Kenneth C. Davis, author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller Don’t Know Much About History, presents a collection of extraordinary stories, each detailing an overlooked episode that shaped the nation’s destiny and character. Davis’s dramatic narratives set the record straight, busting myths and bringing to light little-known but fascinating facts from a time when the nation’s fate hung in the balance.

Spanning a period from the Spanish arrival in America to George Washington’s inauguration in 1789, America’s Hidden History details these episodes, among others:

• The story of the first real Pilgrims in America, who were wine-making French Huguenots, not dour English Separatists
• The coming-of-age story of Queen Isabella, who suggested that Columbus pack the moving mess hall of pigs that may have spread disease to many Native Americans
• The long, bloody relationship between the Pilgrims and Indians that runs counter to the idyllic scene of the Thanksgiving feast
• The little-known story of George Washington as a headstrong young soldier who committed a war crime, signed a confession, and started a war!

Full of color, intrigue, and human interest, America’s Hidden History is an iconoclastic look at America’s past, connecting some of the dots between history and today’s headlines, proving why Davis is truly America’s Teacher.

In this remarkable book, the historian Jack Rakove shows how the private lives of these men were suddenly transformed into public careers–how Washington became a strategist, Franklin a pioneering cultural diplomat, Madison a sophisticated constitutional thinker, and Hamilton a brilliant policymaker. Rakove shakes off accepted notions of these men as godlike visionaries, focusing instead on the evolution of their ideas and the crystallizing of their purpose. In Revolutionaries, we see the founders before they were fully formed leaders, as individuals whose lives were radically altered by the explosive events of the mid-1770s. They were ordinary men who became extraordinary–a transformation that finally has the literary treatment it deserves.

Spanning the two crucial decades of the country’s birth, from 1773 to 1792, Revolutionaries uses little-known stories of these famous (and not so famous) men to capture–in a way no single biography ever could–the intensely creative period of the republic’s founding. From the Boston Tea Party to the First Continental Congress, from Trenton to Valley Forge, from the ratification of the Constitution to the disputes that led to our two-party system, Rakove explores the competing views of politics, war, diplomacy, and society that shaped our nation.

Thoughtful, clear-minded, and persuasive, Revolutionaries is a majestic blend of narrative and intellectual history, one of those rare books that makes us think afresh about how the country came to be, and why the idea of America endures.

I went alone, flying from Heathrow airport to Boston’s Logan Airport, picked up the car I had rented at Alamo’s a bus ride away and found my way to the YMCA on Huntington Avenue, where I had already booked a room for three nights weeks earlier over the internet. I had hoped to get to bed early so as to avoid as much as possible the effects of jet lag (it was three o’clock in the morning according to my body clock), but I was hungry, and looked for somewhere to eat and have a beer and eventually found my way to the Irish pub just across the road.

The following morning, I awoke early (EST) and as I looked out of my bedroom window across the rooves towards Cambridge, the light had that quality which reminded me so much of the light in Italy, seen from a train window early one morning many years earlier, and it was not difficult to believe that Boston is on the same latitude as southern Portugal.

After a full breakfast, I walked all the way to the Common, explored Beacon Hill with its strangely familiar Federalist architecture not unlike the Regency architecture back home, walked the Freedom Trail, visiting Park Street Congregationalist Church, a beacon of orthodoxy at a time when many of Boston’s Congregationalist and Episcopalian churches were going over to the Unitarian and Universalist heresy, the Old South Meeting House, venue of seditious meetings in the run-up to the Revolution, the Old State House, and Faneuil Hall, known as the “cradle of liberty”, stopped in the Food Hall of Quincy Market to buy a hot dog and, thus fortified, walked on to Paul Revere’s house and the Old North Church.

In the afternoon, I went on the harbor tour, stopping off at the USS Constitution, the world’s oldest commissioned ship afloat and visiting the museum, where I was buttonholed by a young researcher who told me the fascinating story of a young midshipman who sailed aboard the Constitution and who saw the Philadelphia burn in America’s first foreign adventure.

In the evenings I watched Boston Red Sox play on the telly in the Irish pub, the lights of Fenway Park visible from my room in the YMCA.

I spent three days in Boston, which, for me, new to this country, constituted the sum total of my first hand experience of America at that time and indeed was America.

It was one of those experiences that you knew you would look back on and treasure for the rest of your life and you were in the process of living it!

What stands out the most?

The opening paragraphs of the declaration of Independence in an original Dunlap Broadside under glass on a wall inside the Old State House and being moved by those ringing words in a way I had never been before, and which, for me, formed kind of epiphany?

The Freedom Trail?

The intriguing Italo-American accents of Boston’s North End?

The hot-dogs and pizza (the best I had ever eaten), washed down with root ale (another discovery), in the Food Hall of Quincy Market?

The harbor tour?

The Harpoon IPA? (And I always thought American beer was crap!)

The besuited “heavies” standing outside John Kerry’s residence in Louisburg Square?

Shakespeare on the Common?

The girl with cascading, curling golden tresses, who could have been anything from 14 to 24 who triumphantly held aloft a ball in the stalls above the Green Monster after a flurry to retrieve it after Kevin Youkilis had scored a home run?

The white sails of the yachts joyously plying to and fro on the Charles River?

What stands out the most are the following words of John Adams, America’s second president, which I read, displayed under Perspex on an information plaque, on Boston Common, and which hit me between the eyes:

What do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations…This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.”

During that that winter which Washington and his fledgling army spent at Valley Forge, the American Revolution faced its darkest hour.

Speaking of the condition of his troops at that time, Washington said: “ . . . you might have tracked the army from White Marsh to Valley Forge by the blood of their feet.”

The Revolution was supported by such friends as Lafayette and Rochambeau from France, von Steuben from Prussia, and Kosciuszko from Poland and, although we Brits were ostensibly at war with the Colonies, it had its Friends in this country, too.

The Duke of Richmond, a great grandson of Charles II, said in the House of Lords that under no code should the fighting Americans be considered traitors. What they did was “perfectly justifiable in every possible political and moral sense.”

All the world knows that Chatham and Burke and Fox urged the conciliation of America and hundreds took the same stand.

Burke said of General Conway, a man of position, that when he secured a majority in the House of Commons against the Stamp Act his face shone as the face of an angel.

Since the bishops almost to a man voted with the King, Conway attacked them as in this untrue to their high office.

Sir George Savile, whose benevolence, supported by great wealth, made him widely respected and loved, said that the Americans were right in appealing to arms.

Coke of Norfolk, a fellow farmer who corresponded with Washington, said: “…every night during the American War did I drink the health of General Washington as the greatest man on earth.” The war, he said, was the King’s war, ministers were his tools, the press was bought. Those who paid taxes, he said, should control those who governed. America was not getting fair play.

Both Coke and Fox, and no doubt many others, wore waistcoats of blue and buff because these were the colors of the uniforms of Washington’s army.”

I spent a total of fifteen days in America, visiting Boston, Cambridge, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Newport, Mystic, New Haven, New York (and yes, New Yorkers really do call it Noo Yoik!), Washington, the Watergate and Georgetown during a summer storm, the Skyline Drive, the house that Jefferson built at Monticello, Hooper’s Island on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, and back to Washington to visit Pennsylvania Avenue, Congress, the National Gallery, and Georgetown again, returning from Washington’s Dulles Airport.

And, despite the evil deeds done in America’s (and Britain’s) name in foreign lands, the Revolution still has its Friends in this country today. Oh, BTW, I found the tea in Boston a little salty!

It is sadly amusing, that small part of Steven Wax’s book that brings us back to the bizarre color-coded system of homeland security alerts; the breathlessness with which the media would announce each day’s threat level and the way the Bush administration enlisted local police—untrained and almost certainly unaware of what they were supposed to do if they stumbled over a terrorist—in the early years of the so-called war on terror.

Wax, the federal public defender for the district of Oregon, recalls driving over a Willamette River bridge with his young son, who wondered what police cruisers were doing on each end of the span. The boy asked questions an innocent would ask: “Was there a real danger? If so, why were we driving over the bridge?”

I chuckled out loud at that paragraph in Wax’s “Kafka Comes to America,” but that is its only humor.

The book provides an insider’s view of some of the most hideous practices our country has allowed since the 9/11 attacks. And that’s without giving accounts of torture and abuse of detainees. Rather, it recounts an abuse of power and the twisting of American legal norms until they have been distorted beyond recognition—a disregard for the law that has swept up American citizens and foreigners alike.

Wax and his colleagues were lawyers for Brandon Mayfield, the Oregon man who was erroneously jailed for alleged complicity in the 2004 Madrid train bombings. He was picked up as a “material witness” by the Justice Department, which based its suspicion of him—and countless media leaks that portrayed Mayfield, an American citizen who is Muslim, as a possible international terrorist—on what turned out to have been a faulty reading of a fingerprint by the FBI.

When Wax first was retained to defend Mayfield, he did not immediately know that the FBI and Spanish investigators had differed from the start on the fingerprint identification, the sole piece of “evidence” the U.S. government came up with before it swooped down on Mayfield and his family, searching his home through “sneak and peek” tactics authorized under the Patriot Act; leaving his wife and children with the terrifying thought that Mayfield might disappear or be charged with a crime that carried the death penalty.

At the time, the White House was claiming it had the power to detain American citizens without charge or trial, and to incarcerate them in military brigs. Having read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” and taken a law school course that described the Soviet legal system, Wax shuddered. “Now I was sitting in the county jail in Portland, Oregon, actually telling a client that he might disappear and we were even planning for the possibility,” he writes.

In the end, the fingerprint identification was determined to be wrong, Mayfield was released and won a $2-million settlement from the government because of its misconduct. Still, Wax says, the secret search of Mayfield’s home could be conducted under the latest version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows such searches without probable cause, without evidence that the targeted individual has committed a crime. “Nothing’s changed,” Wax told me in an interview.

Wax continues to be part of the legal team that works to get hearings for the Guantanamo detainees who have never had a day in court. The book flips back and forth between Wax’s efforts to get to the bottom of the Mayfield detention and his bid to free Adel Hamad, a Sudanese hospital administrator who was picked up by Pakistani security forces in his Peshawar apartment and shipped to Guantanamo.

Though Hamad was returned to Sudan—after five years, four months and 25 days in captivity—under a deal with the Sudanese government, Wax is still battling to get this client a hearing in federal court. The reason? He’s never been able to present the evidence he’s developed that Hamad’s detention was a gross error; that he had nothing whatever to do with terrorist activity. The U.S. government, meanwhile, will “neither confirm nor deny that they ever talked to the Sudanese and reached an agreement” to free Hamad, Wax says.

This would be laughable if it weren’t so frightening. The country has moved on to other worries as memories of 9/11 have faded. Yet the decisions made in the aftermath of that attack haunt us today, and they will be recorded as a blight on our history.

Marie Cocco’s e-mail address is mariecocco(at)washpost.com.

© 2008, Washington Post Writers Group

For the past forty years Noam Chomsky’s writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, since the 1960s Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States.

Chomsky’s many bestselling works—including Manufacturing Consent, Hegemony or Survival, Understanding Power, and Failed States—have served as essential touchstones for dissidents, activists, scholars, and concerned citizens on subjects ranging from the media to human rights to intellectual freedom. In particular, Chomsky’s scathing critiques of the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East have furnished a widely accepted intellectual inspiration for antiwar movements over nearly four decades.

The Essential Chomsky assembles the core of his most important writings, including excerpts from his most influential texts over the past forty years. Here is an unprecedented, comprehensive overview of Chomsky’s thought.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT and the author of numerous books including Chomsky vs. Foucault: A Debate on Human Nature, On Language, Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship, and Towards a New Cold War (all published by The New Press). He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

U.S. war planners want an obedient client state that will house major U.S. military bases, right at the heart of the world’s major energy reserves.

The deal just taking shape between Iraq’s Oil Ministry and four Western oil companies raises critical questions about the nature of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq — questions that should certainly be addressed by presidential candidates and seriously discussed in the United States, and of course in occupied Iraq, where it appears that the population has little if any role in determining the future of its country.

Negotiations are under way for Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners decades ago in the Iraq Petroleum Company, now joined by Chevron and other smaller oil companies — to renew the oil concession they lost to nationalization during the years when the oil producers took over their own resources. The no-bid contracts, apparently written by the oil corporations with the help of U.S. officials, prevailed over offers from more than 40 other companies, including companies in China, India and Russia.

“There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract,” Andrew E. Kramer wrote in the New York Times.

Kramer’s reference to “suspicion” is an understatement. Furthermore, it is highly likely that the military occupation has taken the initiative in restoring the hated Iraq Petroleum Company, which, as Seamus Milne writes in the U.K. Guardian, was imposed under British rule to “dine off Iraq’s wealth in a famously exploitative deal.”

Later reports speak of delays in the bidding. Much is happening in secrecy, and it would be no surprise if new scandals emerge.

The demand could hardly be more intense. Iraq contains perhaps the second-largest oil reserves in the world, which are, furthermore, very cheap to extract: no permafrost or tar sands or deep-sea drilling. For U.S. planners, it is imperative that Iraq remain under U.S. control, to the extent possible, as an obedient client state that will also house major U.S. military bases, right at the heart of the world’s major energy reserves.

That these were the primary goals of the invasion was always clear enough through the haze of successive pretexts: weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein’s links with al Qaeda, democracy promotion and the war against terrorism, which, as predicted, sharply increased as a result of the invasion.

Last November, the guiding concerns were made explicit when President Bush and Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, signed a “Declaration of Principles,” ignoring the U.S. Congress, the Iraqi parliament and the populations of the two countries.

The declaration left open the possibility of an indefinite long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq that would presumably include the huge air bases now being built around the country, and the “embassy” in Baghdad, a city within a city, unlike any embassy in the world. These are not being constructed to be abandoned.

The declaration also had a remarkably brazen statement about exploiting the resources of Iraq. It said that the economy of Iraq — which means its oil resources — must be open to foreign investment, “especially American investments.” That comes close to a pronouncement that we invaded you so that we can control your country and have privileged access to your resources.

The seriousness of this commitment was underscored in January, when Bush issued a “signing statement” declaring that he would reject any congressional legislation that restricted funding “to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq” or “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Extensive resort to “signing statements” to expand executive power is yet another Bush innovation, condemned by the American Bar Association as “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers.” To no avail.

Not surprisingly, the declaration aroused immediate objections in Iraq, among others from Iraqi unions, which survive even under the harsh anti-labor laws that Hussein instituted and the occupation preserves.

In Washington propaganda, the spoiler to U.S. domination in Iraq is Iran. U.S. problems in Iraq are blamed on Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sees a simple solution: “Foreign forces” and “foreign arms” should be withdrawn from Iraq — Iran’s, not ours.

The confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program heightens the tensions. The Bush administration’s “regime change” policy toward Iran comes with ominous threats of force (there Bush is joined by both U.S. presidential candidates). The policy also is reported to include terrorism within Iran — again legitimate, for the world rulers. A majority of the American people favor diplomacy and oppose the use of force. But public opinion is largely irrelevant to policy formation, not just in this case.

An irony is that Iraq is turning into a U.S.-Iranian condominium. The Maliki government is the sector of Iraqi society most supported by Iran. The so-called Iraqi army — just another militia — is largely based on the Badr brigade, which was trained in Iran and fought on the Iranian side during the Iran-Iraq War.

Nir Rosen, one of the most astute and knowledgeable correspondents in the region, observes that the main target of the U.S.-Maliki military operations, Moktada al-Sadr, is disliked by Iran as well: He’s independent and has popular support, and is therefore dangerous.

Iran “clearly supported Prime Minister Maliki and the Iraqi government against what they described as ‘illegal armed groups’ (of Moktada’s Mahdi army) in the recent conflict in Basra,” Rosen writes, “which is not surprising given that their main proxy in Iraq, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, dominates the Iraqi state and is Maliki’s main backer.”

“There is no proxy war in Iraq,” Rosen concludes, “because the U.S. and Iran share the same proxy.”

Tehran is presumably pleased to see the United States institute and sustain a government in Iraq that’s receptive to its influence. For the Iraqi people, however, that government continues to be a disaster, very likely with worse to come.

In Foreign Affairs, Steven Simon points out that current U.S. counterinsurgency strategy is “stoking the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism and sectarianism.” The outcome might be “a strong, centralized state ruled by a military junta that would resemble” Saddam Hussein’s regime.

If Washington achieves its goals, then its actions are justified. Reactions are quite different when Vladimir Putin succeeds in pacifying Chechnya, to an extent well beyond what Gen. David Petraeus has achieved in Iraq. But that is them, and this is the United States. Criteria are therefore entirely different.

In the United States, the Democrats are silenced now because of the supposed success of the U.S. military surge in Iraq. Their silence reflects the fact that there are no principled criticisms of the war. In this way of regarding the world, if you’re achieving your goals, the war and occupation are justified. The sweetheart oil deals come with the territory.

In fact, the whole invasion is a war crime — indeed the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes in that it encompasses all the evil that follows, in the terms of the Nuremberg judgment. This is among the topics that can’t be discussed, in the presidential campaign or elsewhere. Why are we in Iraq? What do we owe Iraqis for destroying their country? The majority of the American people favor U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Do their voices matter?

Noam Chomsky’s writings on linguistics and politics have just been collected in The Essential Chomsky, edited by Anthony Arnove, from the New Press. Chomsky is an emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

© 2008 Khaleej Times Online All rights reserved.

ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the
following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:
Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in
the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its
impeachment against President George W. Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors.
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 to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the following abuses of power.
_____________
ARTICLE I
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.
Article II
FALSELY, SYSTEMATICALLY, AND WITH CRIMINAL INTENT CONFLATING THE ATTACK S
OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 WITH MISREPRESENTATION OF IRAQ AS AN IMMINENT
SECURITY THREAT AS PART OF A FRAUDULENT JUSTIFICATION FOR A WAR OF
AGGRESSION.
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,
executed a calculated and wide-ranging strategy to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United
States into believing that there was and is a connection between Iraq and Saddam Hussein on the one
hand, and the attacks of September 11, 2001 and al Qaeda, on the other hand, so as to falsely justify the
use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner that is damaging to the
national security interests of the United States, as well as to fraudulently obtain and maintain
congressional authorization and funding for the use of such military force against Iraq, thereby
interfering with and obstructing Congress’s lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs and declaring
war.
The means used to implement this deception were and continue to be, first, allowing, authorizing and
sanctioning the manipulation of intelligence analysis by those under his direction and control, including
the Vice President and the Vice President’s agents, and second, personally making, or causing,
authorizing and allowing to be made through highly-placed subordinates, including the President’s
Chief of Staff, the White House Press Secretary and other White House spokespersons, the Secretaries
of State and Defense, the National Security Advisor, and their deputies and spokespersons, false and
fraudulent representations to the citizens of the United States and Congress regarding an alleged
connection between Saddam Hussein and Iraq, on the one hand, and the September 11th attacks and al
Qaeda, on the other hand, that were half-true, literally true but misleading, and/or made without a
reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to their truth, as well as omitting to state facts necessary
to present an accurate picture of the truth as follows:
(A) On or about September 12, 2001, former terrorism advisor Richard Clarke personally informed the
President that neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq was responsible for the September 11th attacks. On
September 18, Clarke submitted to the President’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice a
memo he had written in response to George W. Bush’s specific request that stated: (1) the case for
linking Hussein to the September 11th attacks was weak; (2) only anecdotal evidence linked Hussein to
al Qaeda; (3) Osama Bin Laden resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein; and (4) there was no
confirmed reporting of Saddam Hussein cooperating with Bin Laden on unconventional weapons.
(B) Ten days after the September 11th attacks the President received a President’s Daily Briefing
which indicated that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the
September 11th attacks and that there was “scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant
collaborative ties with Al Qaeda.”
(C) In Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary No. 044-02, issued in February 2002, the United
States Defense Intelligence Agency cast significant doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein- Al
Qaeda conspiracy: “Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary
movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control.”
(D) The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate gave a “Low Confidence” rating to the notion of
whether “in desperation Saddam would share chemical or biological weapons with Al Qaeda.” The
CIA never informed the President that there was an operational relationship between Al Qaeda and
Saddam Hussein; on the contrary, its most “aggressive” analysis contained in Iraq and al-Qaeda-
Interpreting a Murky Relationship” dated June 21, 2002 was that Iraq had had “sporadic, wary contacts
with al Qaeda since the mid-1990s rather than a relationship with al Qaeda that has developed over
time.”
(E) Notwithstanding his knowledge that neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq was in any way connected to
the September 11th attacks, the President allowed and authorized those acting under his direction and
control, including Vice President Richard B. Cheney and Lewis Libby, who reported directly to both
the President and the Vice President, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, among others, to
pressure intelligence analysts to alter their assessments and to create special units outside of, and
unknown to, the intelligence community in order to secretly obtain unreliable information, to
manufacture intelligence or reinterpret raw data in ways that would further the Bush administration’s
goal of fraudulently establishing a relationship not only between Iraq and al Qaeda, but between Iraq
and the attacks of September 11th.
(F) Further, despite his full awareness that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had no relationship to the
September 11th attacks, the President, and those acting under his direction and control have, since at
least 2002 and continuing to the present, repeatedly issued public statements deliberately worded to
mislead, words calculated in their implication to bring unrelated actors and circumstances into an
artificially contrived reality thereby facilitating the systematic deception of Congress and the American
people. Thus the public and some members of Congress, came to believe, falsely, that there was a
connection between Iraq and the attacks of 911. This was accomplished through well-publicized
statements by the Bush Administration which contrived to continually tie Iraq and 911 in the same
statements of grave concern without making an explicit charge:
(1) ” [If] Iraq regimes [sic] continues to defy us, and the world, we will move deliberately, yet
decisively, to hold Iraq to account…It’s a new world we’re in. We used to think two oceans could
separate us from an enemy. On that tragic day, September the 11th, 2001, we found out that’s not the
case. We found out this great land of liberty and of freedom and of justice is vulnerable. And therefore
we must do everything we can — everything we can — to secure the homeland, to make us safe.”
Speech of President Bush in Iowa on September 16, 2002.
(2) “With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons,
our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply
these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September 11th would be a prelude to far greater
horrors.” March 6, 2003, Statement of President Bush in National Press Conference.
(3) “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 — and still
goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men — the shock troops of a hateful ideology — gave America
and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that
September the 11th would be the ‘beginning of the end of America.’ By seeking to turn our cities into
killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation’s resolve, and force
our retreat from the world. They have failed.” May 1, 2003, Speech of President Bush on U.S.S.
Abraham Lincoln.
(4) “Now we’re in a new and unprecedented war against violent Islamic extremists. This is an
ideological conflict we face against murderers and killers who try to impose their will. These are the
people that attacked us on September the 11th and killed nearly 3,000 people. The stakes are high, and
once again, we have had to change our strategic thinking. The major battleground in this war is Iraq.”
June 28, 2007, Speech of President Bush at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
(G) Notwithstanding his knowledge that there was no credible evidence of a working relationship
between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda and that the intelligence community had specifically assessed
that there was no such operational relationship, the President, both personally and through his
subordinates and agents, has repeatedly falsely represented, both explicitly and implicitly, and through
the misleading use of selectively-chosen facts, to the citizens of the United States and to the Congress
that there was and is such an ongoing operational relationship, to wit:
(1) “We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al
Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who
received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for
chemical and biological attacks. We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making
and poisons and deadly gases.” September 28, 2002, Weekly Radio Address of President Bush to the
Nation.
(2) “[W]e we need to think about Saddam Hussein using al Qaeda to do his dirty work, to not leave
fingerprints behind.” October 14, 2002, Remarks by President Bush in Michigan.
(3) “We know he’s got ties with al Qaeda.” November 1, 2002, Speech of President Bush in New
Hampshire.
(4) “Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in
custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.
Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help
them develop their own.” January 28, 2003, President Bush’s State of the Union Address.
(5) “[W]hat I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between
Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and
modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network…” February 5, 2003, Speech
of Former Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations.
(6) “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 — and
still goes on. . . . [T]he liberation of Iraq . . . removed an ally of al Qaeda.” May 1, 2003, Speech of
President Bush on U.S. S. Abraham Lincoln
(H) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq
By U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated By Intelligence Information, which was released on
June 5, 2008, concluded that:
(1) “Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-
Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not
substantiated by the intelligence.”
(2) “The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer
in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.”
Through his participation and instance in the breathtaking scope of this deception, the President has
used the highest office of trust to wage of campaign of deception of such sophistication as to
deliberately subvert the national security interests of the United States. His dishonesty set the stage for
the loss of more than 4000 United States service members; injuries to tens of thousands of soldiers, the
loss of more than 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi citizens since the United States invasion; the loss of
approximately $527 billion in war costs which has increased our Federal debt and the ultimate
expenditure of three to five trillion dollars for all costs covering the war; the loss of military readiness
within the United States Armed Services due to overextension, the lack of training and lack of
equipment; the loss of United States credibility in world affairs; and the decades of likely blowback
created by the invasion of Iraq.
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.
Article III
MISLEADING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO BELIEVE IRAQ
POSSESSED WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, SO AS TO MANUFACTURE A FALSE
CASE FOR WAR
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,
executed instead a calculated and wide-ranging strategy to deceive the citizens and Congress of the
United States into believing that the nation of Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to
justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to
our national security interests, thereby interfering with and obstructing Congress’s lawful functions of
overseeing foreign affairs and declaring war.
The means used to implement this deception were and continue to be personally making, or causing,
authorizing and allowing to be made through highly-placed subordinates, including the President’s
Chief of Staff, the White House Press Secretary and other White House spokespersons, the Secretaries
of State and Defense, the National Security Advisor, and their deputies and spokespersons, false and
fraudulent representations to the citizens of the United States and Congress regarding Iraq’s alleged
possession of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons that were half-true, literally true but
misleading, and/or made without a reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to their truth, as well
as omitting to state facts necessary to present an accurate picture of the truth as follows:
(A) Long before the March 19, 2003 invasion of Iraq, a wealth of intelligence informed the President
and those under his direction and control that Iraq’s stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons had
been destroyed well before 1998 and that there was little, if any, credible intelligence that showed
otherwise. As reported in the Washington Post in March of 2003, in 1995, Saddam Hussein’s son-inlaw
Hussein Kamel had informed U.S. and British intelligence officers that “all weapons—biological,
chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed.” In September 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency
issued a report that concluded: “A substantial amount of Iraq’s chemical warfare agents, precursors,
munitions and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation
Desert Storm and UNSCOM actions…[T]here is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing
and stockpiling chemical weapons or whether Iraq has-or will-establish its chemical warfare agent
production facilities.” Notwithstanding the absence of evidence proving that such stockpiles existed
and in direct contradiction to substantial evidence that showed they did not exist, the President and his
subordinates and agents made numerous false representations claiming with certainty that Iraq
possessed chemical and biological weapons that it was developing to use to attack the United States, to
wit:
(1) “[T]he notion of a Saddam Hussein with his great oil wealth, with his inventory that he already has
of biological and chemical weapons . . . is, I think, a frightening proposition for anybody who thinks
about it.” Statement of Vice President Cheney on CBS’s Face the Nation, March 24, 2002.
(2) “In defiance of the United Nations, Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is
rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons.” Speech of President Bush, October 5,
2002.
(3) “All the world has now seen the footage of an Iraqi Mirage aircraft with a fuel tank modified to
spray biological agents over wide areas. Iraq has developed spray devices that could be used on
unmanned aerial vehicles with ranges far beyond what is permitted by the Security Council. A UAV
launched from a vessel off the American coast could reach hundreds of miles inland.” Statement by
President Bush from the White House, February 6, 2003.
(B) Despite overwhelming intelligence in the form of statements and reports filed by and on behalf of
the CIA, the State Department and the IAEA, among others, which indicated that the claim was untrue,
the President, and those under his direction and control, made numerous representations claiming and
implying through misleading language that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger in
order to falsely buttress its argument that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program,
including:
(1) “”The regime has the scientists and facilities to build nuclear weapons, and is seeking the materials
needed to do so.” Statement of President Bush from White House, October 2, 2002.
(2) “The [Iraqi] report also failed to deal with issues which have arisen since 1998, including: . .
attempts to acquire uranium and the means to enrich it.” Letter from President Bush to Vice President
Cheney and the Senate, January 20, 2003.
(3) “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of
uranium from Africa .” President Bush Delivers State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003.
(C) Despite overwhelming evidence in the form of reports by nuclear weapons experts from the
Energy, the Defense and State Departments, as well from outside and international agencies which
assessed that aluminum tubes the Iraqis were purchasing were not suitable for nuclear centrifuge use
and were, on the contrary, identical to ones used in rockets already being manufactured by the Iraqis,
the President, and those under his direction and control, persisted in making numerous false and
fraudulent representations implying and stating explicitly that the Iraqis were purchasing the tubes for
use in a nuclear weapons program, to wit:
(1) “We do know that there have been shipments going . . . into Iraq . . . of aluminum tubes that really
are only suited to — high-quality aluminum tools [sic] that are only really suited for nuclear weapons
programs, centrifuge programs.” Statement of then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on
CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, September 8, 2002.
(2) “Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes
suitable for nuclear weapons production.” President Bush’s State of the Union Address, January 28,
2003.
(3) “[H]e has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11
different countries, even after inspections resumed. …By now, just about everyone has heard of these
tubes and we all know that there are differences of opinion. There is controversy about what these tubes
are for. Most US experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich
uranium.” Speech of Former Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations, February 5, 2003.
(D) The President, both personally and acting through those under his direction and control, suppressed
material information, selectively declassified information for the improper purposes of retaliating
against a whistleblower and presenting a misleading picture of the alleged threat from Iraq, facilitated
the exposure of the identity of a covert CIA operative and thereafter not only failed to investigate the
improper leaks of classified information from within his administration, but also failed to cooperate
with an investigation into possible federal violations resulting from this activity and, finally, entirely
undermined the prosecution by commuting the sentence of Lewis Libby citing false and insubstantial
grounds, all in an effort to prevent Congress and the citizens of the United States from discovering the
fraudulent nature of the President’s claimed justifications for the invasion of Iraq.
(E) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq
By U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated By Intelligence Information, which was released on
June 5, 2008, concluded that:
(1) “Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence
Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the
intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.”
(2) “The Secretary of Defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD
facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply
buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.”
(3) Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Jay Rockefeller concluded: “In making the case for
war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated,
contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat
from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”
The President has subverted the national security interests of the United States by setting the stage for
the loss of more than 4000 United States service members and the injury to tens of thousands of US
soldiers; the loss of more than 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi citizens since the United States invasion; the
loss of approximately $500 billion in war costs which has increased our Federal debt with a long term
financial cost of between three and five trillion dollars; the loss of military readiness within the United
States Armed Services due to overextension, the lack of training and lack of equipment; the loss of
United States credibility in world affairs; and the decades of likely blowback created by the invasion of
Iraq.
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.
Article IV
MISLEADING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO BELIEVE IRAQ
POSED AN IMMINENT THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES
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,
executed a calculated and wide-ranging strategy to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United
States into believing that the nation of Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States in order to
justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to
our national security interests, thereby interfering with and obstructing Congress’s lawful functions of
overseeing foreign affairs and declaring war.
The means used to implement this deception were and continue to be, first, allowing, authorizing and
sanctioning the manipulation of intelligence analysis by those under his direction and control, including
the Vice President and the Vice President’s agents, and second, personally making, or causing,
authorizing and allowing to be made through highly-placed subordinates, including the President’s
Chief of Staff, the White House Press Secretary and other White House spokespersons, the Secretaries
of State and Defense, the National Security Advisor, and their deputies and spokespersons, false and
fraudulent representations to the citizens of the United States and Congress regarding an alleged urgent
threat posed by Iraq, statements that were half-true, literally true but misleading, and/or made without a
reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to their truth, as well as omitting to state facts necessary
to present an accurate picture of the truth as follows:
(A) Notwithstanding the complete absence of intelligence analysis to support a claim that Iraq posed
an imminent or urgent threat to the United States and the intelligence community’s assessment that Iraq
was in fact not likely to attack the United States unless it was itself attacked, President Bush, both
personally and through his agents and subordinates, made, allowed and caused to be made repeated
false representations to the citizens and Congress of the United States implying and explicitly stating
that such a dire threat existed, including the following:
(1) “States such as these [Iraq, Iran and North Korea] and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil,
arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose
a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to
match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of
these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.” President Bush’s State of the Union
Address, January 29, 2002.
(2) “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. He is
amassing them to use against our friends our enemies and against us.” Speech of Vice President
Cheney at VFW 103rd National Convention, August 26, 2002.
(3) “The history, the logic, and the facts lead to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave
and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime’s
good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a
risk we must not take.” Address of President Bush to the United Nations General Assembly, September
12, 2002.
(4) “[N]o terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the
regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq.” Statement of Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to
Congress, September 19, 2002.
(5) “On its present course, the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency. . . . it has developed weapons
of mass death.” Statement of President Bush at White House, October 2, 2002.
(6) “But the President also believes that this problem has to be dealt with, and if the United Nations
won’t deal with it, then the United States, with other likeminded nations, may have to deal with it. We
would prefer not to go that route, but the danger is so great, with respect to Saddam Hussein having
weapons of mass destruction, and perhaps even terrorists getting hold of such weapons, that it is time
for the international community to act, and if it doesn’t act, the President is prepared to act with
likeminded nations.” Statement of Former Secretary of State Colin Powell in interview with Ellen
Ratner of Talk Radio News, October 30, 2002.
(7) “Today the world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq. A dictator
who has used weapons of mass destruction on his own people must not be allowed to produce or
possess those weapons. We will not permit Saddam Hussein to blackmail and/or terrorize nations which
love freedom.” Speech by President Bush to Prague Atlantic Student Summit, November 20, 2002.
(8) “But the risk of doing nothing, the risk of the security of this country being jeopardized at the
hands of a madman with weapons of mass destruction far exceeds the risk of any action we may be
forced to take.” President Bush Meets with National Economic Council at White House, February 25,
2003.
(B) In furtherance of his fraudulent effort to deceive Congress and the citizens of the United States into
believing that Iraq and Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States, the President
allowed and authorized those acting under his direction and control, including Vice President Richard
B. Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Lewis Libby, who reportedly directly to
both the President and the Vice President, among others, to pressure intelligence analysts to tailor their
assessments and to create special units outside of, and unknown to, the intelligence community in order
to secretly obtain unreliable information, to manufacture intelligence, or to reinterpret raw data in ways
that would support the Bush administration’s plan to invade Iraq based on a false claim of urgency
despite the lack of justification for such a preemptive action.
(C) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq
By U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated By Intelligence Information, which was released on
June 5, 2008, concluded that:
(1) “Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared
to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were
contradicted by available intelligence information.”
Thus the President willfully and falsely misrepresented Iraq as an urgent threat requiring immediate
