I support the notion that George W. Bush should be impeached! It will not happen because the US congress is just as guilty as Bush in conducting an illegal invasion and occupation of two sovereign nations. The US government is a ROGUE STATE! If congress will not impeach Bush what can be done? Elizabeth de la Vega, an ex-federal prosecutor has written a book: United States v George W. Bush et al. This book provides a hypothetical account of the indictment of George Bush, Richard B.Cheney, Condolezza Rice, Donald M. Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell. Conspiracy to Defraud the United States/18 U.S.C. Section 371. This is the indictment portion of the book: Indictment/The Grand Jury Charges: Introductory Allegations/At times relevant to this Indictment: 1. The primary law of the US Federal Government was set forth in the U.S. Constitution ("Constitution"),which provides that the first branch of government is the legislative ("Congress").Pursuant to Article I, Section 8, Congress has certain powers and obligations regarding oversight of foreign affairs, including the powers to: (1)declare war;(2)raise and support the armed forces; and (3)tax and spend for the common good. 2. Article II of the Constitution establishes the Executive Branch. The Executive Power of the US is vested in the President, who is also the Commander in Chief of the Armed Services. 3.Defendant GEORGE W. BUSH ("BUSH")has been employed as President of the United States since January 20, 2001. On that day, BUSH took a constitutionally mandated oath to faithfully execute the Office of President and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. BUSH is also constitutionlly obilgated to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. 4. As Chief Executive,BUSH excercised authority, direction, and control over the entire Executive Branch, which includes the White House, the office of the Vice President, the Department of State, Defense, and others, and the National Security Council. 5.Defendent RICHARD B. CHENEY ("Cheney")has been employed as Vice President of the United States since January 20, 2001. 6. Defendent CONDOLEEZA RICE ("RICE") was employed as the National Security Adviser from January 2001 to January 2005, when she became Secretary of State, a position she holds as of the date of this indictment. As National Security Adviser, Rice, exercised direction, control, and authority over the National Security Council, which coordinates various national security and foreign policy agencies, including the Departments of Defense and State. 7. Defendent DONALD M.RUMSFELD ("RUMSFELD")has been employed as Secretary of Defense since January 2001.(no longer secretary of defense).8.Defendent COLIN M. POWELL,("POWELL")was employed as Secretary of State from January 2001 through January of 2005. 9. Before assuming their offices, CHENEY, RICE, RIMSFELD and POWELL, took an oath to preserve,protect, and defend the Constitution.10. As employees of the Executive Branch, BUSH,CHENEY, RICE, RUMSFELD, and POWELL, were governed by Executive Orders 12674 and 12731. These orders provide that Executive Branch employees hold their positions as a public trust and that the American people have a right to expect that they will fulfill that trust in accordance with certain ethical standards and principles. These include abiding by the Constitution and laws of the United States, as well as not using their offices to further private goals and interests. 11. Pursuant to the Constitution, their oaths of office, their status as Executive Branch employees, and their presence in the United States, BUSH,CHENEY,RICE,RUMSFELD, AND POWELL, and their subordinates and employees, are required to obey Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, which prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States. 12. As used in Section 371, the term "to defend the United States" means "to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful government functions by deceit, craft,trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest." The term also means to "impair, obstruct, or defeat the lawful function of any department of government" by the use of "false or fraudulent pretenses or representations." 13. A "false" or "fraudulent" representation is one that is" (a) made with knowledge that it is untrue; (b) a half-truth; (c) made without a reasonable basis or with reckless indifference as to whether it is, in fact, true or false; or (d) literally true, but intentionally presented in a manner reasonably calculated to deceive a person of ordinary prudence and intelligence. The knowing concealment or omission of information that a reasonable person would consider important in deciding an issue also constitutes fraud. 14. Congress is a "department of the United States" within the meaning of Section 371. In addition, hearings regarding funding for military action and authorization to use military force are "lawful functions" of Congress. 15. Accordingly, the presentation of information to congress and the general public through deceit, craft, trickery, dishonest means, and fraudulent reprsentatons, including lies, half-truths, meaterial omissions, and statements made with reckless indifferene to their truth or falsity, while knowing and intending that such fraudulent representations would influence Congress" decisions regarding authorization to use military force and funding for military action, constitutes interfering with,obstructing, impairing , and defeating a lawful government function of a department of the United States within the meaning of Section 371.The Conspiracy to Defraud the United States.16. Beginning on or about a date unknown, but no later than August of 2002, and continuing to the present, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendents, GEORGE W. BUSH, RICHARD B. CHENEY, CONDOLEEZA RICE,DONALD M.RUMSFELD, AND COLIN POWELL, and others known and unknown, did knowingly and intentionally conspire to defraud the United States by using deceit, craft,trickery,dishonest means, false and fraudulent representations, including ones made without a reasonable basis and with recklesss indifference to their truth or falsity, and omitting to state material facts necessary to make their representations truthful,fair,and accurate, while knowning and intending that their false and fraudulent representations would influence the public and the deliberations of Congress with regard to authorization of a preventive war against Iraq, thereby defeating, obstructing, impairing, and interfering with Congress'lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs and making appropriations. 17.The Early Months of the Bush-Cheney Administration: Prior to January of 2001, Bush,Cheney, and Rumsfeld each demonstrated a predisposition to employ U.S. military force to invade the Middle East, including, specifically, to forcibly remove Saddam Hussein. 18. Since 1992,Cheney has endorsed a "bold foreign policy" that includes using military force to "punish" or "threaten to punish" possible aggressors in order to protect the United States's access to Persian Gulf oil and to halt proliferation of weapons of mass destruction ("WMD"), a term that is customarily used to describe chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. 19. On or about January 26,1998 RUMSFELD and seven other future BUSH-CHENEY administration appointees signed a letter sent by a conservative policy institute named "Project for a New American Century" ("PNAC") to then President William Clinton, which called for U.S. military action to forcibly remove Saddam Hussein from power. 20.In Janury 1999, BUSH named RICE, and future Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley ("Hadley"), as his presidential campaign foreign-policy advisers, along with future Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz ("Wolfowitz") and four others who had publicy advocated forcibly removing Saddam Hussein. 21.On or before September 2000, 12 future BUSH-CHENEY administration appointees, including Wolfowitz, former Assistant to Vice President CHENEY,I.Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Rumsfeld's long term aide Stephen Cambone, participated in drafting "Rebuilding America's Defenses," a PNAC policy statement which asserted that the "need for a substantial American force presence in th Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." PNAC acknowledged that its goals would take a long time to achieve "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor." 22. Once BUSH became the Republican candidate in the 2000 presidentil election campaign, he and CHENEY informed the general public that they would be reluctant to use military force and did not believe that the United States should engage in "nation building." 22. Once Bush became the Republican candidate in the 2000 presidential election campaign, he and CHENEY informed the general public that they would be reluctant to use military force and did not believe that the United States should engage in "nation building." 23.On and after January 20, 2001, BUSH and CHENEY caused to be appointed as senior foreign policy advisors and consultants, at least thirty-four persons who had publicly endorsed the PNAC principles of United States global preeminence and use force to "punish" or "threaten to punish" emerging threats from weapons of mass destruction ("WMD") or impediments to United States access to oil in the Middle East. Of those appointees, eighteen had also publicly advocated forcibly removing Saddam Hussein. 