[Vision2020] One Lawyer With A Spine, Part 2: Congressional Testimony On Limits Of Executive Power

[Ted Moffett]

Historic, dramatic, fundamental to the survival of the US Constitution and
the Bill of Rights, and worth the price C-Span requests at the URL below.
Maybe more relevant than "The Dark Knight"... Huxley was correct in 1932 in
"Brave New World"... The "feelies" have become more important to the public
than knowing the truth about our government's efforts to control...

Though excerpts are offered on YouTube, I'm not sure this will air again on
C-Span for free... Maybe.  I wish I had recorded.

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=280000-1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDAFozFn4kU&feature=related
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Vincent Bugliosi, lawyer, author and very successful former prosecutor,
testified before the House Judiciary Committee this week, hearing on limits
of executive power, televised on C-Span, media that offers a hope for
democracy continuing in the US after the abuses heaped upon the US
Constitution by the Bush administration are rolled back, if they are rolled
back...

One stunning moment involved Bugliosi holding up copies of US intelligence
community documents involved in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, some
formerly offered to members of the US Congress, that helped to convince them
that they should authorize use of force before the invasion, which as we all
know they did.  Bugliosi offered evidence that in fact there were documented
doubts and dissenting opinions in the US intelligence community, regarding
both whether or not Saddam possessed WMD at that time, and even if so, if
these WMD represented a immanent threat to the national security of the US.
These doubts and dissents were left out of the intelligence assessments
given to the US Congress, as they pondered whether to authorize the use of
force against Iraq.

One member of the judiciary committee (guess from which political party?)
angrily insisted Bugliosi was exposing classified documents... But he was
unsuccessful... Bugliosi calmly insisted that the documents were not
classified.

Assuming Bugliosi's testimony is based on accurate documentation, the often
heard claim that the invasion of Iraq was justified, based on*
inaccurate*intelligence that WMD presented an immanent threat, given
we know there were
no WMD presenting an immanent threat, is *false.*  The intelligence was not,
in whole, *inaccurate.*  Doubts and dissents about WMD, and the threat to
the US from Iraq, within the US intelligence community, were deliberately
left out of critical documents offered to the US Congress, as they pondered
how to vote on authorizing the use of force.

In short, as Bugliosi argues, this was deliberate censorship of the
intelligence offered to the US Congress regarding the WMD threat from Iraq,
to encourage the invasion... An impeachable offence.

Some members of the US Congress (guess from which political party?) were
particularly annoyed by Bugliosi holding up a copy of his most recent book
during his testimony:

http://www.prosecutionofbush.com/

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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