on July 6, 2003 was the first person to publicly challenge President Bush's claim that Iraq had sought uranium. See The Politics of Truth by Joseph Wilson.

The new special counsel could base an investigation on the Watergate mantra of what did the President and his top officials know and when did they know it, as well as why did they say it. Certainly any such violations of the above criminal statutes would necessitate not only a criminal prosecution by the special counsel but also impeachment proceedings by Congress.

Francis T. Mandanici

The author is a lawyer in Connecticut. In 1968 he graduated from Fairfield University where he wrote a lengthy paper on the unconstitutionality of the Vietnam War. From 1968 to 1970 he served in the Peace Corps as a rural community development worker in Roi Et Province in northeast Thailand. He was a public defender for 18 years. In the late 1990's he filed a series of ethical grievances against independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Of the four judges who addressed the merits of his grievances, two of the four agreed that Starr suffered from the appearance of a conflict of interest that should be investigated. The judge who dismissed his last grievance and ridiculed him also a few days later dismissed an ethics complaint that 6 federal judges had filed against Starr's office. That complaint and its dismissal were kept secret until after the 2000 presidential elections when Robert Ray revealed the matter in his final independent counsel report. Go to http://icreport.access.gpo.gov/lewinsky.html (pages 109-112, 140). The author's summary of his grievances and the statements of the judges who agreed with him can be found in the Comments section at the end of Ray's report, pages 195-222.





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Story Source: Democracy Rising

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Thailand; Speaking Out; Presidents - Bush; ; Iraq; Law

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