24. In late December 2000, BUSH and CHENEY advised outgoing President William J. Clinton and others that, among potential foreign policy issues, BUSH's primary concern was Iraq. 25. On February 11, 2001, BUSH ordered the first airstikes since 1998 to be conducted outside the United Nations ("UN") agreed upon No-Fly zones, to get Saddam Hussein"s "attention."26. The Attacks of September 11, 2001. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four commercial airplanes. They crashed two planes into the World Trade Towers in New York City and another into the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. In total, nearly 3,000 people died as a result of the September 11, 2001, attacks ("9/11"). 27. Shortly afterward, United States intelligence agencies dtermined that 9/11 was the work of the terrorist organization al Qaeda, spearheaded by Osama Bin Laden. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from Yemen, and two from Lebanon. This information, along with the conclusion that no evidence linked the attacks to Saddam Hussein or al Qaeda, was immediately communicated to BUSH, CHENEY, RUMSFELD, POWELL, and others. 28. BUSH-CHENEY administration members began discussing an invasion of Iraq immediately after 9/11. BUSH, RUMSFELD and others also assigned various subordinates, including former counterterrorism czar Richard Clark, CIA Director George Tenet, General Richard Meyes to look for intelligence that could justify attacking Saddam Hussein's regime. 29. On September 17, 2001, BUSH secretly ordered the formulation of preliminary plans for an invasion of Iraq, while admitting to his aides that no evidence existed to justify an attack. 30. On or about September 18, 2001, in response to BUSH's request, Clarke sent RICE a memo that stated: (a) the case for linking Hussein to 9/11 was weak;(b)only anecdotal evidence linked Hussein to al Qaeda;(c)Osama Bin Laden resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein; and(d)there was no confirmed reporting of Saddam cooperating with Bin Laden on unconventional weapons. 31. On September 20, 2001, BUSH informed British Prime Minister Tony Blair that after Afghanistan, the United States and Britain should return to the issue of invading Iraq. 32. U.S. Intellegence Community Assessments of Risk from Iraq in Effect on November 2001. On occasion, Executive Branch officials request assessments of current intelligence on risks posed by WMD in a given country. Although such assessments are coordinated by the Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA"), the final product incorporates the analyses, including dissenting opinions, of the intelligence branches of the Departments of State, Energy, Defense, the National Security Agency, and others, which are collectively called the Intelligence Community ("IC").33. As of November 2001, the most recent assessment on Iraq was a December 2000 classified Intelligence Community Assessment ("ICA") called "Iraq: Steadily Pursuing WMD Capabilities." This ICA was a comprehensiveupdate on pssible Iraqi efforts to rebuild WMD and weapons delivery systems after teh 1998 departure of International Atomic Energy Agency ("IAEA") representatives and UN weapons inspectors, who are collectively referred to as the United Nations Special Commission ("UNSCOM"). 34. Regarding Iraq's possible nuclear program, the December 2000 NIE unanimously concluded that: (a) The IAEA and UNSCOM had destroyed or neutralized Iraq's nuclear infrastructure, but Iraq still had a foundation for future nuclear reconstitution; (b) Iraq was continuing low-level theoretical research and training, and attempting to obtain dual-use items that could be used to reconstitute its nuclear program; (c) if Iraq acquired a significant quanity of fissile material through foreign assistance, it could have a crude nuclear weapon within a year; if Iraq received foreign assistance, it would take five to seven years to produce enough weapons-grade fissile material for a nuclear weapon;and (d) Iraq did not appear to have reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. 35. Escalation of Military Acitivity and Planning for Invasion of Iraq. On November 21, 2001, BUSH secretly ordered preparation of a formal war plan for invading Iraq. Thereafter, for sixteen months, the BUSH-CHENEY administration expended substantial U.S. government funds in military activity and planning for invasion of Iraq, all without notice to, or approvalby, the U.S. Congress. 36. BUSH did not receive an extensive briefing about possible WMD in Iraq before ordering a war plan, nor did he discuss the legitimacy of grounds for war with anyone. BUSH received no such briefing until December 21, 2002. 37.On or about November 27, 2001 RUMSFELD asked General "Tommy" Franks, head oc Central Command, which supervises Middle East operations, to immediately prepare an Iraq war plan in response to BUSH's order. 38. Thereafter, Franks discussed numerous revised Iraq war plans with RUMSFELD. Between December 2001 and August 2002, BUSH, CHENEY, RICE, RUMSFELD, POWELL, and others held at lease five lengthy meetings about Franks' plans. In August, BUSH ordered Franks to prepare to invade Iraq using the "Hybrid Plan," a combination of the "Running Start" and "Generated Start" plans developed previously. 39. During 2002, the United States and Great Britain increased air strikes in order to degrade Iraqi air defenses and began deploying troops to areas around Iraq. 40. On or about July 30, 2002, without approval by, or notice to, Congress, BUSH caused the diversion of $700 million from Afghanistan war funds into Iraq invasion preparations. 41. On September 5, 2002, without approval by, or notice to, Congress, BUSH caused approximately 100 United States and British aircraft to launch ballistic missiles at Iraq's major western air-defense facility. 42. By September 12, 2002, without approval by, or notice to, Congress, BUSH, had caused the movement of 40,000 military personnel and over 350,000 tons of equipment to areas around Iraq. Franks also ordered Central Command to be moved to Al Udeid Air Base near Doha, Qutar. 43. Behind-the-Scenes Strategizing with British Officials: On or before March 2002, BUSH, RICE, Wolfowitz, and others secretly began discussing ways to persude the public and foreign allies to accept Bush's goal of invading Iraq, with British Prime Minister Tony Blair ("Blair") and his advisers. 44. On March 12, 2002, in Washington, DC, RICE met with Blair's Foreign Policy Adviser Sir David Manning and informed him of BUSH's problems with persuading "international opinion that military action against Iraq was necessary and justified." 45. On March 17, 2002, in Washington,DC, British Ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer advised Wolfowitz that the two countries should "wrongfoot" Saddam Hussien by seeking a UN resolution that would require the readmission of weapons inspectors with the expectation tdhat Saddam would create a justification for war by obstructing the inspections. 46.On April 6, 2002, in Crawford, Texas, BUSH and Blair discussed strategies to sway public opinion regarding military action in Iraq. Blair agreed to support a United States invasion if the two countries obtained a UN resolution first. 47. In mid-July,2002, in Washington, DC, White House Officials discussed Iraq with visiting British officials. Upon their return to London, these officials reported the talks to Blair in a meeting at 10 dowining St. on July 23, 2002.Among other things, Blair's advisers suggested that he urge BUSH to devise a more realistic political strategy for attacking Iraq, because a desire for "regime change" would not justify military action under international law. 48. In mid-July, 2002, in Washington,DC, CIA Director Tenet and others talked about the Bush administration's intentions regarding Iraq with Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of British Intelligence. 49. On July 23, 2002, during the Downing St. meeting described above, Dearlove informed Blair that in the United States "Military action was now seen as inevetable. BUSH wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." 50. On July 23, 2002, British Foreign Secretary Jack Snow also noted that BUSH had "made up his mind to take military action." Straw said he would urge POWELL to persaude BUSH to seek a UN resolution requiring Saddam Hussein to readmit weapons inspectors, in effect, suggesting the "wrongfooting" strategy that Meyer described to Wolfowitz. 51. BEHIND-THE-SCENES EFFORTS TO FIX INTELLIGENCE AROUND THE POLICY. Within weeks after learning from Clarke, Tenet, and others that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had no involvement with either 9/11 or al Qaeda RUMSFELD caused Deputy Undersecretary for Defense Douglas Feith ("Feith") to secretly create the Counter Terrorism Group ("CTEG")a small unit of political appointees whose mission was to find links between Iraq and al Qaeda by reviewing raw intelligence that previously had been discarded as unreliable. CTEG reported weekly to RUMSFELD's longterm associate Stephen Cambone, and occasionally presented information directly to Wolfowitz, thereby circumventing standard IC procedures. 52.At some time in 2002, Feith also designated political appointees to work under his supervision in the newly-created Office of Special Plans, whose purpose was to develop and package information for use in marketing the President's plan for an invasion of Iraq. In the fall of 2002, this group presented information directly to RUMSFELD, to RICE's office, and to CHENEY's office, thereby circumventing standard IC procedures. 