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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (97967)	5/13/2007 4:41:55 PM
From: Land Shark	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

No, but I know you are. Why We Know Rice and Bush Lied about Uranium, And Why We Need A Special Counsel By Francis T. Mandanici Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on April 18 concerning her involvement in the claims that the Administration made prior to the war that Iraq had sought uranium for nuclear weapons. Chairman Henry A. Waxman of that committee in a letter to Rice dated April 9 has asked Rice to testify as to whether she knew why President George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union Address cited forged evidence about Iraq's efforts to procure uranium from Niger and whether she knew before that Address about the doubts that the CIA and State Department had raised concerning the veracity of that uranium claim. Waxman has also asked Rice to explain her January 23, 2003 op-ed article. In that article entitled Why We Know Iraq Is Lying, which Rice wrote when she was the National Security Advisor for President Bush, she stated that Iraq had lied in its prewar declaration to the United Nations about weapons of mass destruction because Iraq's declaration "fail[ed] to account for or explain Iraq's efforts to get uranium from abroad." In a report that I have written that is based on a review of the public record and entitled The Uranium Grounds For Impeachment And For A Special Counsel: A Report To Congress, I note that during the pre war period of January 20 to 29, 2003, Administration officials publicly stated at least five times that Iraq had sought uranium for a nuclear weapon. A few days later on February 4 the American government turned over to the UN the documents in support that claim. During that nine day period not only did President Bush make such a claim in his State of the Union report to Congress but he also made the claim in another report to Congress that he was required to submit pursuant to the resolution that Congress had passed in October 2002 that authorized him to start the war. In addition to Rice's op-ed article, then Secretary of State Colin Powell and then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made similar public statements that Iraq had sought uranium for a nuclear weapon. Vice President Richard Cheney's Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, was in charge at the White House for producing papers arguing the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Vice President Cheney's office viewed attacks on the Administration's uranium claims as a direct attack on the credibility of Vice President Cheney. The uranium claims were false. Prior to the war UN weapons inspectors in Iraq found no weapons of mass destruction nor found any evidence that Iraq had sought uranium as the Bush Administration had claimed. In early March 2003, the UN stated that the documents that it had received that allegedly supported the uranium claim were forgeries. A few weeks later President Bush started the war. After the start of the war, the Iraq Survey Group issued a report to the CIA Director stating that Iraq did not possess a nuclear device, had ended its nuclear program in 1991, and that there was no evidence that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991. The uranium claims that President Bush and his officials made were not only false but also fraudulent since when they made the statements they intended to deceive Congress and did not mention all the warnings that the American Intelligence Community had issued about the weakness of the claims, which if revealed would have made the uranium claims worthless. A few months prior to the Administration's uranium claims CIA officials in October 2002 not only informed Rice but also her deputy Stephen Hadley that the evidence on the uranium claim was weak. CIA Director George Tenet personally told Hadley that President Bush should not make the claim because the reporting on it was weak. In January 2003 prior to any of the statements, the State Department told the CIA that the documents behind the uranium claim were probably a hoax and a forgery. Prior to the State of the Union Address the CIA told the White House that it had several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the intelligence on the uranium claim in the draft of the State of the Union Address. The White House then changed the draft to cite the view of the British government that Iraq had sought uranium without mentioning the concerns of the CIA. Furthermore, as reported in the press, the National Intelligence Council issued a memo to the White House in January 2003 that stated that the uranium claim was baseless. Also the National Security Council in January 2003 believed that the nuclear case against Iraq was weak. The motive for making the false and fraudulent uranium claims prior to the war was to scare Congress into believing that Iraq was a nuclear threat and thereby thwart any efforts by Congress to repeal or modify the Congressional resolution that had empowered President Bush to use military force in Iraq. After Congress passed the war resolution in October 2002, Iraq allowed UN weapons inspectors to reenter Iraq but by January 2003 the UN inspectors had found no weapons of mass destruction. At the time of the above uranium claims in January 2003, there was pending a Congressional resolution filed January 7 that sought to delay the start of the war to allow the UN inspectors to finish their inspections. Also 130 Members of Congress on January 24 sent President Bush a letter basically requesting that he agree to any request by the UN for further time to finish weapons inspections. On January 27 the UN's chief nuclear weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, publicly stated that UN inspectors had found no evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons program and he basically asked for a few more months to finish weapons inspections because he said such inspections "could help us avoid a war." To overcome the fact that UN weapons inspectors had not found any weapons of mass destruction and therefore Iraq was not a nuclear threat, the Administration resorted to the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theatre not because there was a fire but to create panic and fear. President Bush and his said senior officials twisted the untrue uranium reports into unquestioned evidence that would scare Members of Congress into believing that Iraq was an imminent nuclear threat because it was secretly seeking the fuel for a hidden nuclear bomb. As mentioned in my report, under the statute 18 U.S.C. § 1001 it is a felony to make false and fraudulent statements to Congress. Under the statute 18 U.S.C. § 371 it is a felony to conspire to defraud Congress, which includes conspiring to obstruct its functions, such as the function that Congress had prior to the war to consider whether to repeal the war resolution or modify it so as to delay the start of the war at least until UN weapons inspectors finished their inspections. Under the law in order to show that a defendant had knowledge that his or her statements were false or fraudulent it is not necessary to produce direct evidence. Considering the nature of fraud, the law allows such knowledge to be proven by circumstantial evidence. My report provides the circumstantial evidence to prove that President Bush knowingly made false and fraudulent statements to Congress and thereby violated 18 U.S.C. § 1001; and that he, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rice, Secretary Powell and Secretary Rumsfeld knowingly were involved in a tacit agreement to make false and fraudulent statements to deceive Congress into believing that Iraq was a nuclear threat and thereby they violated 18 U.S.C. § 371. Rice will have a difficult time explaining to the committee that although intelligence officials had told her that the evidence on the uranium claim was weak she still made the claim in her op-ed article, and furthermore despite that warning to her President Bush still made the uranium claims in his reports to Congress, which were reports that Rice as the President's National Security Advisor would have been involved in preparing. In light of my report and the public record, Rice will have difficulty explaining that what she did was not fraudulent and therefore not a crime. Even if Rice ignores the committee's request to testify, the public record contains enough evidence of criminal conduct to prompt the committee to request the Justice Department to appoint an outside Special Counsel pursuant to the Department's current regulations, 28 C.F.R. §§ 600.1-7. In September 2005, forty Members of Congress asked United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate whether the Administration's false and fraudulent uranium claims violated the above criminal statutes. Six months later Fitzgerald responded that he did not have the authority to investigate the matter. Since we now know that the Administration was lying and why it was lying, the time has come for Congress to demand that the Justice Department appoint an outside Special Counsel.