action thereby subverting the national security interests of the United States by setting the stage for the
loss of more than 4000 United States service members; the injuries to tens of thousands of US soldiers;
the deaths of more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens since the United States invasion; the loss of
approximately $527 billion in war costs which has increased our Federal debt and the ultimate costs of
the war between three trillion and five trillion dollars; the loss of military readiness within the United
States Armed Services due to overextension, the lack of training and lack of equipment; the loss of
United States credibility in world affairs; and the decades of likely blowback created by the invasion of
Iraq.
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.
Article V.
ILLEGALLY MISSPENDING FUNDS TO SECRETLY BEGIN A WAR OF AGGRESSION
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 misspent funds to begin a war in secret prior to any Congressional authorization.
The president used over $2 billion in the summer of 2002 to prepare for the invasion of Iraq. First
reported in Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, and later confirmed by the Congressional Research
Service, Bush took money appropriated by Congress for Afghanistan and other programs and—with no
Congressional notification — used it to build airfields in Qatar and to make other preparations for the
invasion of Iraq. This constituted a violation of Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, as well as a
violation of the War Powers Act of 1973.
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.
Article VI.
INVADING IRAQ IN VIOLATION OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF HJRes114.
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”,
exceeded his Constitutional authority to wage war by invading Iraq in 2003 without meeting the
requirements of HJRes 114, the “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of
2002″ to wit:
(1) HJRes 114 contains several Whereas clauses consistent with statements being made by the White
House at the time regarding the threat from Iraq as evidenced by the following:
(A) HJRes 114 states “Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the
United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material
and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess
and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear
weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;”; and
(B) HJRes 114 states “Whereas members of Al Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for
attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September
11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;”.
(2) HJRes 114 states that the President must provide a determination, the truthfulness of which is
implied, that military force is necessary in order to use the authorization, as evidenced by the
following:
(A) Section 3 of HJRes 114 states:
“(b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION.—In connection with the exercise of the authority granted
in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon thereafter as may be
feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the
House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that—
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not
adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq
or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions
regarding Iraq; and
(2) acting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries
continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorist and terrorist organizations,
including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the
terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”
(3) On March 18, 2003, President George Bush sent a letter to Congress stating that he had made that
determination as evidenced by the following:
(A) March 18th, 2003 Letter to Congress stating:
Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of
2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed
document, I determine that:
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A)
adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq
nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding
Iraq; and
(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and
other countries continuing 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.
(4) President George Bush knew that these statements were false as evidenced by:
(A) Information provided with Article I, II, III, IV and V.
(B) A statement by President George Bush in an interview with Tony Blair on January 31st 2003: [WH]
Reporter: “One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a
direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?”
President Bush: “I can’t make that claim”
(C) An article on February 19th by Terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna states “I could find no evidence
of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The documentation and interviews indicated that Al Qaeda
regarded Saddam, a secular leader, as an infidel.” [InternationalHeraldTribune]
(D) According to a February 2nd, 2003 article in the New York Times: [NYT]
At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush
administration’s insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s network. “We’ve been
looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don’t think it’s there,” a
government official said.
(5) Section 3C of HJRes 114 states that “Nothing in this joint resolution supersedes any requirement of
the War Powers Resolution.”
(6) The War Powers Resolution Section 9(d)(1) states:
(d) Nothing in this joint resolution–
(1) is intended to alter the constitutional authority of the Congress or of the President, or the provision
of existing treaties; or
(7) The United Nations Charter was an existing treaty and, as shown in Article VIII, the invasion of
Iraq violated that treaty
(8) President George Bush knowingly failed to meet the requirements of HJRes 114 and violated the
requirement of the War Powers Resolution and, thereby, invaded Iraq without the authority of
Congress.
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.
Article VII.
INVADING IRAQ ABSENT A DECLARATION OF WAR
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 launched a war against Iraq absent any congressional declaration of war or equivalent action.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 (the War Powers Clause) makes clear that the United States Congress
holds the exclusive power to decide whether or not to send the nation into war. “The Congress,” the
War Powers Clause states, “shall have power…To declare war…”
The October 2002 congressional resolution on Iraq did not constitute a declaration of war or equivalent
action. The resolution stated: “The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United
States as he deems necessary and appropriate in order to 1) defend the national security of the United
States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and 2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security
Council resolutions regarding Iraq.” The resolution unlawfully sought to delegate to the President the
decision of whether or not to initiate a war against Iraq, based on whether he deemed it “necessary and
appropriate.” The Constitution does not allow Congress to delegate this exclusive power to the
President, nor does it allow the President to seize this power.
In March 2003, the President launched a war against Iraq without any constitutional authority.
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.
Article VIII
INVADING IRAQ, A SOVEREIGN NATION, IN VIOLATION OF THE UN CHARTER AND
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW
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”,
violated United States law by invading the sovereign country of Iraq in violation of the United Nations
Charter to wit:
(1) International Laws ratified by Congress are part of United States Law and must be followed as
evidenced by the following:
(A) Article VI of the United States Constitution, which states “This Constitution, and the Laws of the
United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made,
under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land;”
(2) The UN Charter, which entered into force following ratification by the United States in 1945,
requires Security Council approval for the use of force except for self-defense against an armed attack
as evidenced by the following:
A) Chapter 1, Article 2 of the United Nations Charter states:
“3.All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that
international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
“4.All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the
territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the
Purposes of the United Nations.”
(B) Chapter 7, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter states:
“51. Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective selfdefense
if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council
has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
(3) There was no armed attack upon the United States by Iraq.
(4) The Security Council did not vote to approve the use of force against Iraq as evidenced by:
(A) A United Nation Press release which states that the United States had failed to convince the
Security Council to approve the use of military force against Iraq. [UN]
(5) President Bush directed the United States military to invade Iraq on March 19th, 2003 in violation
of the UN Charter and, therefore, in violation of United States Law as evidenced by the following:
(A) A letter from President Bush to Congress dated March 21st, 2003 stating “I directed U.S. Armed
Forces, operating with other coalition forces, to commence combat operations on March 19, 2003,
against Iraq.” [WH]
(B) On September 16, 2004 Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations, speaking on the
invasion, said, “I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view,
from the charter point of view, it was illegal.” [BBC]
( C ) The consequence of the instant and direction of President George W. Bush, in ordering an attack
upon Iraq, a sovereign nation is in direct violation of United States Code, Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 118,
Section 2441, governing the offense of war crimes.
(6). In the course of invading and occupying Iraq, the President, as Commander in Chief, has taken
responsibility for the targeting of civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, use of antipersonnel
weapons including cluster bombs in densely settled urban areas, the use of white phosphorous as a
weapon, depleted uranium weapons, and the use of a new version of napalm found in Mark 77
firebombs. Under the direction of President George Bush the United States has engaged in collective
punishment of Iraqi civilian populations, including but not limited to blocking roads, cutting electricity
and water, destroying fuel stations, planting bombs in farm fields, demolishing houses, and plowing
over orchards.
(A) Under the principle of “command responsibility”, i.e., that a de jure command can be civilian as
well as military, and can apply to the policy command of heads of state, said command brings President
George Bush within the reach of international criminal law under the Additional Protocol I of June 8,
1977 to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of
International Armed Conflicts, Article 86 (2). The United States is a state signatory to Additional
Protocol I, on December 12, 1977.
(B) Furthermore, Article 85 (3) of said Protocol I defines as a grave breach making a civilian
population or individual civilians the object of attacks. This offense, together with the principle of
command responsibility, places President George Bush’s conduct under the reach of the same law and
principles described as the basis for war crimes prosecution at Nuremburg, under Article 6 of the
Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunals: including crimes against peace, violations of the laws and customs
of war and crimes against humanity, similarly codified in the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court, Articles 5 through 8.
(C) The Lancet Report has established massive civilian casualties in Iraq as a result of the United
States’ invasion and occupation of that country.
(D) International laws governing wars of aggression are completely prohibited under the legal
principle of jus cogens, whether or not a nation has signed or ratified a particular international
agreement.
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
Article IX.
FAILING TO PROVIDE TROOPS WITH BODY ARMOR AND VEHICLE ARMOR
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,
has been responsible for the deaths of members of the U.S. military and serious injury and trauma to
other soldiers, by failing to provide available body armor and vehicle armor.
While engaging in an invasion and occupation of choice, not fought in self-defense, and not launched
in accordance with any timetable other than the President’s choosing, President Bush sent U.S. troops
into danger without providing them with armor. This shortcoming has been known for years, during
which time, the President has chosen to allow soldiers and Marines to continue to face unnecessary risk
to life and limb rather then providing them with armor.
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.
Article X
FALSIFYING ACCOUNTS OF U.S. TROOP DEATHS AND INJURIES FOR POLITICAL
PURPOSES
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,
promoted false propaganda stories about members of the United States military, including individuals
both dead and injured.
The White House and the Department of Defense (DOD) in 2004 promoted a false account of the death
of Specialist Pat Tillman, reporting that he had died in a hostile exchange, delaying release of the
information that he had died from friendly fire, shot in the forehead three times in a manner that led
investigating doctors to believe he had been shot at close range.
A 2005 report by Brig. Gen. Gary M. Jones reported that in the days immediately following Specialist
Tillman’s death, U.S. Army investigators were aware that Specialist Tillman was killed by friendly fire,
shot three times to the head, and that senior Army commanders, including Gen. John Abizaid, knew of
this fact within days of the shooting but nevertheless approved the awarding of the Silver Star, Purple
Heart, and a posthumous promotion.
On April 24, 2007, Spc. Bryan O’Neal, the last soldier to see Specialist Pat Tillman alive, testified
before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he was warned by superiors not
to divulge information that a fellow soldier killed Specialist Tillman, especially to the Tillman family.
The White House refused to provide requested documents to the committee, citing “executive branch
confidentiality interests.”
The White House and DOD in 2003 promoted a false account of the injury of Jessica Dawn Lynch,
reporting that she had been captured in a hostile exchange and had been dramatically rescued. On April
2, 2003, the DOD released a video of the rescue and claimed that Lynch had stab and bullet wounds,
and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated. Iraqi doctors and nurses later
interviewed, including Dr. Harith Al-Houssona, a doctor in the Nasirya hospital, described Lynch’s
injuries as “a broken arm, a broken thigh, and a dislocated ankle”. According to Al-Houssona, there
was no sign of gunshot or stab wounds, and Lynch’s injuries were consistent with those that would be
suffered in a car accident. Al-Houssona’s claims were later confirmed in a U.S. Army report leaked on
July 10, 2003.
Lynch denied that she fought or was wounded fighting, telling Diane Sawyer that the Pentagon “used
me to symbolize all this stuff. It’s wrong. I don’t know why they filmed [my rescue] or why they say
these things…. I did not shoot, not a round, nothing. I went down praying to my knees. And that’s the
last I remember.” She reported excellent treatment in Iraq, and that one person in the hospital even sang
to her to help her feel at home.
On April 24, 2007 Lynch testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:
“[Right after my capture], tales of great heroism were being told. My parent’s home in Wirt County was
under siege of the media all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down
fighting. It was not true…. I am still confused as to why they chose to lie.”
The White House had heavily promoted the false story of Lynch’s rescue, including in a speech by
President Bush on April 28, 2003. After the fiction was exposed, the president awarded Lynch the
Bronze Star.
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.
Article XI
ESTABLISHMENT OF PERMANENT U.S. MILITARY BASES IN 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 violated an act of Congress that he himself signed into law by using public funds to construct
permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq.
On January 28, 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law the National Defense Authorization
Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (H.R. 4986). Noting that the Act “authorizes funding for the defense of the
United States and its interests abroad, for military construction, and for national security-related energy
programs,” the president added the following “signing statement”:
“Provisions of the Act, including sections 841, 846, 1079, and 1222, purport to impose requirements
that could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to
execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a
manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.”
Section 1222 clearly prohibits the expenditure of money for the purpose of establishing permanent U.S.
military bases in Iraq. The construction of over $1 billion in U.S. military bases in Iraq, including
runways for aircraft, continues despite Congressional intent, as the Administration intends to force
upon the Iraqi government such terms which will assure the bases remain in Iraq.
Iraqi officials have informed members of Congress in May 2008 of the strong opposition within the
Iraqi parliament and throughout Iraq to the agreement that the administration is trying to negotiate with
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The agreement seeks to assure a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq
of which military bases are the most obvious, sufficient and necessary construct, thus clearly defying
Congressional intent as to the matter and meaning of “permanency”.
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.
Article XII
INITIATING A WAR AGAINST IRAQ FOR CONTROL OF THAT NATION’S NATURAL
RESOURCES
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,
invaded and occupied a foreign nation for the purpose, among other purposes, of seizing control of that
nation’s oil.
The White House and its representatives in Iraq have, since the occupation of Baghdad began,
attempted to gain control of Iraqi oil. This effort has included pressuring the new Iraqi government to
pass a hydrocarbon law. Within weeks of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the US Agency for
International Development (USAid) awarded a $240 million contract to Bearing Point, a private U.S.
company. A Bearing Point employee, based in the US embassy in Baghdad, was hired to advise the
Iraqi Ministry of Oil on drawing up the new hydrocarbon law. The draft law places executives of
foreign oil companies on a council with the task of approving their own contracts with Iraq; it denies
the Iraqi National Oil Company exclusive rights for the exploration, development, production,
transportation, and marketing of Iraqi oil, and allows foreign companies to control Iraqi oil fields
containing 80 percent of Iraqi oil for up to 35 years through contracts that can remain secret for up to 2
months. The draft law itself contains secret appendices.
President Bush provided unrelated reasons for the invasion of Iraq to the public and Congress, but
those reasons have been established to have been categorically fraudulent, as evidenced by the herein
mentioned Articles of Impeachment I, II, III, IV, VI, and VII.
Parallel to the development of plans for war against Iraq, the U.S. State Department’s Future of Iraq
project, begun as early as April 2002, involved meetings in Washington and London of 17 working
groups, each composed of 10 to 20 Iraqi exiles and international experts selected by the State
Department. The Oil and Energy working group met four times between December 2002 and April
2003. Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, later the Iraqi Oil Minister, was a member of the group, which
concluded that Iraq “should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the
war,” and that, “the country should establish a conducive business environment to attract investment of
oil and gas resources.” The same group recommended production-sharing agreements with foreign oil
companies, the same approach found in the draft hydrocarbon law, and control over Iraq’s oil resources
remains a prime objective of the Bush Administration.
Prior to his election as Vice President, Dick Cheney, then-CEO of Halliburton, in a speech at the
Institute of Petroleum in 1999 demonstrated a keen awareness of the sensitive economic and
geopolitical role of Midde East oil resources saying: “By 2010, we will need on the order of an
additional 50 million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and national
oil companies are obviously controlling about 90 percent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a
government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East,
with two-thirds of the world’s oil and lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies. Even though
companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.”
The Vice President led the work of a secret energy task force, as described in Article XXXII below, a
task force that focused on, among other things, the acquisition of Iraqi oil through developing a
controlling private corporate interest in said oil.
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.
ARTICLE XIII
CREATING A SECRET TASK FORCE TO DEVELOP ENERGY AND MILITARY POLICIES
WITH RESPECT TO IRAQ AND OTHER COUNTRIES
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 to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has both personally and acting through his agents
and subordinates, together with the Vice President, created a secret task force to guide our nation’s
energy policy and military policy, and undermined Congress’ ability to legislate by thwarting attempts
to investigate the nature of that policy.
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) Report on the Cheney Energy Task Force, in August
2003, described the creation of this task force as follows:
“In a January 29, 2001, memorandum, the President established NEPDG [the National Energy Policy
Development Group] — comprised of the Vice President, nine cabinet-level officials, and four other
senior administration officials — to gather information, deliberate, and make recommendations to the
President by the end of fiscal year 2001. The President called on the Vice President to chair the group,
direct its work and, as necessary, establish subordinate working groups to assist NEPDG.”
The four “other senior administration officials were the Director of the Office of Management and
Budget, the Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, the Assistant to the
President for Economic Policy, and the Deputy Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs.
The GAO report found that:
“In developing the National Energy Policy report, the NEPDG Principals, Support Group, and
participating agency officials and staff met with, solicited input from, or received information and
advice from nonfederal energy stakeholders, principally petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and
electricity industry representatives and lobbyists. The extent to which submissions from any of these
stakeholders were solicited, influenced policy deliberations, or were incorporated into the final report
cannot be determined based on the limited information made available to GAO. NEPDG met and
conducted its work in two distinct phases: the first phase culminated in a March 19, 2001, briefing to
the President on challenges relating to energy supply and the resulting economic impact; the second
phase ended with the May 16, 2001, presentation of the final report to the President. The Office of the
Vice President’s (OVP) unwillingness to provide the NEPDG records or other related information
precluded GAO from fully achieving its objectives and substantially limited GAO’s ability to
comprehensively analyze the NEPDG process. associated with that process.
“None of the key federal entities involved in the NEPDG effort provided GAO with a complete
accounting of the costs that they incurred during the development of the National Energy Policy report.
The two federal entities responsible for funding the NEPDG effort—OVP and the Department of
Energy (DOE)—did not provide the comprehensive cost information that GAO requested. OVP
provided GAO with 77 pages of information, two-thirds of which contained no cost information while
the remaining one-third contained some miscellaneous information of little to no usefulness. OVP
stated that it would not provide any additional information. DOE, the Department of the Interior, and
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provided GAO with estimates of certain costs and salaries
associated with the NEPDG effort, but these estimates, all calculated in different ways, were not
comprehensive.”
In 2003, the Commerce Department disclosed a partial collection of materials from the NEPDG,
including documents, maps, and charts, dated March 2001, of Iraq’s, Saudi Arabia’s and the United
Arab Emirates’ oil fields, pipelines, refineries, tanker terminals, and development projects.
On November 16, 2005, the Washington Post reported on a White House document showing that oil
company executives had met with the NEPDG, something that some of those same executives had just
that week denied in Congressional testimony. The Bush Administration had not corrected the
inaccurate testimony.
On July 18, 2007, the Washington Post reported the full list of names of those who had met with the
NEPDG.
In 1998 Kenneth Derr, then chief executive of Chevron, told a San Francisco audience, “Iraq possesses
huge reserves of oil and gas, reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.” According to the GAO
report, Chevron provided detailed advice to the NEPDG.
In March, 2001, the NEPDG recommended that the United States Government support initiatives by
Middle Eastern countries “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.” Following
the invasion of Iraq, the United States has pressured the new Iraqi parliament to pass a hydrocarbon law
that would do exactly that. The draft law, if passed, would take the majority of Iraq’s oil out of the