53. In the spring of 2002, CHENEY and former aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, began visiting CIA headquarters to question CIA agents' assessments about Iraq. RUMSFELD and Deputy National Security Adviser Hadley also repeatedly pressed CIA Director Tenet and his subordinates t present a stronger case against Iraq. 54. Bush's Creation of the White House Iraq Group. By the summer of 2002, domestic and international support for BUSH's plan to invade Iraq was lukewarm. At the same time, Bush's chief political strategist and Senior Advisor Karl Rove and Kenneth Mehlman, head of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, were beginning to coordinate the President's involvement in the November 7, 2002 congressional election. Their overall goal was to gain Republican majorities in both houses of Congress so that the President would have the greatest possible support for his policies. Rove had specifically recommended that Republicans "focus on war" as a way to win elections. Consequently, in the summer of 2002, BUSH's efforts to win support for an invasion O Iraq and his efforts to assist Republican congressional candidates became inextricably intertwined. 55. In the summer of 2002, BUSH caused the creation of the White House Iraq Group, which was cochaired by BUSH's long-term political operatives Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, who remained BUSH's close associate even though she had resigned her position as Counselor to the President. This team, also called WHIG, was largely a political and public-relations entity that included RICE, Hadley, President's Chief of Staff Andrew Card, President's legislative liaison Nicholas Calio, CHENEY's key aide and veteran Republican political strategist Mary Matalin, CHENEY's senior adviser Libby, and James Wilkinson, another Republican campaign consultant. 56.On or about September 6, 2002, Rove and Card publicly announced that:(a) the BUSH-CHENEY administration was beginning to "roll out" its case for an invasion of Iraq;(b) its public-relations campaign was specifically directed at forcing Congress to pass a resolution authorizing the President to use military force in Iraq;(c) BUSH wanted the resolution passed in about five weeks, before the 2002 election; and (d) in the end, it would be difficult for any legislator to vote against it. 57.The Defendants' Massive Fraud to "Market" an invasion of Iraq. On or about September 4, 2002, BUSH staged a photo opportunity with a bipartisan group of congressional leaders, after which he falsely and fraudulently announced that Iraq posed a serious threat to the safety of the United States and the world, while concealing from Congress and the American people the material facts that:(a)he had no reasonable basis whatsoever for his assertion;(b) he had never discussed the legitimacy of the grounds for an attack against Iraq with anyone;(c) he had never extensively reviewed existing intellgence regarding any possible threat from Iraq;(d) he had not requested an updated intelligence assessment on Iraq;(e)the United States intelligence assessment then in effect stated that Iraq had neither nuclear weapons nor a nuclear weapons program; and(f) the IC had consistently reported that Iraq had no involvement in 9/11 and no relationship with al Qaeda. 58.On September 4, 2002, BUSH also falsely and fraudulently claimed he was beginning an "open dialogue" with the American public, with Congress, and with United States allies to decide how to respond to Iraq, while concealing the material facts that he:(a)had requested a formal plan to invade Iraq nearly a year before;(b)had been conducting significant military and nonmilitary planning and attacks against Iraq for a year;(c)had directed significant military deployment to areas around Iraq;(d) was planning a massive air assault against Iraq's air defenses facility for the next day;and (e)intended to work with the UN only to create a justification to use military force against Iraq. 59.Thereafter, the defendants and WHIG executed a calculated and wide-ranging strategy to deceive Congress and the American people by making hundreds of false and fraudulent representations that were only half-true, or literally true but misleading; by concealing material facts; and by making statements without a reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to their truth, regarding, among other things: (a)their true intent to invade Iraq:(b)the extent of military buildup and force used against Iraq without notice to or approval by Congress; (c)their true purpose in seeking a Congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq; (d) their true intent to use their involvement in seeking a UN resolution requiring Iraq to cooperate with weapons inspectors as a sham; and (e) their claimed justifications for invading Iraq, including but not limited to: The alleged connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11, 2001; The alleged connection between Iraq and al Qaeda; The alleged connection between Saddam Hussein and any terrorists whose primariy animus was directed towards the United States;Saddam Hussein's alleged intent to attack the United States in any way; Saddam Hussein's possession of nuclear of nuclear weapons and the status of any alleged ongoing nuclear weapons propgrams; The lack of any reasonable basis for asserting with certainy that Saddam Hussein was actively manufacturing chemical and biological weapons; and The alleged urgencey of any threat posed to the United States by Saddam Hussein. 60. Congressional Joint Resolution to Authorize Use of Force Against Iraq. As a result of the defendants' false and fraudulent "marketing" of the President's plan to invade Iraq, on October 11, 2002, the U.S. Congress, acting pursuant to its Article I constitutional authority to oversee and authorize use of military force, passed a Congressional Joint Resolution to Authorize Use of Force Against Iraq ("the Resolution") which stated: The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to- (a) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (b) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq. 61. The Resolution required the President to, either before or within 48 hours after exercising the authority to use force, make available to the Senate and the House of Representatives this determination that: (a) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (1) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (2) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and (b) acting pursuant to this resolution in 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 terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. 62. The Resolution also required the President to, at least every 60 days, present Congress a report on "matters relevant to this joint resolution." 63. In furtherance of the above-described conspiracy, the defendants and their coconspirators committed and caused to be committed the following overt acts: OVERT ACTS A. On December 9, 2001, CHENEY announced on NBC's Meet the Press that "it was pretty well confirmed" that lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had met the head of the Iraqi intelligence in Prague in April 2001, which statement was, as CHENEY well knew, made without reasonable basis and with reckless disregard for the truth, because it was based on a single witness's uncorroborated allegation that had not been fully investigated by U.S. intelligence agencies. B. On July 15, 2002, POWELL, stated on Ted Koppel's Nightline: "What we have consistenly said is that the President has no plan on his desk to invade Iraq at the moment, nor has one been presented to him, nor have his advisors come together to put a plan to him," which statement was deliberately false and misleading in that it deceitfully implied the President was not planning an invasion of Iraq when, as POWELL, well knew, the President was close to finalizing detailed military plans for such an invasion that he had ordered months previously. C. On August 26, 2002, CHENEY made numerous false and fraudulent statements including: "Simply stated there in no doublt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. the in no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us," when, as CHENEY well knew, this statement was made without reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to the truth in that the IC's then prevailing assessment was that Iraq had neither nuclear weapons nor a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. D. On September 7, 2002 appearing publicly with Blair, BUSH claimed a recent IAEA report stated that Iraq was "six months away from developing a (nuclear) weapon" and "I don't know what more evidence we need," which statements were made without basis and with reckless indifference to the truth in that: (1) the IAEA had not even been present in Iraq since 1998; and (2) the report the IAEA did write in 1998 had concluded there was no indication that Iraq had the physical capacity to produce weapons-usable nuclear material or that it had attempted to obtain such materila. E. On September 8, 2002, on Late Night with Wolf Blitzer, RICE, asserted that Saddam Hussein was acquiring aluminum tubes that wre "only suited" for nuclear centifuge use, which statemtent was deliberately false and