[Vision2020] Bush, et al. before a Grand Jury

[Pat Kraut]

He forgets John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, and varies others who also said the WMD
were there! As well as many Iraqis. What a stupid thing to waste your time
on...he needs to get a life.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <nickgier at adelphia.net>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 10:41 AM
Subject: [Vision2020] Bush, et al. before a Grand Jury


Former Prosecutor Imagines Bush's Judgment Day

William Fisher


NEW YORK, Nov 27 (IPS) - The scene is a U.S. federal grand jury room. There,
impaneled ordinary citizens listen intently as a veteran federal prosecutor
asks them to return an indictment unique in U.S. history.

The charge is conspiracy to defraud the United States. And the defendants
are President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, former Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and former
Secretary of State Colin Powell.

On the first day of grand jury proceedings, the prosecutor addresses the
jurors. "Please remember that you must decide the case based solely on the
evidence that's presented and applicable law, without regard to prejudice or
sympathy. In other words, your politics, and any personal feelings you may
have toward the defendants -- positive or negative -- should have no bearing
on your deliberations."

The prosecutor then passes out the indictment, reminding jurors, "don't
forget your reading glasses..."

The indictment charges that the defendants "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 reckless indifference to their truth or
falsity, and omitting material facts necessary to make their representations
truthful, fair and accurate, while knowing and intending that their false
and fraudulent representations would influence the public and the
deliberations of Congress with authorisation of a preventive war against
Iraq, thereby defeating, obstructing, impairing, and interfering with
Congress' lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs and making
appropriations."

Over the next seven days, the grand jurors evaluate a 64-point case
presented by the prosecutor. They hear compelling supporting testimony from
three agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They battle their way
through thousands of pages of documentation supporting the alleged crime.

Of course, none of this actually happened -- nor is it likely to happen.
Rather, it is the scenario of a new book about a hypothetical case,
presented to a hypothetical grand jury, with hypothetical witnesses.

Only the prosecutor is real. She is Elizabeth de la Vega, a retired
government lawyer with more than 20 years of experience. She served as an
assistant U.S. attorney in Minneapolis, was and a member of the Organised
Crime Strike Force and Branch Chief in San Jose, California.

Her book is titled, simply, "U.S. v. George W. Bush et al". It will be
published in December by Seven Stories Press. Amazon.com is currently taking
orders for the book.

Why did Ms. de la Vega write this book? "The president will not be held
accountable for misrepresenting the prewar intelligence unless and until
Congress conducts hearings similar to the Watergate hearings," she told IPS.
"As yet, however, we seem painfully incapable of reaching that point."

"Although the evidence of wrongdoing is overwhelming, the facts are so
complicated that it's impossible to have a productive debate about them in
the political sphere," she said. "One forum where that's not true is the
courtroom."

Does she believe that her book will lead to making her hypothetical case
real?

She writes, "Consider this my 911 [emergency] call. I'm calling on Democrats
and Republicans to do the right thing... and convince Congress to do the
right thing. I am not talking about bringing people to justice in the
vengeful sense that President Bush employs. I am talking about effecting
justice... holding out highest government officials accountable for... a
criminal betrayal of trust that is strikingly similar to, yet far worse,
than the fraud committed by Enron's top officials."

She told IPS, "Many of the victims of the president's fraud -- millions of
Iraqis -- have no voice in the United States, but the millions of Americans
who were deceived by the president's fraud do have a voice. We should use
it, loudly and repeatedly, to pressure Congress into holding the president,
the vice president and their top-level aides accountable for tricking the
nation into war."

The indictment takes jurors from the prewar period and the "regime change"
influence of the neoconservative group, Project for the New American
Century, to the attacks of 9/11, the formation of the shadowy Iraq Group
inside the White House, and the preparation of war plans beginning in
September 2001.

It moves from the distortion of intelligence information regarding Iraq's
WMD capabilities and programmes and President Bush's strategy sessions with
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to actions designed to end the United
Nations inspections, the abandonment of multilateral diplomacy, Colin
Powell's deeply flawed presentation to the U.N. Security Council, and
finally Congressional authorisation of the use of force.

It sets out 19 "Overt Acts" allegedly committed by the defendants to
"market" the need for preemptive invasion -- based largely on their public
statements via the media in which, among other things, administration
officials professed absolute certainty about Saddam Hussein's WMDs, ties
between Iraq and al Qaeda, the use of aluminum tubes to process uranium, to
the warnings from then-National Security Advisor Rice and Vice President
Cheney that the smoking gun could be "in the form of a mushroom cloud".

Some of De la Vega's readers may be disappointed that we never learn about
the decision of the grand jury. But that's one of the points of the book -- 
it's the reader who is sitting on the jury.

This slender book is a fascinating, suspenseful, fact-based read. It is a
volume that should be read by all those who seek truth and clarity -- 
especially those who returned to Congress after Nov. 7. (FIN/2006)

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