exclusive hands of the Iraqi Government and open it to international oil companies for a generation or
more. The Bush administration hired Bearing Point, a U.S. company, to help write the law in 2004. It
was submitted to the Iraqi Council of Representatives in May 2007.
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.
Article XIV
MISPRISION OF A FELONY, MISUSE AND EXPOSURE OF CLASSIFIED INFORMATION AND
OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE IN THE MATTER OF VALERIE PLAME WILSON, CLANDESTINE
AGENT OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
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,
(1) suppressed material information;
(2) selectively declassified information for the improper purposes of retaliating against a whistleblower
and presenting a misleading picture of the alleged threat from Iraq;
(3) facilitated the exposure of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson who had theretofore been employed
as a covert CIA operative;
(4) failed to investigate the improper leaks of classified information from within his administration;
(5) failed to cooperate with an investigation into possible federal violations resulting from this activity;
and
(6) finally, entirely undermined the prosecution by commuting the sentence of Lewis Libby citing false
and insubstantial grounds, all in an effort to prevent Congress and the citizens of the United States from
discovering the deceitful nature of the President’s claimed justifications for the invasion of Iraq.
In facilitating this exposure of classified information and the subsequent cover-up, in all of these
actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as
President, 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.
Article XV
PROVIDING IMMUNITY FROM PROSECUTION FOR CRIMINAL CONTRACTORS IN 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,
established policies granting United States government contractors and their employees in Iraq
immunity from Iraqi law, U.S. law, and international law.
Lewis Paul Bremer III, then-Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for post-war Iraq,
on June 27, 2004, issued Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 17, which granted members of
the U.S. military, U.S. mercenaries, and other U.S. contractor employees immunity from Iraqi law.
The Bush Administration has chosen not to apply the Uniform Code of Military Justice or United
States law to mercenaries and other contractors employed by the United States government in Iraq.
Operating free of Iraqi or U.S. law, mercenaries have killed many Iraqi civilians in a manner that
observers have described as aggression and not as self-defense. Many U.S. contractors have also
alleged that they have been the victims of aggression (in several cases of rape) by their fellow contract
employees in Iraq. These charges have not been brought to trial, and in several cases the contracting
companies and the U.S. State Department have worked together in attempting to cover them up.
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which the United States is party, and which under Article VI
of the U.S. Constitution is therefore the supreme law of the United States, it is the responsibility of an
occupying force to ensure the protection and human rights of the civilian population. The efforts of
President Bush and his subordinates to attempt to establish a lawless zone in Iraq are in violation of the
law.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President 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.
Article XVI
RECKLESS MISSPENDING AND WASTE OF US TAX DOLLARS IN CONNECTION WITH
IRAQ CONTRACTORS
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,
recklessly wasted public funds on contracts awarded to close associates, including companies guilty of
defrauding the government in the past, contracts awarded without competitive bidding, “cost-plus”
contracts designed to encourage cost overruns, and contracts not requiring satisfactory completion of
the work. These failures have been the rule, not the exception, in the awarding of contracts for work in
the United States and abroad over the past seven years. Repeated exposure of fraud and waste has not
been met by the president with correction of systemic problems, but rather with retribution against
whistleblowers.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reported on Iraq reconstruction
contracting:
“From the beginning, the Administration adopted a flawed contracting approach in Iraq. Instead of
maximizing competition, the Administration opted to award no-bid, cost-plus contracts to politically
connected contractors. Halliburton’s secret $7 billion contract to restore Iraq’s oil infrastructure is the
prime example. Under this no-bid, cost-plus contract, Halliburton was reimbursed for its costs and then
received an additional fee, which was a percentage of its costs. This created an incentive for
Halliburton to run up its costs in order to increase its potential profit.
“Even after the Administration claimed it was awarding Iraq contracts competitively in early 2004, real
price competition was missing. Iraq was divided geographically and by economic sector into a handful
of fiefdoms. Individual contractors were then awarded monopoly contracts for all of the work within
given fiefdoms. Because these monopoly contracts were awarded before specific projects were
identified, there was no actual price competition for more than 2,000 projects.
“In the absence of price competition, rigorous government oversight becomes essential for
accountability. Yet the Administration turned much of the contract oversight work over to private
companies with blatant conflicts of interest. Oversight contractors oversaw their business partners and,
in some cases, were placed in a position to assist their own construction work under separate monopoly
construction contracts….
“Under Halliburton’s two largest Iraq contracts, Pentagon auditors found $1 billion in ‘questioned’ costs
and over $400 million in ‘unsupported’ costs. Former Halliburton employees testified that the company
charged $45 for cases of soda, billed $100 to clean 15- pound bags of laundry, and insisted on housing
its staff as the five-star Kempinski hotel in Kuwait. Halliburton truck drivers testified that the company
‘torched’ brand new $85,000 trucks rather than perform relatively minor repairs and regular
maintenance. Halliburton procurement officials described the company’s informal motto in Iraq as
‘Don’t worry about price. It’s cost-plus.’ A Halliburton manager was indicted for ‘major fraud against
the United States’ for allegedly billing more than $5.5 billion for work that should have cost only
$685,000 in exchange for a $1 million kickback from a Kuwaiti subcontractor….
“The Air Force found that another U.S. government contractor, Custer Battles, set up shell
subcontractors to inflate prices. Those overcharges were passed along to the U.S government under the
company’s cost-plus contract to provide security for Baghdad International Airport. In one case, the
company allegedly took Iraqi-owned forklifts, re-painted them, and leased them to the U.S.
government.
“Despite the spending of billions of taxpayer dollars, U.S. reconstruction efforts in keys sectors of the
Iraqi economy are failing. Over two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, oil and electricity
production has fallen below pre-war levels. The Administration has failed to even measure how many
Iraqis lack access to drinkable water.”
“Constitution in Crisis,” a book by Congressman John Conyers, details the Bush Administration’s
response when contract abuse is made public:
“Bunnatine Greenhouse was the chief contracting officer at the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency
that has managed much of the reconstruction work in Iraq. In October 2004, Ms. Greenhouse came
forward and revealed that top Pentagon officials showed improper favoritism to Halliburton when
awarding military contracts to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR). Greenhouse
stated that when the Pentagon awarded Halliburton a five-year $7 billion contract, it pressured her to
withdraw her objections, actions which she claimed were unprecedented in her experience.
“On June 27, 2005, Ms. Greenhouse testified before Congress, detailing that the contract award process
was compromised by improper influence by political appointees, participation by Halliburton officials
in meetings where bidding requirements were discussed, and a lack of competition. She stated that the
Halliburton contracts represented “the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed
during the course of my professional career.” Days before the hearing, the acting general counsel of the
Army Corps of Engineers paid Ms. Greenhouse a visit and reportedly let it be known that it would not
be in her best interest to appear voluntarily.
“On August 27, 2005, the Army demoted Ms. Greenhouse, removing her from the elite Senior
Executive Service and transferring her to a lesser job in the corps’ civil works division . As Frank Rich
of The New York Times described the situation, ‘[H]er crime was not obstructing justice but pursuing it
by vehemently questioning irregularities in the awarding of some $7 billion worth of no-bid contracts
in Iraq to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown Root.’ The demotion was in apparent retaliation
for her speaking out against the abuses, even though she previously had stellar reviews and over 20
years of experience in military procurement.”
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reports on domestic contracting:
“The Administration’s domestic contracting record is no better than its record on Iraq. Waste, fraud, and
abuse appear to be the rule rather than the exception….
“A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) cost-plus contract with NCS Pearson, Inc., to hire
federal airport screeners was plagued by poor management and egregious waste. Pentagon auditors
challenged $303 million (over 40%) of the $741 million spent by Pearson under the contract. The
auditors detailed numerous concerns with the charges of Pearson and its subcontractors, such as ‘$20-
an-hour temporary workers billed to the government at $48 per hour, subcontractors who signed out
$5,000 in cash at a time with no supporting documents, $377,273.75 in unsubstantiated long distance
phone calls, $514,201 to rent tents that flooded in a rainstorm, [and] $4.4 million in “no show” fees for
job candidates who did not appear for tests.’ A Pearson employee who supervised Pearson’s hiring
efforts at 43 sites in the U.S. described the contract as ‘a waste a taxpayer’s money.’ The CEO of one
Pearson subcontractor paid herself $5.4 million for nine months work and provided herself with a
$270,000 pension….
“The Administration is spending $239 million on the Integrated Surveillance and Intelligence System, a
no-bid contract to provide thousands of cameras and sensors to monitor activity on the Mexican and
Canadian borders. Auditors found that the contractor, International Microwave Corp., billed for work it
never did and charged for equipment it never provided, ‘creat[ing] a potential for overpayments of
almost $13 million.’ Moreover, the border monitoring system reportedly does not work….
“After spending more than $4.5 billion on screening equipment for the nation’s entry points, the
Department of Homeland Security is now ‘moving to replace or alter much of’ it because ‘it is
ineffective, unreliable or too expensive to operate.’ For example, radiation monitors at ports and
borders reportedly could not ‘differentiate between radiation emitted by a nuclear bomb and naturally
occurring radiation from everyday material like cat litter or ceramic tile.’…
“The TSA awarded Boeing a cost-plus contract to install over 1,000 explosive detection systems for
airline passenger luggage. After installation, the machines ‘began to register false alarms’ and
‘[s]creeners were forced to open and hand-check bags.’ To reduce the number of false alarms, the
sensitivity of the machines was lowered, which reduced the effectiveness of the detectors. Despite these
serious problems, Boeing received an $82 million profit that the Inspector General determined to be
‘excessive.’…
“The FBI spent $170 million on a ‘Virtual Case File’ system that does not operate as required. After
three years of work under a cost-plus contract failed to produce a functional system, the FBI scrapped
the program and began work on the new ‘Sentinel’ Case File System….
“The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General found that taxpayer dollars were being
lavished on perks for agency officials. One IG report found that TSA spent over $400,000 on its first
leader’s executive office suite. Another found that TSA spent $350,000 on a gold-plated gym….
“According to news reports, Pentagon auditors … examined a contract between the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) and Unisys, a technology and consulting company, for the upgrade of
airport computer networks. Among other irregularities, government auditors found that Unisys may
have overbilled for as much as 171,000 hours of labor and overtime by charging for employees at up to
twice their actual rate of compensation. While the cost ceiling for the contract was set at $1 billion,
Unisys has reportedly billed the government $940 million with more than half of the seven-year
contract remaining and more than half of the TSA-monitored airports still lacking upgraded networks.”
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
Article XVII
ILLEGAL DETENTION: DETAINING INDEFINITELY AND WITHOUT CHARGE PERSONS
BOTH U.S. CITIZENS AND FOREIGN CAPTIVES
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,
violated United States and International Law and the US Constitution by illegally detaining indefinitely
and without charge persons both US citizens and foreign captives.
In a statement on Feb. 7, 2002, President Bush declared that in the US fight against Al Qaeda, “none of
the provisions of Geneva apply,” thus rejecting the Geneva Conventions that protect captives in wars
and other conflicts. By that time, the administration was already transporting captives from the war in
Afghanistan, both alleged Al Qaeda members and supporters, and also Afghans accused of being
fighters in the army of the Taliban government, to US-run prisons in Afghanistan and to the detention
facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The round-up and detention without charge of Muslim non-citizens
inside the US began almost immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, with some being held as long as nine months. The US, on orders of the
president, began capturing and detaining without charge alleged terror suspects in other countries and
detaining them abroad and at the US Naval base in Guantanamo.
Many of these detainees have been subjected to systematic abuse, including beatings, which have been
subsequently documented by news reports, photographic evidence, testimony in Congress, lawsuits,
and in the case of detainees in the US, by an investigation conducted by the Justice Department’s Office
of the Inspector General.
In violation of US law and the Geneva Conventions, the Bush Administration instructed the
Department of Justice and the US Department of Defense to refuse to provide the identities or locations
of these detainees, despite requests from Congress and from attorneys for the detainees. The president
even declared the right to detain US citizens indefinitely, without charge and without providing them
access to counsel or the courts, thus depriving them of their constitutional and basic human rights.
Several of those US citizens were held in military brigs in solitary confinement for as long as three
years before being either released or transferred to civilian detention.
Detainees in US custody in Iraq and Guantanamo have, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, been
hidden from and denied visits by the International Red Cross organization, while thousands of others in
Iraq, Guantanamo, Afghanistan, ships in foreign off-shore sites, and an unknown number of so-called
“black sites” around the world have been denied any opportunity to challenge their detentions. The
president, acting on his own claimed authority, has declared the hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo
Bay to be “enemy combatants” not subject to US law and not even subject to military law, but
nonetheless potentially liable to the death penalty.
The detention of individuals without due process violates the 5th Amendment. While the Bush
administration has been rebuked in several court cases, most recently that of Ali al-Marri, it continues
to attempt to exceed constitutional limits.
In all of these actions violating US and International law, 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.
ARTICLE XVIII
TORTURE: SECRETLY AUTHORIZING, AND ENCOURAGING THE USE OF TORTURE
AGAINST CAPTIVES IN AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ, AND OTHER PLACES, AS A MATTER OF
OFFICIAL POLICY
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,
violated United States and International Law and the US Constitution by secretly authorizing and
encouraging the use of torture against captives in Afghanistan, Iraq in connection with the so-called
“war” on terror.
In violation of the Constitution, US law, the Geneva Conventions (to which the US is a signatory), and
in violation of basic human rights, torture has been authorized by the President and his administration
as official policy. Water-boarding, beatings, faked executions, confinement in extreme cold or extreme
heat, prolonged enforcement of painful stress positions, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, and the
defiling of religious articles have been practiced and exposed as routine at Guantanamo, at Abu Ghraib
Prison and other US detention sites in Iraq, and at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The president,
besides bearing responsibility for authorizing the use of torture, also as Commander in Chief, bears
ultimate responsibility for the failure to halt these practices and to punish those responsible once they
were exposed.
The administration has sought to claim the abuse of captives is not torture, by redefining torture. An
August 1, 2002 memorandum from the Administration’s Office of Legal Counsel Jay S. Bybee
addressed to White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales concluded that to constitute torture, any pain
inflicted must be akin to that accompanying “serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment
of bodily function, or even death.” The memorandum went on to state that even should an act constitute
torture under that minimal definition, it might still be permissible if applied to “interrogations
undertaken pursuant to the President’s Commander-in-Chief powers.” The memorandum further
asserted that “necessity or self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal
liability.”
This effort to redefine torture by calling certain practices simply “enhanced interrogation techniques”
flies in the face of the Third Geneva Convention Relating to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which
states that “No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners
of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer
may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any
kind.”
Torture is further prohibited by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the paramount
international human rights statement adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly,
including the United States, in 1948. Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment is also prohibited by international treaties ratified by the United States: the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel
Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT).
When the Congress, in the Defense Authorization Act of 2006, overwhelmingly passed a measure
banning torture and sent it to the President’s desk for signature, the President, who together with his
vice president, had fought hard to block passage of the amendment, signed it, but then quietly appended
a signing statement in which he pointedly asserted that as Commander-in-Chief, he was not bound to
obey its strictures.
The administration’s encouragement of and failure to prevent torture of American captives in the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the battle against terrorism, has undermined the rule of law in the US
and in the US military, and has seriously damaged both the effort to combat global terrorism, and more
broadly, America’s image abroad. In his effort to hide torture by US military forces and the CIA, the
president has defied Congress and has lied to the American people, repeatedly claiming that the US
“does not torture.”
In all of these actions and decisions in violation of US and International law, 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.
ARTICLE XIX
RENDITION: KIDNAPPING PEOPLE AND TAKING THEM AGAINST THEIR WILL TO
“BLACK SITES” LOCATED IN OTHER NATIONS, INCLUDING NATIONS KNOWN TO
PRACTICE TORTURE
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,
violated United States and International Law and the US Constitution by kidnapping people and
renditioning them to “black sites” located in other nations, including nations known to practice torture.
The president has publicly admitted that since the 9-11 attacks in 2001, the US has been kidnapping
and transporting against the will of the subject (renditioning) in its so-called “war” on terror—even
people captured by US personnel in friendly nations like Sweden, Germany, Macedonia and Italy—and
ferrying them to places like Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, and to prisons operated in Eastern
European countries, African Countries and Middle Eastern countries where security forces are known
to practice torture.
These people are captured and held indefinitely, without any charges being filed, and are held without
being identified to the Red Cross, or to their families. Many are clearly innocent, and several cases,
including one in Canada and one in Germany, have demonstrably been shown subsequently to have
been in error, because of a similarity of names or because of misinformation provided to US
authorities.
Such a policy is in clear violation of US and International Law, and has placed the United States in the
position of a pariah state. The CIA has no law enforcement authority, and cannot legally arrest or
detain anyone. The program of “extraordinary rendition” authorized by the president is the substantial
equivalent of the policies of “disappearing” people, practices widely practiced and universally
condemned in the military dictatorships of Latin America during the late 20th Century.
The administration has claimed that prior administrations have practiced extraordinary rendition, but,
while this is technically true, earlier renditions were used only to capture people with outstanding arrest
warrants or convictions who were outside in order to deliver them to stand trial or serve their sentences
in the US. The president has refused to divulge how many people have been subject to extraordinary
rendition since September, 2001. It is possible that some have died in captivity. As one US official has
stated off the record, regarding the program, Some of those who were renditioned were later delivered
to Guantanamo, while others were sent there directly. An example of this is the case of six Algerian
Bosnians who, immediately after being cleared by the Supreme Court of Bosnia Herzegovina in
January 2002 of allegedly plotting to attack the US and UK embassies, were captured, bound and
gagged by US special forces and renditioned to Guantanamo.
In perhaps the most egregious proven case of rendition, Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria,
was picked up in September 2002 while transiting through New York’s JFK airport on his way home to
Canada. Immigration and FBI officials detained and interrogated him for nearly two weeks, illegally
denying him his rights to access counsel, the Canadian consulate, and the courts. Executive branch
officials asked him if he would volunteer to go to Syria, where he hadn’t been in 15 years, and Maher
refused
Maher was put on a private jet plane operated by the CIA and sent to Jordan, where he was beaten for 8
hours, and then delivered to Syria, where he was beaten and interrogated for 18 hours a day for a
couple of weeks. He was whipped on his back and hands with a 2 inch thick electric cable and asked
questions similar to those he had been asked in the United States. For over ten months Maher was held
in an underground grave-like cell – 3 x 6 x 7 feet – which was damp and cold, and in which the only
light came in through a hole in the ceiling. After a year of this, Maher was released without any
charges. He is now back home in Canada with his family. Upon his release, the Syrian Government
announced he had no links to Al Qaeda, and the Canadian Government has also said they’ve found no
links to Al Qaeda. The Canadian Government launched a Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of
Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar, to investigate the role of Canadian officials, but the Bush
Administration has refused to cooperate with the Inquiry.
Hundreds of flights of CIA-chartered planes have been documented as having passed through European
countries on extraordinary rendition missions like that involving Maher Arar, but the administration
refuses to state how many people have been subjects of this illegal program.
The same U.S. laws prohibiting aiding and abetting torture also prohibit sending someone to a country
where there is a substantial likelihood they may be tortured. Article 3 of CAT prohibits forced return
where there is a “substantial likelihood” that an individual “may be in danger of” torture, and has been
implemented by federal statute. Article 7 of the ICCPR prohibits return to country of origin where
individuals may be “at risk” of either torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Under international Human Rights law, transferring a POW to any nation where he or she is likely to be
tortured or inhumanely treated violates Article 12 of the Third Geneva Convention, and transferring
any civilian who is a protected person under the Fourth Geneva Convention is a grave breach and a
criminal act.
In situations of armed conflict, both international human rights law and humanitarian law apply. A
person captured in the zone of military hostilities “must have some status under international law; he is
either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third Convention, [or] a civilian covered by the
Fourth Convention….There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law.”
Although the state is obligated to repatriate Prisoners of War as soon as hostilities cease, the ICRC’s
commentary on the 1949 Conventions states that prisoners should not be repatriated where there are
serious reasons for fearing that repatriating the individual would be contrary to general principles of