fraudulent, and made with reckless indifference to the truth in that it omitted to state the following material facts: (1) the U.S. intelligence community was deeply divided about the likely use of the tubes; (2) there were at least fifteen intelligence reports written since April 2001 that cast doubt on the tubes' possible nuclear-related use; and (3) the U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons experts had conclude, after analyzing the tube's specifications and the circumstances of the Iraqis' attempts to procure them, that the aluminum tubes were not well suited for nuclear centrifuge use and were more likely for artillery rocket production. F. On September 8, 2002, RUMSFELD stated on Face the Nation: "Imagine a September 11th, with weapons of mass destruction. It's not three thousand, it's tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children," which statement was deliberately fraudulent and misleading in that it implied without reasonable basis and in direct contradiction to then prevailing intelligence that Saddam Hussein had no operational relationship with al Qaeda and was unlikely to provide weapons to terrorists. G.On September 19, 2002 RUMSFELD told the Senate Armed Services committee that "no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein," which statement was, as Rumsfeld well knew, made without reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to the truth in that: (1) Hussein had not acted agressively toward the United States since his alleged attempt to assinate Prsident George H.W. Bush in 1993; (2) Iraq's military forces and equipment were severly debilitated because of UN sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War; (3) the IC's opinion was that Iraq's sponsorship of terrorists was limited to ones whose hostility was directed toward Israel; and (4) Iran, not Iraq, was the most active state sponsor of terrorism. H. On October 1, 2002, the defendants caused the IC's updated classified National Intellegence Estimate to be delivered to Congress just hours before the beginning of debate on the Authorization to Use Military Force. At the same time, the defendants caused an unclassified 'White Paper" to be published which was false and misleading in many respects in that it failed to include qualifying language and dissents that substantially weakended their argument that Iraq posed a serious threat to the United States. I. On October 7, 2002, in Cincinnati, Ohio, BUSH made numerous deliberately misleading statements to the nation, including stating that in comparison to Iran and North Korea, Iraq posed a uniquely serious threat, which statement BUSH well knew was false and fraudulent in that it omitted to state the material fact that a State Department representative had been informed just three days previously that North Korea had actually already produced nuclear weapons. The defendants continued to conceal this information until Congress passed the Authorization to Use Military Force against Iraq. J. Between Septmeber 1, 2002, and November 2, 2002, BUSH traveled the country making in excess of thirty congressional-campaign speeches in which he falsely and fraudulently asserted that Iraq was a "serious threat" which required immediate action, when as he well knew, this assertion was made without reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to the truth. K. In his January 28, 2003 State of the Union address, BUSH announced that the "British have recently learned that Iraq was seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa" which statement was fraudulent and misleading and made with reckless disregard for the truth, in that it falsely implied that the information was true, when the CIA had advised the administration more than once that the allegation was unsupported by available intelligence. L. In a February 5, 2003, speech to the UN, POWELL falsely implied, without reasonable basis and with reckless disregard fro the truth, that, among things: (1) those who maintained that Iraq was purchasing alumninum tubes for rockets were allied with Saddam Hussein, even though POWELL well knew that both Department of Energy nuclear weapons experts and State Department intelligence analysts had concluded that the tubes were not suited for nuclear centrifuge use; and (2) Iraq had an ongoing cooperative relationship with al Queda, when he well knew that no intelligence agency had reached that conclusion. M. On March 18, 2003, BUSH sent a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate which asserted that further reliance on diplomatic and peaceful means alone would not either: (1) adequately protect United States national security against the "continuing threat posed by Iraq" or (2) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant UN Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, which statement was made without reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to the truth in that, as BUSH well knew, the U.S. intelligence community had never reported that Iraq posed an urgent threat to the United States and there was no evidence whatsoever to prove tha Iraq had either the means or intent to attack the U.S. directly or indirectly. The statement was also false because, as BUSH well knew, the UN weapons inspectors had not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and wanted to continue the inspection process because it was working well. N. In the same March 18, 2003, letter, BUSH also represented that taking action pursuant to the Resolution was "consistent with 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 terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001," which statement was entirely false and without reasonable basis in that, as BUSH well knew, Iraq had no involvement with al Queda or the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. ALL IN VIOLATION OF TITLE 18, UNITED STATES CODE, SECTION 371. A TRUE BILL/END OF INDICTMENT.I am a student of the Austrian School of Economics. I reject the Chicago School of Economics---The school turns out statists who seek positions in the US government,they are elite, and they intend to control the world, using their lackeys' in the US government. I intend to do everything I can on a daily basis to disrupt the daily functions of government. Already I have been successful on many different levels. I will also tell you that the US government can and will garnish your wages if you reject paying income taxes. But, let me say this, there is immense satisfaction in standing up for what you believe in and dealing with the violent means in which the government gets you to cooperate.
Winston Churchill, Madelaine Albright(Remark to Collin Powell,1993,"What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it.?"), Abraham Lincoln(The Lincoln Myths--Exposed. MYTH #1: "LINCOLN INVADED THE SOUTH TO FREE THE SLAVES". This is another way of saying that slavery was the sole cause of the war, which has recently become the mantra of the Lincoln gatekeepers. The problem for them, however,is that Lincoln never said this and most certainly did not believe it. Nor did anyone else in his government--or in the Northern states. It is unlikely that anyone who voted for Lincoln in 1860 did so because he thought the new president whould order an army to march south to free the slaves in a war that might cost hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars. On March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln's inauguration as president, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed constitutional amendment that read:"No Amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of the State." The U.S. House of Reprsentatives passed the amendment on February 28, 1861. "Domestic institutions" meant slavery. Two days later, in his first inaugural address, Lincoln promised several times that he had no intention to interfere with Southern slavery, and that even if he did, it would be unconstitutional to do so. He also pledged his support for this amendment, announcing to the world that "holding such a provision (the legality of slavery) to be implied constitutinal law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable". Thus, on the day of his inauguration, Abraham Lincoln did not defend or support the natural, God-given rights of Southern slaves to life, liberty, and property. Quite the opposite: He supported the "rights" of Southern slave ownners to deprive the slaves of those rights. Lincoln was perfectly willing to see Southern slavery persist long pass his own lifetime, for all he knew, as long as the Southern states remained in the Union and continued to pay federal taxes. Lincoln clearly stated the real cause and purpose of the war on numerous occasions, including in his famous August 22, 1862, letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley. There he wrote, "My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery." His objective was to destroy the secession movement by force of arms, period. The U.S.Congress concurred, announcing to the world on July 22, 1861, that the purpose of the war was not "interference with the rights or established institutions of those states"--that is, slavery--"but to preserve the Union with the rights of the several states unimpaired." Thus, according to both President Lincoln and the Congress, the conflict over states rights was the sole cause of the war. The Confederate states believed the Union was voluntary, that governments derived