Dennis J. Kucinich of
In the
Monday, June 9th, 2008
A Resolution
INDEX
Article I
Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for
War Against
Article II
Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks
of September 11, 2001, With
Misrepresentation of
Aggression.
Article III
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe
Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War.
Article IV
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe
to the
Article V
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression.
Article VI
Invading
Article VII
Invading
Article VIII
Invading
Article IX
Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor
Article X
Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political
Purposes
Article XI
Establishment of Permanent
Article XII
Initiating a War Against
Article XIIII
Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies
With Respect to
Countries
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
Article XV
Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in
Article XVI
Reckless Misspending and Waste of
Article XVII
Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons
Both
Captives
Article XVIII
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture
Against Captives in
Article XIX
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to
"Black Sites" Located in Other
Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture
Article XX
Imprisoning Children
Article XXI
Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from
Organizations Within
Article XXII
Creating Secret Laws
Article XXIII
Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act
Article XXIV
Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in
Violation of the Law and the
Fourth Amendment
Article XXV
Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and
Unconstitutional Database of the
Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens
Article XXVI
Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements
Article XXVII
Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former
Employees Not to Comply
Article XXVIII
Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration
of Justice
Article XXIX
Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Article XXX
Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy
Medicare
Article XXXI
Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane
Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil
Emergency
Article XXXII
Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining
Efforts to Address Global
Climate Change
Article XXXIII
Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence
Warnings of Planned Terrorist
Attacks in the
Article XXXIV
Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001
Article XXXV
Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders
____________
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
Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the
the name of itself and of the people of the
impeachment against President George W. Bush for high crimes and
misdemeanors.
In his conduct while President of the
oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
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
In his conduct while President of the
oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
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
The Department of Defense (DOD) has engaged in a years-long secret
domestic propaganda campaign
to promote the invasion and occupation of
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
the American people. The group included Karl Rove,
Hughes, Mary Matalin, Stephen Hadley, Nicholas E. Calio, and James R.
Wilkinson.
The WHIG produced white papers detailing so-called intelligence of
proved to be false. This supposed intelligence included the claim that
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
interview regarding waiting until after Labor Day to try to sell the
American people on military action
against
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
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
Saddam was trying to develop nuclear arms.
The Pentagon military analyst propaganda program was revealed in an
April 20, 2002,
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
A March 21, 2005, report by the Congressional Research Service states
that "publicity or propaganda"
is defined by the
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
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
SECURITY THREAT AS PART OF A FRAUDULENT JUSTIFICATION FOR A WAR OF
AGGRESSION.
In his conduct while President of the
oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
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
hand, and the attacks of September 11, 2001 and al Qaeda, on the other
hand, so as to falsely justify the
use of the
national security interests of the
congressional authorization and funding for the use of such military
force against
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
connection between Saddam Hussein and
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
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
September 11th attacks and that there was "scant credible evidence
that
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,
(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
Interpreting a Murky Relationship" dated June 21, 2002 was that
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
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
and the attacks of September 11th.
(F) Further, despite his full awareness that
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
statements by the Bush Administration which contrived to continually tie
statements of grave concern without making an explicit charge:
(1) " [If]
decisively, to hold
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
(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
goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a
hateful ideology -- gave
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
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
June 28, 2007, Speech of President Bush at the Naval
(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
that there was and is such an ongoing operational relationship, to wit:
(1) "We know that
Qaeda leaders who fled
received medical treatment in
chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that
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
(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
(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.
of Former Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations.
(6) "The battle of
still goes on. . . . [T]he liberation of
President Bush on
(H) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on Whether Public
Statements Regarding
By
June 5, 2008, concluded that:
(1) "Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of
State suggesting that
Qa'ida had a partnership, or that
substantiated by the intelligence."
(2) "The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta
met an Iraqi intelligence officer
in
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
the loss of more than 4000
loss of more than 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi citizens since the
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
equipment; the loss of
created by the invasion of
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
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
POSSESSED WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, SO AS TO MANUFACTURE A FALSE
CASE FOR WAR
In his conduct while President of the
oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
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
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.