established international law for the protection of human beings Thus, all of the Guantánamo detainees
as well as renditioned captives are protected by international human rights protections and
humanitarian law.
By his actions as outlined above, the President has abused his power, broken the law, deceived the
American people, and placed American military personnel, and indeed all Americans—especially those
who may travel or live abroad–at risk of similar treatment. Furthermore, in the eyes of the rest of the
world, the President has made the US, once a model of respect for Human Rights and respect for the
rule of law, into a state where international law is neither respected nor upheld.
In all of these actions and decisions in violation of United States and International law, 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.
Article XX
IMPRISONING CHILDREN
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, authorized or permitted the arrest
and detention of at least 2500 children under the age of 18 as “enemy combatants” in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relating to the
treatment of “protected persons” and the Optional Protocol to the Geneva Convention on the Rights of
the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, signed by the US in 2002 . To wit:
In May 2008, the US government reported to the United Nations that it has been holding upwards of
2,500 children under the age of 18 as “enemy combatants” at detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan and
at Guantanamo Bay (where there was a special center, Camp Iguana, established just for holding
children). The length of these detentions has frequently exceeded a year, and in some cases has
stretched to five years. Some of these detainees have reached adulthood in detention and are now not
being reported as child detainees because they are no longer children.
In addition to detaining children as “enemy combatants,” it has been widely reported in media reports
that the US military in Iraq has, based upon Pentagon rules of engagement, been treating boys as young
as 14 years of age as “potential combatants,” subject to arrest and even to being killed. In Fallujah, in
the days ahead of the November 2004 all-out assault, Marines ringing the city were reported to be
turning back into the city men and boys “of combat age” who were trying to flee the impending scene
of battle — an act which in itself is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which require combatants to
permit anyone, combatants as well as civilians, to surrender, and to leave the scene of battle.
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which the United States has been a signatory since 1949,
children under the age of 15 captured in conflicts, even if they have been fighting, are to be considered
victims, not prisoners. In 2002, the United States signed the Optional Protocol to the Geneva
Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of children in Armed Conflict, which raised
this age for this category of “protected person” to under 18.
The continued detention of such children, some as young as 10, by the US military is a violation of
both convention and protocol, and as such constitutes a war crime for which the president, as
commander in chief, bears full responsibility.
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.
Article XXI
MISLEADING CONGRESS AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ABOUT THREATS FROM IRAN,
AND SUPPORTING TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS WITHIN IRAN, WITH THE GOAL OF
OVERTHROWING THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT
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 to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has both personally and acting through his agents
and subordinates misled the Congress and the citizens of the United States about a threat of nuclear
attack from the nation of Iran.
The National Intelligence Estimate released to Congress and the public on December 4, 2007, which
confirmed that the government of the nation of Iran had ceased any efforts to develop nuclear weapons,
was completed in 2006. Yet , the president and his aides continued to suggest during 2007 that such a
nuclear threat was developing and might already exist. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley
stated at the time the National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iran was released that the president had
been briefed on its findings “in the last few months.” Hadley’s statement establishes a timeline that
shows the president knowingly sought to deceive Congress and the American people about a nuclear
threat that did not exist.
Hadley has stated that the president “was basically told: stand down” and, yet, the president and his
aides continued to make false claims about the prospect that Iran was trying to “build a nuclear
weapon” that could lead to “World War III.”
This evidence establishes that the president actively engaged in and had full knowledge of a campaign
by his administration to make a false “case” for an attack on Iran, thus warping the national security
debate at a critical juncture and creating the prospect of an illegal and unnecessary attack on a
sovereign nation.
Even after the National Intelligence Estimate was released to Congress and the American people, the
president stated that he did not believe anything had changed and suggested that he and members of his
administration would continue to argue that Iran should be seen as posing a threat to the United States.
He did this despite the fact that United States intelligence agencies had clearly and officially stated that
this was not the case.
Evidence suggests that the Bush Administration’s attempts to portray Iran as a threat are part of a
broader U.S. policy toward Iran. On September 30, 2001, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
established an official military objective of overturning the regime in Iran, as well as those in Iraq,
Syria, and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted in then-
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith’s book, “War and Decision.”
General Wesley Clark, reports in his book “Winning Modern Wars” being told by a friend in the
Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of governments that Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz planned to overthrow included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia.
Clark writes that the list also included Lebanon.
Journalist Gareth Porter reported in May 2008 asking Feith at a public event which of the six regimes
on the Clark list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, to which Feith replied “All of them.”
Rumsfeld’s aides also drafted a second version of the paper, as instructions to all military commanders
in the development of “campaign plans against terrorism”. The paper called for military commanders
to assist other government agencies “as directed” to “encourage populations dominated by terrorist
organizations or their supporters to overthrow that domination”.
In January 2005, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker Magazine that the Bush Administration
had been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since the summer of 2004.
In June 2005 former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter reported that United States security
forces had been sending members of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) into Iranian territory. The MEK
has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, Canada, Iraq,
and Iran. Ritter reported that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had used the MEK
to carry out remote bombings in Iran.
In April 2006, Hersh reported in the New Yorker Magazine that U.S. combat troops had entered and
were operating in Iran, where they were working with minority groups including the Azeris, Baluchis,
and Kurds.
Also in April 2006, Larisa Alexandrovna reported on Raw Story that the U.S. Department of Defense
(DOD) was working with and training the MEK, or former members of the MEK, sending them to
commit acts of violence in southern Iran in areas where recent attacks had left many dead. Raw Story
reported that the Pentagon had adopted the policy of supporting MEK shortly after the 2003 invasion of
Iraq, and in response to the influence of Vice President Richard B. Cheney’s office. Raw Story
subsequently reported that no Presidential finding, and no Congressional oversight, existed on MEK
operations.
In March 2007, Hersh reported in the New Yorker Magazine that the Bush administration was
attempting to stem the growth of Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically the Iranian
government and Hezbollah in Lebanon) by funding violent Sunni organizations, without any
Congressional authorization or oversight. Hersh said funds had been given to “three Sunni jihadist
groups … connected to al Qaeda” that “want to take on Hezbollah.”
In April 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported that conflicts with insurgent groups along Iran’s borders
were understood by the Iranian government as a proxy war with the United States. Among the groups
the U.S. DOD is supporting, according to this report, is the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, known by
its Kurdish acronym, PEJAK. The United States has provided “foodstuffs, economic assistance,
medical supplies and Russian military equipment, some of it funneled through nonprofit groups.”
In May 2008, Andrew Cockburn reported on Counter Punch that President Bush, six weeks earlier had
signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime. President Bush’s
secret directive covers actions across an area stretching from Lebanon to Afghanistan, and purports to
sanction actions up to and including the funding of organizations like the MEK and the assassination of
public officials.
All of these actions by the president and his agents and subordinates exhibit a disregard for the truth
and a recklessness with regard to national security, nuclear proliferation and the global role of the
United States military that is not merely unacceptable but dangerous in a commander-in-chief.
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.
Article XXII
CREATING SECRET LAWS
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,
established a body of secret laws through the issuance of legal opinions by the Department of Justice’s
Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).
The OLC’s March 14, 2003, interrogation memorandum (“Yoo Memorandum”) was declassified years
after it served as law for the executive branch. On April 29, 2008, House Judiciary Committee
Chairman John Conyers and Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Chairman Jerrold Nadler wrote in a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey:
“It appears to us that there was never any legitimate basis for the purely legal analysis contained in this
document to be classified in the first place. The Yoo Memorandum does not describe sources and
methods of intelligence gathering, or any specific facts regarding any interrogation activities. Instead, it
consists almost entirely of the Department’s legal views, which are not properly kept secret from
Congress and the American people. J. William Leonard, the Director of the National Archive’s Office
of Information Security Oversight Office, and a top expert in this field concurs, commenting that ‘[t]he
document in question is purely a legal analysis’ that contains ‘nothing which would justify
classification.’ In addition, the Yoo Memorandum suggests an extraordinary breadth and
aggressiveness of OLC’s secret legal opinion-making. Much attention has rightly been given to the
statement in footnote 10 in the March 14, 2003, memorandum that, in an October 23, 2001, opinion,
OLC concluded ‘that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.’ As
you know, we have requested a copy of that memorandum on no less than four prior occasions and we
continue to demand access to this important document.
“In addition to this opinion, however, the Yoo Memorandum references at least 10 other OLC opinions
on weighty matters of great interest to the American people that also do not appear to have been
released. These appear to cover matters such as the power of Congress to regulate the conduct of
military commissions, legal constraints on the ‘military detention of United States citizens,’ legal rules
applicable to the boarding and searching foreign ships, the President’s authority to render U.S.
detainees to the custody of foreign governments, and the President’s authority to breach or suspend
U.S. treaty obligations. Furthermore, it has been more than five years since the Yoo Memorandum was
authored, raising the question how many other such memoranda and letters have been secretly authored
and utilized by the Administration.
“Indeed, a recent court filing by the Department in FOIA litigation involving the Central Intelligence
Agency identifies 8 additional secret OLC opinions, dating from August 6, 2004, to February 18, 2007.
Given that these reflect only OLC memoranda identified in the files of the CIA, and based on the
sampling procedures under which that listing was generated, it appears that these represent only a small
portion of the secret OLC memoranda generated during this time, with the true number almost certainly
much higher.”
Senator Russ Feingold, in a statement during an April 30, 2008, senate hearing stated:
“It is a basic tenet of democracy that the people have a right to know the law. In keeping with this
principle, the laws passed by Congress and the case law of our courts have historically been matters of
public record. And when it became apparent in the middle of the 20th century that federal agencies
were increasingly creating a body of non-public administrative law, Congress passed several statutes
requiring this law to be made public, for the express purpose of preventing a regime of ‘secret law.’
“That purpose today is being thwarted. Congressional enactments and agency regulations are for the
most part still public. But the law that applies in this country is determined not only by statutes and
regulations, but also by the controlling interpretations of courts and, in some cases, the executive
branch. More and more, this body of executive and judicial law is being kept secret from the public,
and too often from Congress as well….
“A legal interpretation by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel … binds the entire
executive branch, just like a regulation or the ruling of a court. In the words of former OLC head Jack
Goldsmith, ‘These executive branch precedents are “law” for the executive branch.’ The Yoo
memorandum was, for a nine-month period in 2003 until it was withdrawn by Mr. Goldsmith, the law
that this Administration followed when it came to matters of torture. And of course, that law was
essentially a declaration that few if any laws applied…
“Another body of secret law is the controlling interpretations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act that are issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. FISA, of course, is the law that
governs the government’s ability in intelligence investigations to conduct wiretaps and search the
homes of people in the United States. Under that statute, the FISA Court is directed to evaluate wiretap
and search warrant applications and decide whether the standard for issuing a warrant has been met – a
largely factual evaluation that is properly done behind closed doors. But with the evolution of
technology and with this Administration’s efforts to get the Court’s blessing for its illegal wiretapping
activities, we now know that the Court’s role is broader, and that it is very much engaged in substantive
interpretations of the governing statute. These interpretations are as much a part of this country’s
surveillance law as the statute itself. Without access to them, it is impossible for Congress or the public
to have an informed debate on matters that deeply affect the privacy and civil liberties of all
Americans…
“The Administration’s shroud of secrecy extends to agency rules and executive pronouncements, such
as Executive Orders, that carry the force of law. Through the diligent efforts of my colleague Senator
Whitehouse, we have learned that OLC has taken the position that a President can ‘waive’ or ‘modify’ a
published Executive Order without any notice to the public or Congress – simply by not following it.”
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
Article XXIII
VIOLATION OF THE POSSE COMITATUS ACT
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, repeatedly and illegally
established programs to appropriate the power of the military for use in law enforcement. Specifically,
he has contravened U.S.C. Title 18. Section 1385, originally enacted in 1878, subsequently amended as
“Use of Army and Air Force as Posse Comitatus” and commonly known as the Posse Comitatus Act.
The Act states:
“Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of
Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to
execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”
The Posse Comitatus Act is designed to prevent the military from becoming a national police force.
The Declaration of Independence states as a specific grievance against the British that the King had
“kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures,” had
“affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the civil power,” and had “quarter[ed]
large bodies of armed troops among us . . . protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any
murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States”
Despite the Posse Comitatus Act’s intent, and in contravention of the law, President Bush
a) has used military forces for law enforcement purposes on U.S. border patrol;
b) has established a program to use military personnel for surveillance and information on criminal
activities;
c) is using military espionage equipment to collect intelligence information for law enforcement use on
civilians within the United States; and
d) employs active duty military personnel in surveillance agencies ,including the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA).
In June 2006, President Bush ordered National Guard troops deployed to the border shared by Mexico
with Arizona, Texas, and California. This deployment, which by 2007 reached a maximum of 6,000
troops, had orders to “conduct surveillance and operate detection equipment, work with border entry
identification teams, analyze information, assist with communications and give administrative support
to the Border Patrol” and concerned “…providing intelligence….inspecting cargo, and conducting
surveillance.”
The Air Force’s “Eagle Eyes” program encourages Air Force military staff to gather evidence on
American citizens. Eagle Eyes instructs Air Force personnel to engage in surveillance and then advises
them to “alert local authorities,” asking military staff to surveil and gather evidence on public citizens.
This contravenes DoD Directive 5525.5 “SUBJECT: DoD Cooperation with Civilian Law
Enforcement” which limits such activities.
President Bush has implemented a program to use imagery from military satellites for domestic law
enforcement through the National Applications Office.
President Bush has assigned numerous active duty military personnel to civilian institutions such as the
CIA and the Department of Homeland Security, both of which have responsibilities for law
enforcement and intelligence.
In addition, on May 9, 2007, President Bush released “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD
51,” which effectively gives the president unchecked power to control the entire government and to
define that government in time of an emergency, as well as the power to determine whether there is an
emergency. The document also contains “classified Continuity Annexes.” In July 2007 and again in
August 2007 Rep. Peter DeFazio, a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee,
sought access to the classified annexes. DeFazio and other leaders of the Homeland Security
Committee, including Chairman Bennie Thompson, have been denied a review of the Continuity of
Government classified annexes.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
Article XXIV
SPYING ON AMERICAN CITIZENS, WITHOUT A COURT-ORDERED WARRANT, IN
VIOLATION OF THE LAW AND THE FOURTH AMENDMENT
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, knowingly violated the fourth
Amendment to the Constitution and the Foreign Intelligence Service Act of 1978 (FISA) by authorizing
warrantless electronic surveillance of American citizens to wit:
(1) The President was aware of the FISA Law requiring a court order for any wiretap as evidenced by
the following:
(A)”Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it
requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about
chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.” White House Press
conference on April 20, 2004 [White House Transcript]
(B) “Law enforcement officers need a federal judge’s permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist’s phone,
or to track his calls, or to search his property. Officers must meet strict standards to use any of the tools
we’re talking about.” President Bush’s speech in Baltimore Maryland on July 20th 2005 [White House
Transcript]
(2) The President repeatedly ordered the NSA to place wiretaps on American citizens without
requesting a warrant from FISA as evidenced by the following:
(A) “Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security
Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of
terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying,
according to government officials.” New York Times article by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau on
December 12, 2005. [NYTimes]
(B) The President admits to authorizing the program by stating “I have reauthorized this program more
than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces
a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups. The NSA’s activities under this authorization are
thoroughly reviewed by the Justice Department and NSA’s top legal officials, including NSA’s general
counsel and inspector general. Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this
authorization and the activities conducted under it.” Radio Address from the White House on
December 17, 2005 [White House Transcript]
(C) In a December 19th 2005 press conference the President publicly admitted to using a combination
of surveillance techniques including some with permission from the FISA courts and some without
permission from FISA.
Reporter: It was, why did you skip the basic safeguards of asking courts for permission for the
intercepts?
THE PRESIDENT: … We use FISA still — you’re referring to the FISA court in your question — of
course, we use FISAs. But FISA is for long-term monitoring. What is needed in order to protect the
American people is the ability to move quickly to detect. Now, having suggested this idea, I then,
obviously, went to the question, is it legal to do so? I am — I swore to uphold the laws. Do I have the
legal authority to do this? And the answer is, absolutely. As I mentioned in my remarks, the legal
authority is derived from the Constitution, as well as the authorization of force by the United States
Congress.” [White House Transcript]
(D) Mike McConnel, the Director of National Intelligence, in a letter to to Senator Arlen Specter,
acknowledged that Bush’s Executive Order in 2001 authorized a series of secret surveillance activities
and included undisclosed activities beyond the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that
Bush confirmed in December 2005. “NSA Spying Part of Broader Effort” by Dan Eggen, Washington
Post, 8/1/07
(3) The President ordered the surveillance to be conducted in a way that would spy upon private
communications between American citizens located within the United States borders as evidenced by
the following:
(A) Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the
Electronic Fronteir Foundation’s FF’s lawsuit against AT&T. He testified that in 2003 he connected a
“splitter” that sent a copy of Internet traffic and phone calls to a secure room that was operated by the
NSA in the San Francisco office of AT&T. He heard from a co-worker that similar rooms were being
constructed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. From “Whistle-
Blower Outs NSA Spy Room”, Wired News, 4/7/06 [Wired] [EFF Case]
(4) The President asserted an inherent authority to conduct electronic surveillance based on the
Constitution and the “Authorization to use Military Force in Iraq” (AUMF) that was not legally valid as
evidenced by the following:
(A) In a December 19th, 2005 Press Briefing General Alberto Gonzales admitted that the surveillance
authorized by the President was not only done without FISA warrants, but that the nature of the
surveillance was so far removed from what FISA can approve that FISA could not even be amended to
allow it. Gonzales stated “We have had discussions with Congress in the past — certain members of
Congress — as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind
of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible.”.
(B) The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution states “The right of the people to be secure
in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
(C) “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 unambiguously limits warrantless domestic
electronic surveillance, even in a congressionally declared war, to the first 15 days of that war;
criminalizes any such electronic surveillance not authorized by statute; and expressly establishes FISA
and two chapters of the federal criminal code, governing wiretaps for intelligence purposes and for
criminal investigation, respectively, as the “exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . and
the interception of domestic wire, oral, and electronic communications may be conducted.” 50 U.S.C.
§§ 1811, 1809, 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(f).” Letter from Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe to John
Conyers on 1/6/06
(D) In a December 19th, 2005 Press Briefing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stated “Our position
is, is that the authorization to use force, which was passed by the Congress in the days following
September 11th, constitutes that other authorization, that other statute by Congress, to engage in this
kind of signals intelligence.”
(E) The “Authorization to use Military Force in Iraq” does not give any explicit authorization related to
electronic surveillance. [HJRes114]
(F) “From the foregoing analysis, it appears unlikely that a court would hold that Congress has
expressly or impliedly authorized the NSA electronic surveillance operations here under discussion,
and it would likewise appear that, to the extent that those surveillances fall within the definition of
“electronic surveillance” within the meaning of FISA or any activity regulated under Title III, Congress
intended to cover the entire field with these statutes.” From the “Presidential Authority to Conduct