their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that they consequently had a right to secede. Lincon disagreed, and was willing to wage total war to "prove" himself right. Most gatekeepers today will say that states' rights were, at best, a "figleaf." Or they will peddle the false notion that it was made up as an excuse after the war by disgruneled former Confederates. Either way, they are distorting true history and contradicting Lincoln himself.MYTH#2: LINCOLN SAVED THE UNION." In reality, Lincoln did more than any other individual to destroy the voluntary union of the founding fathers. All of the founding documents--the Articles of Confederaton, the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty with Great Britain, the Constitution--refer to the states as "free and independent." That is, the founders construed them as being free and independent of any other state, including the federal government which they--the states--had created as their agent. The states delegated certain narrowly defined and enumerated powers to the federal government but preserved sovereignty for themselves. The federal Constitution was created by a voluntary association of states and three of them--New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia--explicitly reserved the right to withdraw from the constitutional compact should the federal government ever abuse their liberties. Since all states have equal rights under the Constitution, and no state is given more riths than any other, the fact that this contingency was accepted by all the other states implies that this right of secession was naturally asssumed to be enjoyed by all the states. The citizens of the states did not create "a new nation" with the Constitution; they created a compact or a confedereacy of states. This was an uncontroversial view in 1860. Newspapers throughout the North echoed the opinion of the Bangor Daily Union, which editorialized on November 13, 1860, that the Union "depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone." Thus, Lincoln "saved" the federal union in the same sense that a man who has been abusing his wife "saves" his marital union by violently forcing his wife back into the home and threatiening to shoot her if she leaves again. The union may well be saved, but it is not the same kind of union that existed on their wedding day. That union no longer exists. The American union of the founding fathers ceased to exist in April 1865.Myth #3: "LINCOLN WAS A CHAMPION OF THE CONSTITUTION." George Orwell himself would blush at this assertion. The only way one could conceivably make this argument is to base the argument exclusively on a few nice things that Lincoln said about the Constitution while generally igoring his actions. For example, he launched an invasion without the consent of Congress; illegally suspended the writ of habeas corpus and imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political opponents; shut down some three hundred opposition newspapers; censored all telegraph communication; imprisoned a large percentage of the duly elected legislature of Maryland as well as the mayor of Baltimore; illegally orchestrated the secession of West Virginia; deported the most outspoken member of the Democratic opposition, Congressmen Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio; systematically disarmed the border states in violation of the Second Amendment; and effectively declared himself dictator. The gatekeepers try to excuse all of this, but their words ring hollow to anyone familiar with the historical facts.Myth #4:"Lincoln was devoted to equality." Lincoln's words and, more importaant, his actions, throughly contradict this claim. "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races," he stated in his August 21, 1858, debate with Stephen Douglas. Incredibly, various Lincoln scholars take a statement like this and somehow conclude that Lincoln "really" meant, "I do have purpose to introduce political and racial equality..."Mostly, statements like this are simply ignored and kept from the innocent eyes fo American schoolchildren. Lincoln opposed the immigration of black people into Illinois; suported the Illinois Black Codes, which deprived the small number of free blacks who resided in the state of any semblance of citizenship; and was a leader of the Illinois Colonization Society, which persuaded the state legislature to allocate funds to "colonize,"or deport, free blacks. As syndicated columnist Joseph Sobran has remarked, Lincoln's position was that blacks could be "equal" all right, but not in the United States. He favored "colonizing them in Africa, Haiti, Central and South America--anywhere but in the United States. This position was supported by the vast majority of Northerners, and Lincoln, as an astute and even brilliant politician, supported it as well. Myth #5: "Lincoln was a great statesman." Imagine that California seceded from the union and an American president responded with the carpet bombing of Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco that destroyed 90% of those cities. Such was the case with General Sherman's bombardment of Atlanta; a naval blockade; a blocking off of virtually all trade; the eviction of thousands of residents from their homes (as occurred in Atlanta in 1864);the destruction of most industries and farms; massive looting of private property by a marauding army; and the killing of one out of four males of military age while maiming for life more than double that number. Would such an American president be considered a "great statesman" or a war criminal? The answer is obvious. A statesman would have recognized the state's right to secede, as enshrined in th Tenth Amendment, among other places, and then worked diligently to persuade the seceded state that a reunion was in its best interest. A great statesman, or even a modest one, would not have impulsively plunged the entire nation into a bloody war. Lincoln's warmongering belligerence and his invasion of all the Southern states in response to Fort Sumter (where no one was harmed or killed) caused the upper South--Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas--to secede after originally voting to remain in the Union. He refused to meet with confederate commissioners to discuss peace and even declined a meeting with Napoleon III of France, who offered to broker a peace agreement. No genuine statesman would have behaved in such a way. After Fort Sumter, Lincoln thanked naval commander Gustavus Fox for assisting him in manipulating the South Carolinians into firing at Fort Sumter. A great statesman does not manipulate his own people into starting one of the bloodiest wars in human history. Myth #6: "Lincoln was a great humanitarian". Great humanitarians do not micromanage the waging of total war, or wage war on civilians, as Lincoln did for the duration of his administration. This included the burning of entire towns populated only by civilians, massive looting and plundering, and even the execution of civilians. A great humanitarian would not express his personal thanks and "the thanks of a nation" to those who committed such atrocities and war crimes, as Lincoln did to General Philip Sheridan. Nor would he have literally laughed at the fate of Southern civilians who had lost everything, as General Sherman said tht he did in his (Sherman)memoirs. Great humanitarians do not become obsessed with allocating tax dollars to the development of more powerful and more devastating weapons of mass destruction to be aimed at their own citizens, as Lincoln did. Historian Lee Kennett was right when he wrote, Marching Through Georgia, that had the Confederates somehow won, they would have been justified in "stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command" as war criminals, especially for waging war on civilians. This is the kind of conclusion that one often comes to from studying the actual history of the War between the States, as opposed to the fanciful reinterpretations of it provided to us by the gatekeepers and assorted court historians.) Woodrow Wilson (Wilson took America into the WWI and with that America changed forever:With U.S. entry innto the Great War, the federal government expanded enormously in size, scope, and power. It virtually nationalized the ocean shipping industy and actually did natiionalize the rairoad, telephone, domestic telegraph, and international telegraphic cable industries. It became deeply engaged in manipulating labor-management relations, securities sales, agricultural production and marketing, the distribution of coal and petroleum, international commerce, and the markets for raw materials and manufactured products. Its Liberty Bond drives dominated the financial capital markets. It turned the newly created Federal Reserve System into a powerful engine of monetary inflation to help satisfy the government's voracious appetite for money and credit. In view of the more than five thousand mobilization agencies of various sorts--boards, committees, corporations, and administrations--contemporaries who described the government's creation as "war socialism" were well justified. During 1917 and 1918, the government built up the armed forces to a strength of 4 million officers and men, drawn from a prewar labor force of 40 million persons. Of those added to the armed forces after the U.S. declaration of war, more than 2.8 million, or 72 percent, were drafted. By employing the draft, the government got more men into