Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
May 21, 2005
Thank You Mr. Roberts

A distinguished fellow at the Cato Institute, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Insitution, a stint as Wall Street Journal editor and columnist, a position as assistant secretary of the Treasury under Reagan –  this is the quite impressive conservative bio of Paul Craig Roberts.

He writes:

George W. Bush and his gang of neocon warmongers have destroyed America’s reputation. It is likely to stay destroyed, because at this point the only way to restore America’s reputation would be to impeach and convict President Bush for intentionally deceiving Congress and the American people in order to start a war of aggression against a country that posed no threat to the United States.

America can redeem itself only by holding Bush accountable.

Abundant evidence now exists in the public domain to convict George W. Bush of the crime of the century. The secret British government memo (dated July 23, 2002, and available here), leaked to the Sunday Times (which printed it on May 1, 2005), reports that 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. . . . But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. . . . The (United Kingdom) attorney general said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defense, humanitarian intervention or UNSC (U.N. Security Council) authorization. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult.”

This memo is the mother of all smoking guns. Why isn’t Bush in the dock?

Has American democracy failed at home?

Comments

indeed, thanks to an american with the spine to stand up for his country. where have you all been for the past 4 years, and longer ?
first galloway, then this mr. roberts. who will be next ? will there eventually be a flood which will flush the bush regime out in disgrace ? will in the end bush and his neocon friends run for their lives like rats fleeing from a flood ?
i want to see more of the same !

Posted by: name | May 21 2005 20:09 utc | 1

Yep – he is a very conservative guy and I will most certainly not agree with his take on economics, social rights, taxes etc, but I would like to discuss this with him and we will agree to disagree on some points. That is fair and in a democratic others may look and decide – maybe against my opinion.
But he seems to be a grown up and has my respect. Where are the other grown ups?

Posted by: b | May 21 2005 20:19 utc | 2

President’s visit met with protests
….Protests are part of any Presidential visit, but when the protest occurs at a small college with a conservative reputation, those protests are bound to draw a lot of attention…..

Posted by: Nugget | May 22 2005 0:04 utc | 3

I don’t know. Calling for impeachment while the president’s party controls the House is futile; lots of conservative dissent has gone under the bridge and disappeared: they just use the media to discredit them. Everyone moves on to the next media-hyped court drama. What happened to all Poppy Bush’s friends Scowcroft and Stormin Norman etc who initially opposed Bush’s Iraq invasion? I wouldn’t get my hopes up this time either.

Posted by: gylangirl | May 22 2005 2:37 utc | 4

Gylangirl, it is not futile to call for impeachment — especially when conservative voices speak out. That the Republicans control Congress is something they do now — but if the mood of the country should really change, then it is not a garantee that they would after 2006.
When it comes push to shove, congresspeople are most concerned about being sure of getting reelected than anything else. If loyalty to the Bush wing of the party becomes a liability — well, they could desert him.
A bellweather might be this “nuclear option” vote coming up.
In any case, he ought to be impeached — and the more people who say it, large and small, conservative and liberal, the more momentum it carries. If nothing else, the rest of the world might regain some faith in our democracy.
The call for and impeachment of Clinton left Europeans shaking their heads in disbelief — the call to impeach Bush would meet with much approval and European leaders might stop sucking up to him if they thought they could get away with it.

Posted by: BarfHead | May 22 2005 6:29 utc | 5

LOL! You keep dreamin’, BH!
1. The Republican Party will continue to consolidate its power in the House and Senate in ’06 because the Democrats keep alienating their own dwindling base [and refusing to expand it by stealing back the votes of Republican wives and daughters, which they could easily do]. Look for the Democrats to lose more seats and the Republicans to pick up more seats.
2. Even if in the next 2 years the inept Democrats miraculously managed to: secure the voting machines with a verifiable paper trail; rejuvenated and expanded their traditional voting base; and finally organize their precincts; update their outdated phonebank technology; start a mainstream 24 hour TV news station that wouldn’t give the GOP/neocons any more free propaganda; and take back control of the House so that they could start impeachment proceedings, and take back control of the Senate so they could force Bush out of office, the best that would accomplish is a Cheney presidency [shudder].