Warrantless Electronic Surveillance to Gather Foreign Intelligence Information” by the Congressional
Research Service on January 5, 2006.
(G) “The inescapable conclusion is that the AUMF did not implicitly authorize what the FISA
expressly prohibited. It follows that the presidential program of surveillance at issue here is a violation
of the separation of powers — as grave an abuse of executive authority as I can recall ever having
studied.” Letter from Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe to John Conyers on 1/6/06
(H) On August 17, 2006 Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the United States District Court in Detroit, in
ACLU v. NSA, ruled that the “NSA program to wiretap the international communications of some
Americans without a court warrant violated the Constitution. … Judge Taylor ruled that the program
violated both the Fourth Amendment and a 1978 law that requires warrants from a secret court for
intelligence wiretaps involving people in the United States. She rejected the administration’s repeated
assertions that a 2001 Congressional authorization and the president’s constitutional authority allowed
the program.” From a New York Times article “Judge Finds Wiretap Actions Violate the Law” 8/18/06
and the Memorandum Opinion
(I) In July 2007, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case, ruling the plaintiffs
had no standing to sue because, given the secretive nature of the surveillance, they could not state with
certainty that they have been wiretapped by the NSA. This ruling did not address the legality of the
surveillance so Judge Taylor’s decision is the only ruling on that issue. [ACLU Legal Documents]
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
Article XXV
DIRECTING TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES TO CREATE AN ILLEGAL AND
UNCONSTITUTIONAL DATABASE OF THE PRIVATE TELEPHONE NUMBERS AND EMAILS
OF AMERICAN CITIZENS
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, violated the Stored
Communications Act of 1986 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 by creating of a very large
database containing information related to the private telephone calls and emails of American citizens,
to wit:
The President requested that telecommunication companies release customer phone records to the
government illegally as evidenced by the following:
“The Stored Communications Act of 1986 (SCA) prohibits the knowing disclosure of customer
telephone records to the government unless pursuant to subpoena, warrant or a National Security Letter
(or other Administrative subpoena); with the customers lawful consent; or there is a business necessity;
or an emergency involving the danger of death or serious physical injury. None of these exceptions
apply to the circumstance described in the USA Today story.” From page 169, “George W Bush versus
the US Constitution”. Compiled at the direction of Representative John Conyers.
According to a May 11, 2006 article in USA Today by Lesley Cauley “The National Security Agency
has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data
provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth”. An unidentified source said ‘The agency’s goal is “to
create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders’.
In early 2001, Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio rejected a request from the NSA to turn over customers
records of phone calls, emails and other Internet activity. Nacchio believed that complying with the
request would violate the Telecommunications Act of 1996. From National Journal, November 2, 2007.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
Article XXVI
ANNOUNCING THE INTENT TO VIOLATE LAWS WITH SIGNING STATEMENTS, AND
VIOLATING THOSE LAWS
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 used signing statements to claim the right to violate acts of Congress even as he signs them into
law.
In June 2007, the Government Accountability Office reported that in a sample of Bush signing
statements the office had studied, for 30 percent of them the Bush administration had already
proceeded to violate the laws the statements claimed the right to violate.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
Article XXVII
FAILING TO COMPLY WITH CONGRESSIONAL SUBPOENAS AND INSTRUCTING FORMER
EMPLOYEES NOT TO COMPLY
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, refused to comply with
Congressional subpoenas, and instructed former employees not to comply with subpoenas.
Subpoenas not complied with include:
1. A House Judiciary Committee subpoena for Justice Department papers and Emails, issued April
10, 2007;
2. A House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoena for the testimony of the
Secretary of State, issued April 25, 2007;
3. A House Judiciary Committee subpoena for the testimony of former White House Counsel
Harriet Miers and documents , issued June 13, 2007;
4. A Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena for documents and testimony of White House Chief of
Staff Joshua Bolten, issued June 13, 2007;
5. A Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena for documents and testimony of White House Political
Director Sara Taylor, issued June 13, 2007 (Taylor appeared but refused to answer questions);
6. A Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena for documents and testimony of White House Deputy
Chief of Staff Karl Rove, issued June 26, 2007;
7. A Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena for documents and testimony of White House Deputy
Political Director J. Scott Jennings, issued June 26, 2007 (Jennings appeared but refused to
answer questions);
8. A Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena for legal analysis and other documents concerning the
NSA warrantless wiretapping program from the White House, Vice President Richard Cheney,
The Department of Justice, and the National Security Council. If the documents are not
produced, the subpoena requires the testimony of White House chief of staff Josh Bolten,
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Cheney chief of staff David Addington, National Security
Council executive director V. Philip Lago, issued June 27, 2007;
9. A House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoena for Lt. General Kensinger.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
Article XXVIII
TAMPERING WITH FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS, CORRUPTION OF THE ADMINISTRATION
OF JUSTICE,
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, conspired to undermine and tamper
with the conduct of free and fair elections, and to corrupt the administration of justice by United States
Attorneys and other employees of the Department of Justice, through abuse of the appointment power.
Toward this end, the President and Vice President, both personally and through their agents, did:
Engage in a program of manufacturing false allegations of voting fraud in targeted jurisdictions where
the Democratic Party enjoyed an advantage in electoral performance or otherwise was problematic for
the President’s Republican Party, in order that public confidence in election results favorable to the
Democratic Party be undermined;
Direct United States Attorneys to launch and announce investigations of certain leaders, candidates and
elected officials affiliated with the Democratic Party at times calculated to cause the most political
damage and confusion, most often in the weeks immediately preceding an election, in order that public
confidence in the suitability for office of Democratic Party leaders, candidates and elected officials be
undermined;
Direct United States Attorneys to terminate or scale back existing investigations of certain Republican
Party leaders, candidates and elected officials allied with the George W. Bush administration, and to
refuse to pursue new or proposed investigations of certain Republican Party leaders, candidates and
elected officials allied with the George W. Bush administration, in order that public confidence in the
suitability of such Republican Party leaders, candidates and elected officials be bolstered or restored;
Threaten to terminate the employment of the following United States Attorneys who refused to comply
with such directives and purposes;
1. David C. Iglesias as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico;
2. Kevin V. Ryan as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California;
3. John L. McKay as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington;
4. Paul K. Charlton as U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona;
5. Carol C. Lam as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California;
6. Daniel G. Bogden as U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada;
7. Margaret M. Chiara as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan;
8. Todd Graves as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri;
9. Harry E. “Bud” Cummins, III as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas;
10. Thomas M. DiBiagio as U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, and;
11. Kasey Warner as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia.
Further, George W. Bush has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together
with the Vice President conspired to obstruct the lawful Congressional investigation of these dismissals
of United States Attorneys and the related scheme to undermine and tamper with the conduct of free
and fair elections, and to corrupt the administration of justice.
Contrary to his oath faithfully to 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 to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, George W. Bush has without lawful
cause or excuse directed not to appear before the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of
Representatives certain witnesses summoned by duly authorized subpoenas issued by that Committee
on June 13, 2007.
In refusing to permit the testimony of these witnesses George W. Bush, substituting his judgment as to
what testimony was necessary for the inquiry, interposed the powers of the Presidency against the
lawful subpoenas of the House of Representatives, thereby assuming to himself functions and
judgments necessary to the exercise of the checking and balancing power of oversight vested in the
House of Representatives.
Further, the President has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with
the Vice President directed the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia to decline to
prosecute for contempt of Congress the aforementioned witnesses, Joshua B. Bolten and Harriet E.
Miers, despite the obligation to do so as established by statute (2 USC § 194) and pursuant to the
direction of the United States House of Representatives as embodied in its resolution (H. Res. 982) of
February 14, 2008.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
Article XXIX
CONSPIRACY TO VIOLATE THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965
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, willfully corrupted and
manipulated the electoral process of the United States for his personal gain and the personal gain of his
co-conspirators and allies; violated the United States Constitution and law by failing to protect the civil
rights of African-American voters and others in the 2004 Election, and impeded the right of the people
to vote and have their vote properly and accurately counted, in that:
A. On November 5, 2002, and prior thereto, James Tobin, while serving as the regional director of
the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee and as the New England Chairman of Bush-
Cheney ’04 Inc., did, at the direction of the White House under the administration of George W. Bush,
along with other agents both known and unknown, commit unlawful acts by aiding and abetting a
scheme to use computerized hang-up calls to jam phone lines set up by the New Hampshire Democratic
Party and the Manchester firefighters’ union on Election Day;
B. An investigation by the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee into the voting
procedures in Ohio during the 2004 election found “widespread instances of intimidation and
misinformation in violation of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, Equal Protection,
Due Process and the Ohio right to vote;”
C. The 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause guarantees that no minority group will suffer
disparate treatment in a federal, state, or local election in stating that: “No State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” However, during and at various times of the
year 2004, John Kenneth Blackwell, then serving as the Secretary of State for the State of Ohio and
also serving simultaneously as Co-Chairman of the Committee to Re-Elect George W. Bush in the State
of Ohio, did, at the direction of the White House under the administration of George W. Bush, along
with other agents both known and unknown, commit unlawful acts in violation of the Equal Protection
Clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution by failing to protect the voting rights
of African-American citizens in Ohio and further, John Kenneth Blackwell did disenfranchise African-
American voters under color of law, by
D. Willfully denying certain neighborhoods in the cities of Cleveland, Ohio and Columbus,
Ohio, along with other urban areas in the State of Ohio, an adequate number of electronic voting
machines and provisional paper ballots, thereby unlawfully impeding duly registered voters from the
act of voting and thus violating the civil rights of an unknown number of United States citizens.
E. In Franklin County, George W. Bush and his agent, Ohio Secretary of State John Kenneth
Blackwell, Co-Chair of the Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign, failed to protect the rights of African-
American voters by not properly investigating the withholding of 125 electronic voting machines
assigned to the city of Columbus.
F. Forty-two African-American precincts in Columbus were each missing one voting machine that
had been present in the 2004 primary.
G. African-American voters in the city of Columbus were forced to wait three to seven hours to
vote in the 2004 presidential election.
H. Willfully issuing unclear and conflicting rules regarding the methods and manner of becoming a
legally registered voter in the State of Ohio, and willfully issuing unclear and unnecessary edicts
regarding the weight of paper registration forms legally acceptable to the State of Ohio, thereby
creating confusion for both voters and voting officials and thus impeding the right of an unknown
number of United States citizens to register and vote.
I. Ohio Secretary of State John Kenneth Blackwell directed through Advisory 2004-31 that voter
registration forms, which were greatest in urban minority areas, should not be accepted and should be
returned unless submitted on 80 bond paper weight. Blackwell’s own office was found to be using 60
bond paper weight.
J. Willfully permitted and encouraged election officials in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo to
conduct a massive partisan purge of registered voter rolls, eventually expunging more than 300,000
voters, many of whom were duly registered voters, and who were thus deprived of their constitutional
right to vote;
K. Between the 2000 and 2004 Ohio presidential elections, 24.93% of the voters in the city of
Cleveland, a city with a majority of African American citizens, were purged from the voting rolls.
L. In that same period, the Ohio county of Miami, with census data indicating a 98% Caucasian
population, refused to purge any voters from its rolls. Miami County “merged” voters from other
surrounding counties into its voting rolls and even allowed voters from other states to vote.
M. In Toledo, Ohio, an urban city with a high African-American concentration, 28,000 voters were
purged from the voting rolls in August of 2004, just prior to the presidential election. This purge was
conducted under the control and direction of George W. Bush’s agent, Ohio Secretary of State John
Kenneth Blackwell outside of the regularly established cycle of purging voters in odd-numbered years.
N. Willfully allowing Ohio Secretary of State John Kenneth Blackwell, acting under color of law and
as an agent of George W. Bush, to issue a directive that no votes would be counted unless cast in the
right precinct, reversing Ohio’s long-standing practice of counting votes for president if cast in the right
county.
O. Willfully allowing his agent, Ohio Secretary of State John Kenneth Blackwell, the Co-Chair of the
Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign, to do nothing to assure the voting rights of 10,000 people in the
city of Cleveland when a computer error by the private vendor Diebold Election Systems, Inc.
incorrectly disenfranchised 10,000 voters
P. Willfully allowing his agent, Ohio Secretary of State John Kenneth Blackwell, the Co-Chair of the
Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign, to ensure that uncounted and provisional ballots in Ohio’s 2004
presidential election would be disproportionately concentrated in urban African-American districts.
Q. In Ohio’s Lucas County, which includes Toledo, 3,122 or 41.13% of the provisional ballots went
uncounted under the direction of George W. Bush’s agent, the Secretary of State of Ohio, John Kenneth
Blackwell, Co-Chair of the Committee to Re-Elect Bush/Cheney in Ohio.
R. In Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, 8,559 or 32.82% of the provisional
ballots went uncounted.
S. In Ohio’s Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati, 3,529 or 24.23% of the provisional
ballots went uncounted.
T. Statewide, the provisional ballot rejection rate was 9% as compared to the greater figures in the
urban areas.
U. The Department of Justice, charged with enforcing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the 14th
Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, and other voting rights laws in the United States of America,
under the direction and Administration of George W. Bush did willfully and purposely obstruct and
stonewall legitimate criminal investigations into myriad cases of reported electoral fraud and
suppression in the state of Ohio. Such activities, carried out by the department on behalf of George W.
Bush in counties such as Franklin and Knox by persons such as John K. Tanner and others, were meant
to confound and whitewash legitimate legal criminal investigations into the suppression of massive
numbers of legally registered voters and the removal of their right to cast a ballot fairly and freely in
the state of Ohio, which was crucial to the certified electoral victory of George W. Bush in 2004.
V. On or about November 1, 2006, members of the United States Department of Justice, under the
control and direction of the Administration of George W. Bush, brought indictments for voter
registration fraud within days of an election, in order to directly effect the outcome of that election for
partisan purposes, and in doing so, thereby violated the Justice Department’s own rules against filing
election-related indictments close to an election;
X. Emails have been obtained showing that the Republican National Committee and members of
Bush-Cheney ’04 Inc., did, at the direction of the White House under the administration of George W.
Bush, engage in voter suppression in five states by a method know as “vote caging,” an illegal voter
suppression technique;
Y. Agents of George W. Bush, including Mark F. “Thor” Hearne, the national general counsel of
Bush/Cheney ’04, Inc., did, at the behest of George W. Bush, as members of a criminal front group,
distribute known false information and propaganda in the hopes of forwarding legislation and other
actions that would result in the disenfranchisement of Democratic voters for partisan purposes. The
scheme, run under the auspices of an organization known as “The American Center for Voting Rights”
(ACVR), was funded by agents of George W. Bush in violation of laws governing tax exempt 501(c)3
organizations and in violation of federal laws forbidding the distribution of such propaganda by the
federal government and agents working on its behalf.
Z. Members of the United States Department of Justice, under the control and direction of the
Administration of George W. Bush, did, for partisan reasons, illegally and with malice aforethought
block career attorneys and other officials in the Department of Justice from filing three lawsuits
charging local and county governments with violating the voting rights of African-Americans and other
minorities, according to seven former senior United States Justice Department employees.
AA. Members of the United States Department of Justice, under the control and direction of the
Administration of George W. Bush, did illegally and with malice aforethought derail at least two
investigations into possible voter discrimination, according to a letter sent to the Senate Rules and
Administration Committee and written by former employees of the United States Department of
Justice, Voting Rights Section.
BB. Members of the United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC), under the control and
direction of the Administration of George W. Bush, have purposefully and willfully misled the public,
in violation of several laws, by;
CC. Withholding from the public and then altering a legally mandated report on the true measure and
threat of Voter Fraud, as commissioned by the EAC and completed in June 2006, prior to the 2006 midterm
election, but withheld from release prior to that election when its information would have been
useful in the administration of elections across the country, because the results of the statutorily
required and tax-payer funded report did not conform with the illegal, partisan propaganda efforts and
politicized agenda of the Bush Administration;
DD. Withholding from the public a legally mandated report on the disenfranchising effect of Photo
Identification laws at the polling place, shown to disproportionately disenfranchise voters not of
George W. Bush’s political party. The report was commissioned by the EAC and completed in June
2006, prior to the 2006 mid-term election, but withheld from release prior to that election when its
information would have been useful in the administration of elections across the country
EE. Withholding from the public a legally mandated report on the effectiveness of Provisional Voting
as commissioned by the EAC and completed in June 2006, prior to the 2006 mid-term election, but
withheld from release prior to that election when its information would have been useful in the
administration of elections across the country, and keeping that report unreleased for more than a year
until it was revealed by independent media outlets.
For directly harming the rights and manner of suffrage, for suffering to make them secret and
unknowable, for overseeing and participating in the disenfranchisement of legal voters, for instituting
debates and doubts about the true nature of elections, all against the will and consent of local voters
affected, and forced through threats of litigation by agents and agencies overseen by George W. Bush,
the actions of Mr. Bush to do the opposite of securing and guaranteeing the right of the people to alter
or abolish their government via the electoral process, being a violation of an inalienable right, and an
immediate threat to Liberty.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
ARTICLE XXX
MISLEADING CONGRESS AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN AN ATTEMPT TO DESTROY
MEDICARE
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,
pursued policies which deliberately drained the fiscal resources of Medicare by forcing it to compete
with subsidized private insurance plans which are allowed to arbitrarily select or not select those they
will cover; failing to provide reasonable levels of reimbursements to Medicare providers, thereby
discouraging providers from participating in the program, and designing a Medicare Part D benefit
without cost controls which allowed pharmaceutical companies to gouge the American taxpayers for
the price of prescription drugs.
The President created, manipulated, and disseminated information given to the citizens and Congress of
the United States in support of his prescription drug plan for Medicare that enriched drug companies
while failing to save beneficiaries sufficient money on their prescription drugs. He misled Congress
and the American people into thinking the cost of the benefit was $400 billion. It was widely
understood that if the cost exceeded that amount, the bill would not pass due to concerns about fiscal
irresponsibility.
A Medicare Actuary who possessed information regarding the true cost of the plan, $539 billion, was
instructed by the Medicare Administrator to deny Congressional requests for it. The Actuary was
threatened with sanctions if the information was disclosed to Congress, which, unaware of the
information, approved the bill. Despite the fact that official cost estimates far exceeded $400 billion,
President Bush offered assurances to Congress that the cost was $400 billion, when his office had
information to the contrary. In the House of Representatives, the bill passed by a single vote and the
Conference Report passed by only 5 votes. The White House knew the actual cost of the drug benefit
was high enough to prevent its passage. Yet the White House concealed the truth and impeded an
investigation into its culpability.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
Article XXXI
KATRINA: FAILURE TO PLAN FOR THE PREDICTED DISASTER OF HURRICANE KATRINA,
FAILURE TO RESPOND TO A CIVIL EMERGENCY
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, failed to take sufficient action to
protect life and property prior to and in the face of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, given decades of
foreknowledge of the dangers of storms to New Orleans and specific forewarning in the days prior to
the storm. The President failed to prepare for predictable and predicted disasters, failed to respond to
an immediate need of which he was informed, and has subsequently failed to rebuild the section of our
nation that was destroyed.
Hurricane Katrina killed at least 1,282 people, with 2 million more displaced. 302,000 housing units
were destroyed or damaged by the hurricane, 71% of these were low-income units. More than 500
sewage plants were destroyed, more than 170 point-source leakages of gasoline, oil, or natural gas,
more than 2000 gas stations submerged, several chemical plants, 8 oil refineries, and a superfund site
was submerged. 8 million gallons of oil were spilled. Toxic materials seeped into floodwaters and
spread through much of the city and surrounding areas.
The predictable increased strength of hurricanes such as Katrina has been identified by scientists for
years, and yet the Bush Administration has denied this science and restricted such information from
official reports, publications, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency’s website. Donald
Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science, wrote in 2006 that “hurricane intensity has increased with oceanic
surface temperatures over the past 30 years. The physics of hurricane intensity growth … has clarified
and explained the thermodynamic basis for these observations. [Kerry] Emanuel has tested this
relationship and presented convincing evidence.”
FEMA’s 2001 list of the top three most likely and most devastating disasters were a San Francisco
earthquake, a terrorist attack on New York, and a Category 4 hurricane hitting New Orleans, with New
Orleans being the number one item on that list. FEMA conducted a five-day hurricane simulation
exercise in 2004, “Hurricane Pam,” mimicking a Katrina-like event. This exercise combined the
National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the LSU Hurricane Center and other
state and federal agencies, resulting in the development of emergency response plans. The exercise
demonstrated, among other things, that thousands of mainly indigent New Orleans residents would be
unable to evacuate on their own. They would need substantial government assistance. These plans,
however, were not implemented in part due to the President’s slashing of funds for protection. In the
year before Hurricane Katrina hit, the President continued to cut budgets and deny grants to the Gulf
Coast. In June of 2004 the Army Corps of Engineers levee budget for New Orleans was cut, and it was
cut again in June of 2005, this time by $71.2 million or a whopping 44% of the budget. As a result,
ACE was forced to suspend any repair work on the levees. In 2004 FEMA denied a Louisiana disaster
mitigation grant request.
The President was given multiple warnings that Hurricane Katrina had a high likelihood of causing
serious damage to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. At 10 AM on Sunday 28 August 2005, the day
before the storm hit, the National Weather Service published an alert titled “DEVASTATING
DAMAGE EXPECTED.” Printed in all capital letters, the alert stated that “MOST OF THE AREA
WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF
WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. … POWER
OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS. … WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN
SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.”
The Homeland Security Department also briefed the President on the scenario, warning of levee
breaches and severe flooding. According to the New York Times, “a Homeland Security Department
report submitted to the White House at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, hours before the storm hit, said, ‘Any
storm rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching.’” These
warnings clearly contradict the statements made by President Bush immediately after the storm that
such devastation could not have been predicted. On 1 September 2005 the President said “I don’t think
anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.”
The President’s response to Katrina via FEMA and DHS was criminally delayed, indifferent, and inept.
The only FEMA employee posted in New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,
Marty Bahamonde, emailed head of FEMA Michael Brown from his Blackberry device on August 31,
2005 regarding the conditions The email was urgent and detailed and indicated that “The situation is
past critical…Estimates are many will die within hours.” Brown’s reply was emblematic of the
administration’s entire response to the catastrophe: “Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to
do or tweak?” The Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, did not declare an emergency,
did not mobilize the federal resources, and seemed to not even know what was happening on the
ground until reporters told him.
On Friday August 26, 2005, Governor Kathleen Blanco declared a State of Emergency in Louisiana
and Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi followed suit the next day. Also on that Saturday,
Governor Blanco asked the President to declare a Federal State of Emergency, and on 28 August 2005,
the Sunday before the storm hit, Mayor Nagin declared a State of Emergency in New Orleans. This
shows that the local authorities, responding to federal warnings, knew how bad the destruction was
going to be and anticipated being overwhelmed. Failure to act under these circumstances demonstrates
gross negligence.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
ARTICLE XXXII
MISLEADING CONGRESS AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, SYTEMATICALLY
UNDERMINING EFFORTS TO ADDRESS GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE.
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,
ignored the peril to life and property posed by global climate change, manipulated scientific
information and mishandled protective policy, constituting nonfeasance and malfeasance in office,
abuse of power, dereliction of duty, and deception of Congress and the American people.
President Bush knew the expected effects of climate change and the role of human activities in driving
climate change. This knowledge preceded his first Presidential term.
1. During his 2000 Presidential campaign, he promised to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.
2. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global body of hundreds of the world’s
foremost experts on climate change, concluded that “most of observed warming over last 50 years (is)
likely due to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activities.” The Third
Assessment Report projected several effects of climate change such as continued “widespread retreat”
of glaciers, an “increase threats to human health, particularly in lower income populations,
predominantly within tropical/subtropical countries,” and “water shortages.”
3. The grave danger to national security posed by global climate change was recognized by the
Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Planning Research Projects Agency in October of 2003. An agencycommissioned
report “explores how such an abrupt climate change scenario could potentially destabilize
the geo-political environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war due to resource
constraints such as: 1) Food shortages due to decreases in net global agricultural production 2)
Decreased availability and quality of fresh water in key regions due to shifted precipitation patters,
causing more frequent floods and droughts 3) Disrupted access to energy supplies due to extensive sea
ice and storminess.”
4. A December 2004 paper in Science reviewed 928 studies published in peer reviewed journals to
determine the number providing evidence against the existence of a link between anthropogenic
emissions of carbon dioxide and climate change. “Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the
consensus position.”
5. The November 2007 Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment
Report showed that global anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gasses have increased 70% between
1970 and 2004, and anthropogenic emissions are very likely the cause of global climate change. The
report concluded that global climate change could cause the extinction of 20 to 30 percent of species in
unique ecosystems such as the polar areas and biodiversity hotspots, increase extreme weather events
especially in the developing world, and have adverse effects on food production and fresh water
availability.
The President has done little to address this most serious of problems, thus constituting an abuse of
power and criminal neglect. He has also actively endeavored to undermine efforts by the federal
government, states, and other nations to take action on their own.
1. In March 2001, President Bush announced the U.S. would not be pursuing ratification of the Kyoto
Protocol, an international effort to reduce greenhouse gasses. The United States is the only
industrialized nation that has failed to ratify the accord.
2. In March0f 2008, Representative Henry Waxman wrote to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson: “In
August 2003, the Bush Administration denied a petition to regulate CO2 emissions from motor
vehicles by deciding that CO2 was not a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. In April 2007, the U.S.
Supreme Court overruled that determination in Massachusetts v. EPA. The Supreme Court wrote that ‘If
EPA makes a finding of endangerment, the Clean Air Act requires the agency to regulate emissions of
the deleterious pollutant from new motor vehicles.’ The EPA then conducted an extensive investigation
involving 60-70 staff who concluded that ‘CO2 emissions endanger both human health and welfare.’
These findings were submitted to the White House, after which work on the findings and the required
regulations was halted.”
3. A Memo to Members of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on May 19, 2008
stated “The record before the Committee shows: (1) the career staff at EPA unanimously supported
granting California’s petition (to be allowed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks,
consistent with California state law); (2) Stephen Johnson, the Administrator of EPA, also supported
granting California’s petition at least in part; and (3) Administrator Johnson reversed his position after
communications with officials in the White House.”
The President has suppressed the release of scientific information related to global climate change, an
action which undermines Congress’ ability to legislate and provide oversight, and which has thwarted
efforts to prevent global climate change despite the serious threat that it poses.
1. In February, 2001, ExxonMobil wrote a memo to the White House outlining ways to influence the
outcome of the Third Assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The
memo opposed the reelection of Dr. Robert Watson as the IPCC Chair. The White House then
supported an opposition candidate, who was subsequently elected to replace Dr. Watson.
2. The New York Times on January 29, 2006, reported that James Hansen, NASA’s senior climate
scientist was warned of “dire consequences” if he continued to speak out about global climate change
and the need for reducing emissions of associated gasses. The Times also reported that: “At climate
laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists
who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved
by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the
phone.”
3. In December of 2007, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a report
based on 16 months of investigation and 27,000 pages of documentation. According to the summary:
“The evidence before the Committee leads to one inescapable conclusion: the Bush Administration has
engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policy makers and the
public about the dangers of global warming.” The report described how the White House appointed
former petroleum industry lobbyist Phil Cooney as head of the Council on Environmental Quality. The
report states “There was a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate
change by editing climate change reports. CEQ Chief of Staff Phil Cooney and other CEQ officials
made at least 294 edits to the Administration’s Strategic Plan of the Climate Change Science Program
to exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties or to de-emphasize or diminish the importance of
the human role in global warming.”
4. On April 23, 2008, Representative Henry Waxman wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L
Johnson. In it he reported: “Almost 1,600 EPA scientists completed the Union of Concerned Scientists
survey questionnaire. Over 22 percent of these scientists reported that ‘selective or incomplete use of
data to justify a specific regulatory outcome’ occurred ‘frequently’ or ‘occasionally’ at EPA. Ninety-four
EPA scientists reported being frequently or occasionally directed to inappropriately exclude or alter
technical information from an EPA scientific document. Nearly 200 EPA scientists said that they have
frequently or occasionally been in situations in which scientists have actively objected to, resigned
from or removed themselves from a project because of pressure to change scientific findings.”
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President 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.
Article XXXIII
REPEATEDLY IGNORED AND FAILED TO RESPOND TO HIGH LEVEL INTELLIGENCE
WARNINGS OF PLANNED TERRORIST ATTACKS IN THE US, PRIOR TO 911
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,
failed in his Constitutional duties to take proper steps to protect the nation prior to September 11, 2001.
The White House’s top counter-terrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, has testified that from the
beginning of George W. Bush’s presidency until September 11, 2001, Clarke attempted unsuccessfully
to persuade President Bush to take steps to protect the nation against terrorism. Clarke sent a
memorandum to then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on January 24, 2001, “urgently” but
unsuccessfully requesting “a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack.”
In April 2001, Clarke was finally granted a meeting, but only with second-in-command department
representatives, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who made light of Clarke’s
concerns.
Clarke confirms that in June, July, and August, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned
the president in daily briefings of unprecedented indications that a major al Qaeda attack was going to
happen against the United States somewhere in the world in the weeks and months ahead. Yet, Clarke
was still unable to convene a cabinet-level meeting to address the issue.
Condoleezza Rice has testified that George Tenet met with the president 40 times to warn him that a
major al-Qaeda attack was going to take place, and that in response the president did not convene any
meetings of top officials. At such meetings, the FBI could have shared information on possible
terrorists enrolled at flight schools. Among the many preventive steps that could have been taken, the
Federal Aviation Administration, airlines, and airports might have been put on full alert.
According to Condoleezza Rice, the first and only cabinet-level meeting prior to 9/11 to discuss the
threat of terrorist attacks took place on September 4, 2001, one week before the attacks in New York
and Washington.
On August 6, 2001, President Bush was presented a President’s Daily Brief (PDB) article titled “Bin
Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The lead sentence of that PDB article indicated that Bin Laden
and his followers wanted to “follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and
‘bring the fighting to America.’” The article warned: “Al-Qa’ida members—including some who are
US citizens— have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a
support structure that could aid attacks.”
The article cited a “more sensational threat reporting that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft,”
but indicated that the CIA had not been able to corroborate such reporting. The PDB item included
information from the FBI indicating “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with
preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings
in New York.” The article also noted that the CIA and FBI were investigating “a call to our embassy in
the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with
explosives.”
The president spent the rest of August 6, and almost all the rest of August 2001 on vacation. There is
no evidence that he called any meetings of his advisers to discuss this alarming report. When the title
and substance of this PDB article were later reported in the press, then-National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice began a sustained campaign to play down its significance, until the actual text was
eventually released by the White House.
New York Times writer Douglas Jehl, put it this way: “In a single 17-sentence document, the
intelligence briefing delivered to President Bush in August 2001 spells out the who, hints at the what
and points towards the where of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that followed 36
days later.”
Eleanor Hill, Executive Director of the joint congressional committee investigating the performance of
the US intelligence community before September 11, 2001, reported in mid-September 2002 that
intelligence reports a year earlier “reiterated a consistent and constant theme: Osama bin Laden’s intent
to launch terrorist attacks inside the United States.”
That joint inquiry revealed that just two months before September 11, an intelligence briefing for
“senior government officials” predicted a terrorist attack with these words: “The attack will be
spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack
preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.”
Given the White House’s insistence on secrecy with regard to what intelligence was given to President
Bush, the joint-inquiry report does not divulge whether he took part in that briefing. Even if he did not,
it strains credulity to suppose that those “senior government officials” would have kept its alarming
substance from the president.
Again, there is no evidence that the president held any meetings or took any action to deal with the
threats of such attacks.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
Article XXXIV
OBSTRUCTION OF INVESTIGATION INTO THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
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,
obstructed investigations into the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11,
2001.
Following September 11, 2001, President Bush and Vice President Cheney took strong steps to thwart
any and all proposals that the circumstances of the attack be addressed. Then-Secretary of State Colin
Powell was forced to renege on his public promise on September 23 that a “White Paper” would be
issued to explain the circumstances. Less than two weeks after that promise, Powell apologized for
his “unfortunate choice of words,” and explained that Americans would have to rely on “information
coming out in the press and in other ways.”
On Sept. 26, 2001, President Bush drove to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in
Langley, Virginia, stood with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and said: “My report to the
nation is, we’ve got the best intelligence we can possibly have thanks to the men and women of the
C.I.A.” George Tenet subsequently and falsely claimed not to have visited the president personally
between the start of Bush’s long Crawford vacation and September 11, 2001.
Testifying before the 9/11 Commission on April 14, 2004, Tenet answered a question from Commission
member Timothy Roemer by referring to the president’s vacation (July 29-August 30) in Crawford and
insisting that he did not see the president at all in August 2001. “You never talked with him?” Roemer
asked. “No,” Tenet replied, explaining that for much of August he too was “on leave.” An Agency
spokesman called reporters that same evening to say Tenet had misspoken, and that Tenet had briefed
Bush on August 17 and 31. The spokesman explained that the second briefing took place after the
president had returned to Washington, and played down the first one, in Crawford, as uneventful.
In his book, At the Center of the Storm, (2007) Tenet, refers to what is almost certainly his August 17
visit to Crawford as a follow-up to the “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US” article in the CIAprepared
President’s Daily Brief of August 6. That briefing was immortalized in a Time Magazine
photo capturing Harriet Myers holding the PDB open for the president, as two CIA officers sit by. It is
the same briefing to which the president reportedly reacted by telling the CIA briefer, “All right, you’ve
covered your ass now.” (Ron Suskind, The One-Percent Doctrine, p. 2, 2006). In At the Center of the
Storm, Tenet writes: “A few weeks after the August 6 PDB was delivered, I followed it to Crawford to
make sure that the president stayed current on events.”
A White House press release suggests Tenet was also there a week later, on August 24. According to
the August 25, 2001, release, President Bush, addressing a group of visitors to Crawford on August 25,
told them: “George Tenet and I, yesterday, we piled in the new nominees for the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, the Vice Chairman and their wives and went right up the canyon.”
In early February, 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney warned then-Senate Majority Leader Tom
Daschle that if Congress went ahead with an investigation, administration officials might not show up
to testify. As pressure grew for an investigation, the president and vice president agreed to the
establishment of a congressional joint committee to conduct a “Joint Inquiry.” Eleanor Hill, Executive
Director of the Inquiry, opened the Joint Inquiry’s final public hearing in mid-September 2002 with the
following disclaimer: “I need to report that, according to the White House and the Director of Central
Intelligence, the president’s knowledge of intelligence information relevant to this inquiry remains
classified, even when the substance of the intelligence information has been declassified.”
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was created on
November 27, 2002, following the passage of congressional legislation signed into law by President
Bush. The President was asked to testify before the Commission. He refused to testify except for one
hour in private with only two Commission members, with no oath administered, with no recording or
note taking, and with the Vice President at his side. Commission Co-Chair Lee Hamilton has written
that he believes the commission was set up to fail, was underfunded, was rushed, and did not receive
proper cooperation and access to information.
A December 2007 review of classified documents by former members of the Commission found that
the commission had made repeated and detailed requests to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 for documents
and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and had been told falsely by a
top C.I.A. official that the agency had “produced or made available for review” everything that had
been requested.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.
Article XXXV
ENDANGERING THE HEALTH OF 911 FIRST RESPONDERS
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,
recklessly endangered the health of first responders, residents, and workers at and near the former
location of the World Trade Center in New York City.
The Inspector General of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) August 21, 2003, report
numbered 2003-P-00012 and entitled “EPA’s Response to the World Trade Center Collapse:
Challenges, Successes, and Areas for Improvement,” includes the following findings:
“[W]hen EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was ‘safe’ to breathe, it did not have
sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement. At that time, air monitoring data was
lacking for several pollutants of concern, including particulate matter and polychlorinated biphenyls
(PCBs). Furthermore, The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) influenced, through
the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press
releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.”
“As a result of the White House CEQ’s influence, guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and information
about the potential health effects from WTC debris were not included in EPA- issued press releases. In
addition, based on CEQ’s influence, reassuring information was added to at least one press release and
cautionary information was deleted from EPA’s draft version of that press release. . . . The White
House’s role in EPA’s public communications about WTC environmental conditions was described in a
September 12, 2001, e-mail from the EPA Deputy Administrator’s Chief of Staff to senior EPA
officials:
“‘All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC [National Security Council] before
they are released.’
“According to the EPA Chief of Staff, one particular CEQ official was designated to work with EPA to
ensure that clearance was obtained through NSC. The Associate Administrator for the EPA Office of
Communications, Education, and Media Relations (OCEMR) said that no press release could be issued
for a 3- to 4-week period after September 11 without approval from the CEQ contact.”
Acting EPA Administrator Marianne Horinko, who sat in on EPA meetings with the White House has
said in an interview that the White House played a coordinating role. The National Security Council
played the key role, filtering incoming data on ground zero air and water, Horinko said: “I think that the
thinking was, these are experts in WMD (weapons of mass destruction), so they should have the
coordinating role.”
In the cleanup of the Pentagon following September 11, 2001, Occupational Safety and Health
Administration laws were enforced, and no workers became ill. At the World Trade Center site, the
same laws were not enforced.
In the years since the release of the EPA Inspector General’s above-cited report, the Bush
Administration has still not effected a clean-up of the indoor air in apartments and workspaces near the
site.
Screenings conducted at the Mount Sinai Medical Center and released in the September 10, 2004,
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) of the federal Centers For Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), produced the following results:
“Both upper and lower respiratory problems and mental health difficulties are widespread among
rescue and recovery workers who dug through the ruins of the World Trade Center in the days
following its destruction in the attack of September 11, 2001.
“An analysis of the screenings of 1,138 workers and volunteers who responded to the World Trade
Center disaster found that nearly three-quarters of them experienced new or worsened upper respiratory
problems at some point while working at Ground Zero. And half of those examined had upper and/or
lower respiratory symptoms that persisted up to the time of their examinations, an average of eight
months after their WTC efforts ended.”
A larger study released in 2006 found that roughly 70 percent of nearly 10,000 workers tested at Mount
Sinai from 2002 to 2004 reported that they had new or substantially worsened respiratory problems
while or after working at ground zero. This study showed that many of the respiratory ailments,
including sinusitis and asthma, and gastrointestinal problems related to them, initially reported by
ground zero workers persisted or grew worse over time. Most of the ground zero workers in the study
who reported trouble breathing while working there were still having those problems two and a half
years later, an indication of chronic illness unlikely to improve over time.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President, 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.