the army and got them there more quickly than it could have by recruiting volunteers. Moreover, it got the men's sevices at far less expenese to the Treasury. As the army leadership had recommended and President Wilson had accepted even bfore the declaration of war, the U.S. government obtained is servicemen by following the Prussian model.Men alone, however, did not make an army. They required barracks and training facilities, transportatiion, food, clothing, and health care. They had to be equipped with modern arms and great stocks of ammunition. In short, to be an effective fighting force, a large soldiery required immense amounts of complementary resources. As the buildup began, the requiste resources remained in the possession of private citizens. Although manpower could be obtained by conscription, public opinion would not tolerate the outright confiscation of all the property required to turn the men into a well-equipped fighting force. Still, ordinary market mechanisms threatned to operate too slowly and at too great an expense to facilitate the government's plans. The Wilson administration therefore resorted to the vast array of interventions mentioned earlier. All were devices to hasten the delivery of the requisite resources and to diminish the fiscal burden of equipping the huge conscript army for effective service in France. Notwithstanding these contrivances to keep the Treasury's expenses down, enormouusly increased taxes still had to be levied--federal revenues increased by nearly 400 percent between fiscal 1917 and fiscal 1919--and even greater amounts had to be borrowed. The national debt swelled from $1.2 billion in 1916 to $25.5 billion in 1919. To ensure that the conscription-based mobilization could proceed without obstructiin, critics had to bve silenced. The Espionage Act of June 15, 1917, penalized those convicted of willfully obstructing the enlistment services with fines as large as $10,000 and imprishonmnet as long as twenty years. An amendment, the notorious Sedition Act of May 16, 1918, went further, imposing the same harsh criminal penalties on all forms of expression in any way critical of the government, its symbols, or its mobilization of resources for the war. These suppressions of free speech, subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court, established dangerous precedents that derogated from the rights previously enjoyed by citizens under the protection of the First Amendment. The government further subverted the Bill of Rights by censoring all printed materials; peremptorily deporting hundreds of alins without due process of law; and conducting-and encouraging state and local governments as well as vigilante groups to conduct--warrantless searches and seizures, blanket arrests of suspected draft evaders, and other outrages too mumerous to catalog here. In California, the police arrested Upton Sinclair for reading the Bill of Rights at a rally. In New Jersy, the police arrested Roger Baldwin for publicly reading the Constitution. The government also employed a massive propaganda machine to whip up what can only described as public hysteria. The result was countless incidents of intimidation, physical abuse, and even lynching of persons suspected of disloyalty or insufficent enthusiasm for the war. People of German ancestry suffered disproportionately. The connection of the draft with these official subversions of the Constitution was hardly coincidental; it was direct, intentional, and publicly acknowledged. Consider the statement of a contemporary legal authority, Professor John Henry Wigmore: "Where a nation has definitely committed itself to a foreign war, all principles of normal internal order may be suspended. As property may be taken and corporal service may be conscripted, so liberty of speech may be limited or suppressed, so far as deemed needful for the successful conduct of the war...(A)ll rights of the individual, and all internal civic interests, become subordinated to the national right in the struggle for national life." The formula, applied again and again, was quite simple: if it is acceptable to draft men, then it is acceptable to do X, where X is any government violation of any individual rights whatsover. Once the draft had been adopted, then, as Justice Louis Brandeis put it, "all bets are off." When the war ended, the government abandoned most--but not all---of its wartime control measures. The draft ended when the armistice took effect on November 11,1918. By the end of 1920, the bulk of the economic regulatory apparatus had been scrapped, including the Food Administration, the Fuel Administration, the Railraod Administration, the War Industries Board, and the War Labor Board. Some emergency powers migrated into rgular governmnet departments such as State, Labor, and Treasury and continued in force. The Espionage Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act remained on the statute books. Congressional enactments in 1920 preserved much of the federal government's wartime invovement int the railroad and the ocean shipping industries. The War Finance Corporation shifted missions, subsidizing exporters and farmers until the mid-192s Wartime probibition of alcoholic beverages, a purposrted conservation measure, transfogrified into the ill-fated Eighteenth Amendment. Most important, the dominant contemporary interpretation of the war mobilization, including the the belief that federal economic controls had been instrumental in achieving the victory, persisted, especially among the elites who had played leading roles in the wartime economic management. Economic czar Bernard Baruch did much to foster the postwar disseminatiion of this interpretation by historians, journalists, and other shapers of public opinion. Many inerest groups, however, such as the farmers, needed no prompting to arrive at Baruchian conclusion. "By the time the Food Administration dropped its wartime controls, it had weakened farmer resistance to governmental direction of their affairs. Have observed how the government could shape wartime food prices, farmers would expect it also to act in peacetime to maintain the propserity of America's farms. Big businessmen in many industries took a similar lesson away from the war. FDR, Harry Truman (ordered the unnecessary bombing of two Japanese cities killing thousands of innocent civilians,Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan(More than any other person Reagan justified and facilitated the barbarity that raged through Central America in the 1980s claiming the lives of tens of thousands of peasants, clergy and students, men, women and children. Reagan protrayed the bloody conflicts as a necessary front in the cold war, but the Central American violence was always more about entrenched ruling elites determined to retain their privileges against improverished peasants, including descendents of the region's Maya Indians, seeking social, political and economic reforms. One of the most notorious acts of brutality occurred in December 1981 in and around the Salvadoran town of El Mozote. The government's Atlacatl Batalion-freshly trained and newly armed thanks to Reagan's hard-line policies-systematically slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children. When the atrocity was revealed by reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Reagan administration showed off its new strategy of "perception management",denying the facts and challenging the intergrity of the journalists. Because of that P.R. offensive, the reality about the El Mozote massacre remained in doubt for almost a decade until the war ended and a United Nations forensic team dug up hundreds of skeletons, including many little ones of childred. Now the Washington Post has added a new grisly dtail. Several months after the massacre, the Salvadoran army returned to the scene and collected the skulls of some El Mozote children as novelty items, the Post reported. "They worked well as candle holders", recalled one of the soldiers, Jose Wilfredo Salgado, "and better as good luck charms." Now, a quarter century later, describing his role piling the tiny skulls into sascks as souvenirs, Salgado acknowledged that he had "lost his love of humanity." The Post reported that "witnessing the aftermath of what his colleagues did in Mozote and reflecting on those skulls changed his mind about how the war was being fought." Salgada said his mentor, Col. Domingo Monterrose, who later died ina helicopter crash, had ordered an act of "genocide" in El Mozote. "If Monterossa had lived," the Post reported. "Salgada said, he should have been prosecuted for "war crimes like a Hitler." But what about the American officials who were the enablers and the protectors of Central America's mass murderers? While Monterrosa may have ordered massacres in El Mozote and other towns in El Salvador, President Reagan and other senior U.S. officials collaborated in and covered up those crimes, along with acts of genocide in Guatemala and terrorism in Nicaragua. Yet, the U.S. officials who supplied the guns, helicopters, advanced technology and political cover have never been called to account. Some, like former State Department official Elliot Abrams, have moved on to oversee the bloody chaos in Iraq. After leaving office, Reagan was showered with honors, including having dozens of government sites named for him, including National Airport in Washington. Criticism also should fall on President Bill Clinton, who came into office after the end of the Cold War but rejected suggestions that he authorize an American truth commission to investigate U.S. complicity in the era's crimes and separate fact from fiction, as was done in Argentina, South Africa and other countries. Only late in his eight-presidency did Clinton agree to declassify documents for use by a Guatemaian truth commission examining three decades of political violence that had torn that Central American country apart and claimed some 200,000 lives. But the worst of the Guatemaian violence--like the bloodletting in El Salvador, Nicaragua and to a lesser extent Honduras--came after the election of Reagan in November 1980. That outcome touched off celebration in the walled-off, well-to-do neighborhoods across Central America. After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the region's rich and powerful were thrilled to have someone in the White House who understood their problems and would let them do the needed dirty work. Once in office, Reagan and his administration swung into action, deflecting condemnation of Salvadoran security forces for the rape/murders of four American churchwomen as well as playing down the staggerering number of political slayings that left decaying and mutilated corpses on street corners and in trash dumps. Reagan also put the Central Intelligence Agency to work arming and training an army of Nicaraguan exiles to launch raids into northern Nicaragua and destabilize that country's leftist Sandinista government. The contra army soon gained a reputation for rape, torture, murder, drug trafficking and terrorism. THE GUATEMALAN GENOCIDE: Reagan also chipped away at an arms embargo imposed on Guatemala by Carter who was offended by its ghastly human rights record. A fundamental plan of Reagan's strategy was to silence criticism of the atrocities whether the accusations were coming from the news media, human rights groups or the U.S. intelligence community. In April 1981, for instance, a secret CIA cable described a Guatemalan army massacre of peasants at Cocob, near Nebvaj in the Ixil Indian territory. On April 17, 1981, government troops attacked the area, which was believed to support leftist guerrillas, the cable said. According to a CIA source, "the social population appeared to fully support the guerrillas" and "the soldiers were forced to fire at anything that moved." The CIA cable added that "the Guatemalan authorities admitted that "many civilian were killed in Cocob, many of whom undoubtedly were non-combatants." While keeping the CIA account secret, Reagan permitted Guatemala's army to buy $3.2 million in military trucks and jeeps in June 1981. Confident of Reagan's sympathies, the Guatemalan government continued its political repression without apology. According to a State Department cable on Oct. 5, 1981, Guatemalan leaders met with Reagan's roving ambassador, retired Gen. Vernon Walters, and left no doubt about their plans, Guatemala's military dictator, Gen. Fernado Romeo Lucas Garcia, "made clear that his government will continue as before--that the repression will continue," the cable said. Human rights groups saw the same picture. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission released a report on Oct. 15, 1981 blaming the Guatemalan government for "thousands of illegal executions." But the Reagan administration sought to confuse the American public. A State Department "white paper" in December 1981 blamed the violence on leftist "extremist groups" and their "terrorist methods," inspired and supported by Cuba's Fidel Castro. )JIMMY CARTER, BILL CLINTON, JOHN BOLTON, GEORGE H.W. BUSH,GEORGE W. BUSH(Bill of Rights Under Bush: A Timeline/2001 January: Presidential directive delays indefinitely the the scheduled release of presidential documents (authorized by the Presidential Records Act of 1978) pertaining to the Reagan-Bush administration. Bush and Cheney begin process of radically broadening scope of documents and information which can be deemed classified:FEBUARY" The National Security Agency (NSA) sets up Project Groundbreaker, a domestic call monitoring program infrastructure. Spring: Bush administration order authorizes NSA monitoring of domestic phone and internet traffic. May: US Supreme Court rules that medical necessity is not a permissible defense against federal marijuana statutes. September: In immediate aftermath of 9-11 terror attacks, Department of Justice authorizes detention without charge for any terror suspects. Over one thousand suspects are brought into detention over the next several months. October: Attorney General John Ashcroft announces change in Department of Justice (DOJ) policy. According to the new policy DOJ will impose far more stringent criteria for the granting of Freedom of Information Act requests. September-October: NSA launches massive new database of information on US phone calls. October: The USA Patriot Act becomes law. Among other things the law: makes it a crime for anyone to contribute money or material support for any group on the State Department's Terror Watch List, allows the FBI to monitor and tape conversations between attorneys and clients, allows the FBI to order librarians to turn over information about patron's reading habits, allows the government to conduct surveillance on internet and email use of US citizens without notice. The act also calls for expanded use of National Security Letters (NSLs), which allow the FBI to search telephone, email and financial records of US citizens without a court order, exempts the government from needing to reveal how evidence against suspected terrorists was obtained and authorizes indefinite detention of immigrants at the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities. NJ Superior court judge and civil liberties scholar Anthony Napolitano, author of A Nation of Sheep, has described the law's assault on first and fourth amendment principles as follows,"The Patriot Act's two most principle constitutional errors are an assault on the Fourth Amendment, and on the First. It permits federal agents to write their own search warrants(under the name "national security letters) with no judge having examined evidence and agreed that it's likely that the person or thing the government wants to search will reveal evidence of a crime...Not only that, but the Patriot Act makes it a felony for the recipient of a self -written search warrant to reveal it to anyone. The Patriot Act allows(agents)to serve self-written search warrants on financial institutions, and the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2004 in Orwellian language defines that to include in addition to banks, also delis, bodegas, restaurants, hotels, doctors' offices, lawyers' offices, telecoms, HMOs, hospitals, casinos, jewelry dealers, automobile dealers, boat dealers, and that great financial institution to which we all would repose our fortunes, the post office.NOVEMBER: Executive order limits release of presidential documents. The order gives incumbent presidents the right to veto requests to open any past presidential records and supercedes the congressionally passed law of 1978 mandating release of all presidential records not explicity deemed classified. 2002 Winter: FBI and Department of Defense (DOD), forbidden by law from compiling databases on US citizens, begin contracting with private database firm ChoicePoint to collect, store, search and maintain data. Spring: Secret executive order issued authorizing NSA to wiretap the phones and read emails of US citizens. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) acknowledges it has created both a "No Fly" and a separate "Watch" list of US travelers. MAY: Department of Justice authorizes the FBI to monitor political and religious groups. The new rules permit the FBI to broadly search or monitor the internet for evidence of criminal activity without having any tips or leads that a specific criminal act has been committed. JUNE: Supreme Court upholds the right of school administrators to conduct mandatory drug testing of students without probable cause. NOVEMBER: Homeland Security Act of 2002 establishes separate Department of Homeland Security. Among other things the department will federally coordinate for the first time all local and state law enforcement nationwide and run a Directorate of Information and Analysis with authority to compile comprehensive data on US citizens using public and commercial records including credit card, phone, bank and travel. The department also will be exempt from Freedom of Information Act disclosure requirements. The Homeland Security department's jurisdicton has been widely criticized for being nebulously defined and has extended beyond terrorism into areas including immigration, pornography and drug enforcement. 