Which country is the rogue nation? Iraq? Iran? Or the United States? Syndicated columnist Charley Reese asks this question in a recently published article.

Reese notes that it is the US that routinely commits “acts of aggression around the globe.” The US government has no qualms about dropping bombs on civilians whether they be in Serbia, the Middle East, or Africa. It is all in a good cause – our cause.

This slaughtering of foreigners doesn’t seem to bother the American public. Americans take it for granted that Americans are superior and that American purposes, whatever they be, take precedence over the rights of other people to life and to a political existence independent of American hegemony.

The Bush regime has come up with a preemption doctrine that justifies attacking a country in order to prevent the country from possibly becoming a future threat to the US. “Threat” is broadly defined. It appears to mean the ability to withstand the imposition of US hegemony. This insane doctrine justifies attacking China and Russia, a direction in which the Republican presidential candidate John McCain seems to lean.

The callousness of Americans toward the lives of other peoples is stunning. How many Christian churches ask God’s forgiveness for having been rushed into an error that has killed, maimed, and displaced a quarter of the Iraqi population?

How many Christian churches ask God to give better guidance to our government so that it does not repeat the error and crime by attacking Iran?

The indifference of Americans to others flows from “American exceptionalism,” the belief that Americans are graced with a special mission to impose their virtue on the rest of the world. Like the French revolutionaries, Americans don’t seem to care how many people they kill in the process of spreading their exceptionalism.

American exceptionalism has swelled Americans’ heads, filling them with hubris and self-righteousness and making Americans believe that they are the salt of the earth.

Three recent books are good antidotes for this unjustified self-esteem. One is Patrick J. Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. Another is After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation by Giles MacDonogh, and a third is John Pilger’s Freedom Next Time.

Buchanan’s latest book is by far his best. It is spell-binding from his opening sentence: “All about us we can see clearly now that the West is passing away.” As the pages turn, the comfortable myths, produced by history written by the victors, are swept aside. The veil is lifted to reveal the true faces of British and American exceptionalism: stupidity and deceit.

Buchanan’s strength is that he lets the story be told by Britain’s greatest 20th century historians and the memoirs of the participants in the events that destroyed the West’s dominance and moral character. Buchanan’s contribution is to assemble the collective judgment of a hundred historians.

As I read the tale, it is a story of hubris destroying judgment and substituting in its place blunder and miscalculation. Both world wars began when England, for no sound or sensible reason, declared war on Germany. Winston Churchill was a prime instigator of both wars. He seems to have been a person who needed a war stage in order to be a “great man.”

The American President Woodrow Wilson shares responsibility with Britain and France for the Versailles Treaty, which dismembered Germany, stripping her of territory and putting millions of Germans under foreign rule, and imposed reparations that Britain’s greatest economist, John Maynard Keynes, correctly predicted to be unrealistic. All of this was done in violation of assurances given to Germany that there would be no reparations or boundary changes. Once Germany surrendered, the assurances were withdrawn, and a starvation blockade forced German submission to the new harsh terms.

Hitler’s program was to put Germany back together. He was succeeding without war until Churchill provoked Chamberlain into an insane act. Danzig was 95 percent German. It had been given to Poland by the Versailles Treaty. Hitler was negotiating its return and offered in exchange a guarantee of Poland’s frontiers. The Polish colonels, assessing the relative strengths of Poland and Germany, understood that a deal was better than a war. But suddenly, the British Prime Minister issued Poland a guarantee of its existing territory, including Danzig, whose inhabitants wished to return to Germany.

Buchanan produces one historian after another to testify that British miscalculations and blunders, culminating in Chamberlain’s worthless and provocative “guarantee” to Poland, brought the West into a war that Hitler did not want, a war that destroyed the British Empire and left Britain a dependency of America, a war that delivered Poland, a chunk of Germany, all of Eastern Europe, and the Baltic states to Joseph Stalin, a war that left the Western allies with a 45-year cold war against the nuclear-armed Soviet Union.

People resist the shattering of their illusions, and many are angry with Buchanan for assembling the facts of the case that distinguished historians have provided.

Churchill admirers are outraged that their hero is revealed as the first war criminal of World War II. It was Churchill who initiated the policy of terror bombing civilians in non-combatant areas. Buchanan quotes B.H. Liddell Hart: “When Mr. Churchill came into power, one of the first decisions of his government was to extend bombing to the non-combatant area.”

In holding Churchill to account, Buchanan makes no apologies for Hitler, but the ease with which Churchill set aside moral considerations is discomforting.

Buchanan documents that Churchill’s plan was to destroy 50% of German homes. Churchill also had plans for using chemical and biological warfare against German civilians. In 2001 the Glasgow Sunday Herald reported Churchill’s plan to drop five million anthrax cakes onto German pastures in order to poison the cattle and through them the people. Churchill instructed the RAF to consider drenching “the cities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany” with poison gas “in such a way that most of the population would be requiring constant medical attention.”

“It is absurd to consider morality on this topic,” the great man declared.

Paul Johnson, a favorite historian of conservatives, notes that Churchill’s policy of terror bombing civilians was “approved in cabinet, endorsed by parliament and, so far as can be judged, enthusiastically backed by the bulk of the British people.” Thus, the terror bombing of civilians, which “marked a critical stage in the moral declension of humanity in our times,” fulfilled “all the conditions of the process of consent in a democracy under law.”

British historian F.J.P. Veale concluded that Churchill’s policy of indiscriminate bombing of civilians caused an unprecedented “reversion to primary and total warfare” associated with “Sennacherib, Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane.”

The Americans were quick to follow Churchill’s lead. General Curtis LeMay boasted of his raid on Tokyo: “We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo that night of March 9–10 than went up in vapor in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.”

MacDonogh’s book, After the Reich, dispels the comfortable myth of generous allied treatment of defeated Germany. Having discarded all moral scruples, the allies fell upon the vanquished country with brutal occupation. Hundreds of thousands of women raped; hundreds of thousands of Germans died in deportations; a million German prisoners of war died in captivity.

MacDonogh calculates that 2.5 million Germans died between the liberation of Vienna and the Berlin airlift.

Nigel Jones writes in the conservative London Sunday Telegraph: “MacDonogh has told a very inconvenient truth,” a story long “cloaked in silence since telling it suited no one.”

The hypocrisy of the Nuremberg trials is that the victors were also guilty of crimes for which the vanquished were punished. The purpose of the trials was to demonize the defeated in order to divert attention from the allies’ own war crimes. The trials had little to do with justice.

In Freedom Next Time, Pilger shows the complete self-absorption of American, British and Israeli governments whose policies are unimpeded by any moral principle.

Pilger documents the demise of the inhabitants of Diego Garcia. The Americans wanted Diego Garcia for an air base, so the British packed up the 2,000 residents, people with British passports under British protection, and deported them to Mauritius, one thousand miles away.

To cover up its crime against humanity, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office created the fiction that the inhabitants, which had been living in the archipelago for two or three centuries, were “a floating population.” This fiction, wrote a legal adviser, bolsters “our arguments that the territory has no indigenous or settled population.”

Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart conspired to mislead the UN about the deported islanders by, in Stewart’s words, ” presenting any move as a change of employment for contract workers – rather than as a population resettlement.”

Pilger interviewed some of the displaced persons, but emotional blocs will shield patriotic Americans and British from the uncomfortable facts. Rational skeptics can find a second documented account of the Anglo-American rape of Diego Garcia online. An entire people were swept away.

Two thousand people were in the way of an American purpose – an air base – so we had our British dependency deport them.

Several million Palestinians are in Israel’s way. Pilger’s documented account of Israel’s crushing of the Palestinians shows that our “democratic ally” in the Middle East is capable of any evil and has no remorse or mercy. Israel is an apt student of the British and American empires’ attitudes toward lesser beings. They simply don’t count.

Those who are the salt of the earth take precedence over everything.

As we head into the Fourth of July weekend of patriotic bluster and beer swilling—but before we are too besotted with ourselves—might we also for once consider our imperfections? Why not take a moment to heed the cautions of our founding father, George Washington, whose true legacy will most likely be ignored during the flag-waving weekend?

Washington’s “Farewell Address” to the new nation was a warning about the threat of American imperial ambitions and a declaration of his high expectations for a republic of free men: “In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. …”

We are drowning in the “impostures of pretended patriotism,” used to cover the lies that got us into Iraq, the defense of torture and the violation of our basic liberties. In the name of patriotism, we presume a God-given American right to reorder the world to our liking, masking the vice of unfettered greed as an obligation of national security.

Any doubts as to this later governing impulse of our imperial ambitions were shattered with the recent news that U.S. advisers to our puppet government in the Green Zone of occupied Iraq have worked out agreements for American oil companies to gain control of Iraqi oil fields. But, then again, what did we expect when we elected a Texas oil hustler, and a failed one at that, to be our president?

Only in an America dumbed down by constant propaganda about our innate moral superiority will anyone any longer believe that we didn’t invade Iraq for the oil, even though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to the Bush administration from the board of directors at Chevron, where they named an oil tanker after her. Like Vice President Dick Cheney with those Halliburton contracts, Rice has stayed true to her corporate sponsors. That’s what the U.S. invasion of Iraq accomplished; for the first time in more than three decades after Iraq joined a worldwide trend of formerly colonized nations gaining control of their own resources, Big Oil is getting its black gold back. It was always about the oil—that’s why “we” invaded Iraq—only “we” aren’t getting any, at least not at a reasonable price. The oil companies are.

I know it’s difficult for the corporate media and politicians, both fueled generously by energy money, to grasp the distinction, but we the people and they the oil companies are not one and the same. While we suffer at the pump, they make record profits, which is the way they like it. Don’t think for a second that U.S. oil companies are rushing into Iraq to expand production to help lower world oil prices, thus making their investments less profitable. They just want to be on the winning side, which is why the CEO of Halliburton relocated his office from Texas to the United Arab Emirates, where I am certain he and his fellow corporate expatriates are able to happily celebrate the Fourth of July.

So, take that American flag off your lapel and replace it with a button bearing the Exxon or Chevron logo. C’mon, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice, be straight about what it is you are really pushing here. ’Fess up—it’s not the good old USA as represented by the sucker taxpayers conned by your patriotic blather. No sirree, what you would have Americans paying homage to is the majesty of the big multinational corporations that exploit American military power to rule the world.

But recognize that you have shamed the legacy of our first president. George Washington, who distinguished the promise of the new world from the corruptions of the old by shunning imperial conquest, said: “Our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing.”

If Barack Obama or John McCain was to offer such words of wisdom this Fourth of July, he would be vilified as “weak,” and that is a fit measure of just how far we have descended from the high hopes of our first president.

Robert Scheer is the author, most recently, of “The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America,” published by Twelve Books.