2003 FEBRUARY: Draft of Domestic Securtiy Enchancement Act (aka Patriot Act 2), a secret document prepared by the Department of Justice is leaked by the Center for Public Integrity. Provisions of the February 7th draft version included: Removal of court-ordered prohibitions against police agencies spying on domestic groups. The FBI would be granted powers to conduct searches and surveillance based on intelligence gathered in foreign countries without first obtaining a court order. Creation of a DNA database of suspected terrorists. Prohibition of any public disclosure of the names of alleged terrorists including those who have been arrested. Exemptions from civil liability for people and businesses who voluntarily turn private information over to the government. Criminalization of the use of encryption to conceal incriminating communications. Automatic denial of bail for persons accused of terrorism-related crimes, reversing the ordinary common law burden of proof principle. All alleged terrorists would be required to demonstrate why they should be released on bail rather than the government being required to demonstrate why they should be held. Expansion of the list of crimes eligible for the death penalty. The United States Environmental Protection Agency would be prevented from releasing "worst case scenario" information to the public about chemical plants. United States citizens whom the government finds to be either members of, or providing material support to, terrorist groups could have their U.S. citizenship revoked and be deported to foreign countries. Although the bill itself has never (yet) been advanced in congress due to public exposure, some of its provisions have become law as parts of other bills. For example The Intelligence Authorizaton Act for Fiscal Year 2004 grants the FBI unprecendented power to obtain records from financial institutions without requiring permission from a judge. Under the law, th FBI does not need to seek a court order to access such records, nor does it need to prove just cause. MARCH: Executive order issued which radically tightens the declassification process of classified government documents, as well as making it easier for government agencies to make and keep infromation classified. The order delayed by three years the release of declassified government documents dating from 1978 or earlier. It also allowed the government to treat all material sent to Americn officials from foreign governments--no matter how routine--as subject to classification, and expanded the ability of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to shield documents from declassification. Finally it gave the vice president the power to classify information. MARCH: In a ruling seen as a victory for the concentration of ownership of intellectual property and an erosion of the public domain, the Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft held that a 20-year extension of the copyright period (from 50 years after the death of the author to 70 years) called for by the Sonny Bono coypright extension not vioate either the Copyright Clause or the First Amendment. APRIL: In Denmore v. Kim, the Supreme Court ruled that even permanent residents could be subject to mandatory detention when facing deportation based on a prior criminal conviction, without any right to an individualized hearing to determine whether they were dangerous or flight risk. FALL: The FBI changes its traditional policy of destroying all data and documents collected on innocent citizens in the course of criminal investigations. This information would, according to the bureau, now be permanently stored. Two years later in late 2005 Executive Order 13388, expanded access to those files for "state, local and tribal governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined. FALL: As authorized by the Patriot Act, the FBI expands the practice of national security letters. NSLs, originally introduced in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, enabled the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents This was extended by the Patriot Act to include permitting clandestine scrutiny of all U.S. residents and visitors whether suspected of terrorism or not. 2004 January: The FBI begins keeping a database of US citizens based on information obtained via NSLs. SPRING: John Ashcroft invokes State Secrets privilege to forbid former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds from testifying in a case brought by families of victims of the 9-11 attacks. Litigation by 9-11 families is subsequently halted. JUNE: Supreme Court upholds Nevada state law allowing police to arrest suspects who refuse to provide identification based on police discetion of "reasonable suspicion." JANUARY: Supreme court rules that police do not need to have probable cause to have drug sniffing dogs examine cars stopped for routine traffic violations. JUNE: Supreme court rules that the federal government can prosecute medical marijuana users even in states which have laws permitting medical marijuana. SUMMER: The Patriot Act, due to expire at the end of 2005, is reauthorized by Congress. WINTER 2005: Senate blocks reauthorization of certain clauses in Patriot Act. 2006(March) Senate passes amended version of Patriot Act, reauthorization, with three basic changes from the original including: recipients of secret court orders to turn over sensitive infromation on individuals linked to terrorism investigations are not allowed to disclose those orders but can challenge the gag order after a year, libraries would not be required to turn over information without the approval of a judge, recipients of an FBI "national security letter"--an investigator's demand fro access to personal of business information--would not have to tell the FBI if they consult a lawyer. New bill also said to extend Congressional oversight over executive department usage guidelines. Shortly after bill is signed George Bush declares oversight rules are not binding.JUNE: Supreme Court rules that evidence obtained in violation of the"knock and announce" rules can still be permitted in court. SEPTEMBER: U.S.Congress and Senate approve the Military Commissions Act, which authorizes torture and strips non-US citizen detainees suspected of terrorist ties of the right of habeas corpus (which includes formal charges, counsel and hearings). It also empowers US presidents at their discretion to declare US citizens as enemy combatants and subject to detention without charge or due process. OCTOBER: John Warner Defense Authorization Act is passed. The act allows a president to declare a public emergency and station US military troops anywhere in America as well as take control of state based national guard units without consent of the governor or other local authorities. The law authorizes presidential deployment of US troops to round up and detain "potential terrorists", "illegal aliens" and "disorderly" citizenry. 2007 MAY: National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51) establishes a new post-disaster plan (with disaster defined as any incident, natural or man-made, resulting in extraordinary mass casualties, damage or disruption) which places the president in charge of all three branches of government, The directive overrides the National Emergencies Act which gives Congress power to determine the duration of a national emergency. JUNE: In "Bong Hits for Jesus" case Supreme Court rules that student free speech rights do not extend to promotion of drug use. JULY: Executive Order 13438: "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stablization Efforts in Iraq, issued. The order asserts the government's power to confiscate the property "of persons determined to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, and act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stablility of Iraq or the Government of Iraq or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistence to the Iraqi people. OCTOBER: The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act passes the House of Representatives 400 to 6 (to be voted on in the Senate in 2008). The act proposes the establishment of a commission composed of members of the House and Senate, Homeland Security and others, to "examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologiclly based violence in the United States" and specifically the role of the internet in fostering and disseminating extremism. According to the bill the term "violent radicalization" means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change, while the term "ideologically-based violence means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs."-------SO I COULD SPIT IN THEIR FACE.
Rolling stones,Neil Young, Prince,Bob Seger,eels, Bob Marley, Interseed, Annie Mac, dub Addict, Machine Dub, Rehabilitation, These kids, Refused, Rise Against, Anti-Flag
College Football, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiam, Bill Maher, the final 4, House
The End of America by Naomi Wolf, The Revolution by Ron Paul, Nemesis by Chalmers Johnson, Day of Deceit by Robert Stinnett, The Politics of War by Walter Karp, Bush Vs the United States of America (a Hypothetical indictment of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Collin Powell for committing fraud against the American Poeple) Anything by Charles Bukowski, A Sport and a Pastime(James Salter) Everything written by Noam Chomsky, Blood Meridian(Cormac McCarthy, Chalmers Johnson(Blowback,The sorrows of Empire), A Fan's Note's(Frederick Exley), anything by Walter Mosley,Calculated Chaos by Butler Shaffer, The Road(Cormac McCathy)Speaking of Liberty by Lew Rockwell, Garet Garrett: Defend America First (Antiwar editorials of the Saturday Evening Post 1939-1942),Salvos Against the New Deal, Ex America(The People's Pottage
Guy Fawkes,Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Noam Chomsky, Charles Bukowski,Buthler D. Shaffer, Lew Rockwell, Albert J. Nock, Frank Chodorov, F. A. Baldy Harper, H.L.Mencken, Garet Garrett,John T. Flynn, Suzanne La Follette Felix Morley,Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, Russell Kirk, Noam Chomsky, F. A. Hayek,Randolph Bourne