Posted by: gylangirl | May 23 2005 0:21 utc | 6

Using the League of Women Voter’s Media Contact page, I sent Robert’s piece to the major papers and networks.
Contact Page

Posted by: Steve J. | May 23 2005 5:22 utc | 7

gylangirl,
Are you paid to be so defeatist? I hope you bill in yuan because your greeen backs will be only half as valuable after the next international overstep. Bet you didn’t notice how close we came to losing the first lady these recent hours? Our infallible republican machine is so smart that the minute they step outside their protected bunker they are swarmed by “adoring throngs”. We haven’t seen that many torches and pitchforks since the opening of Shrek!
There are really three parties in Washington right now, the small and select bush toadies, the ever shrinking collective of persons intimidated by the bush gestapo, and those that don’t like to worship the bushes. Do you really think we can get to 2006 without a major politcal, economic, or international disaster? And if you do please tell us how? Because the administration is working real hard to engineer 2 of the above 3 pre-2006-election, with the completely psychotic view that manufactured disasters will allow them to consolidate power faster.
Do you have any idea how many happy pills it takes to keep the spin machine running these days? Let’s not even go into what has to be done to keep the administration’s people from going starkers. The republican machine is out of control. Solid consistent reporting will continue to expose the fragile underpinnings that keep the machine chugging. It took one television interview by Murrow to show the world the true McCarthy, a delusional drunk. Similar consistent reporting will bring down the Cheney-Rove house of cards.
And as a side note: Newsweek’s top people are an embarrassment, they have nothing to apologize for, rather they should be counter punching the administration. If the top people at Newsweek don’t pull up their pants, they will find themselves out on the street pan handling because, baby, “craven don’t sell papers”. Does anybody really think the ditto head crowd will buy more newsweek issues the longer Newsweek’s leaders gibber? Does anybody really think the ditto head crowd would be capable in mass of buying Newsweek copies if Rush ordered them to, every hour on the hour? Talk radio provides cover for staged TV events of small coordinated groups of paid thugs, to simulate the actions of a larger group. Look at every administration backed populous action from Florida 2000 to Saddam statue toppling to Lebanon post assassination, for evidence of this. Talk radio does not organize or facilitate the actions of large groups of people, rather it creates the illusion in the minds of large groups of people that they are actively engaged in a “real world” dynamic, of which their only requirement in “participating” is to sit passively listening, perhaps in an outraged state. The Rove-Cheney Team has no idea how to lead large populations, look at the collossal failures of Venezuela and Mexico, and now Afghanistan and Iraq.
The republicans got large evangel turnouts only because the Dems couldn’t get their homosexual militants under control, and even then the Repubs needed to weigh down the scales in Ohio and Florida to make it come out their way. Militant gay rights activists sacared the shit out of mom and pop moderate, and every state that voted on gay rights handed the militants a well earned punch in the mouth. The irony is that if it had been on the ballot in their “Massachusetts stronghold” they would have been equally defeated there too, take a look at the poll numbers in MA on this. Fortunately for Rove he was able to use some of this unexpected religous zeal to his advantage. This alignment of the planets is not reproducible in 2006, 2008, 2010, or ever again, without democrats actively collaborating.
Daily Kos alone, has a larger day to day audience than Bill O’Reilly. The TV/Radio moguls are playing to ever shrinking audiences, of less and less marketable value. When Voinovich said “I can’t do this.” it was already too late, for Team Bush.
We have learned from Cromwell. Its time to demonstrate to the world that our system works. Impeach the bastard!

Posted by: patience | May 23 2005 6:27 utc | 8

patience, thank you.

Posted by: beq | May 23 2005 13:04 utc | 9

As we watch the Repugs set off the nuclear option, let me remind you that the only way impeachment dreams will become a reality is to replace the Bush lackeys in Congress with representatives who are not beholden to Rove and Co (I am assuming here for the sake of argument that there are thinking and independent Repubs somewhere…). The current members of the federal legislative branch are tied hand and foot to Bush. Until we relieve ourselves of that, impeachment is a fever dream and we expend energy on that that could be better used to bring down ######## like Santorum. Put the steps in order, then execute.

Posted by: moe99 | May 23 2005 13:20 utc | 10

Yes. American democracy appears to have failed at home.

Posted by: Gabby | May 23 2005 13:40 utc | 11

More non-repubs are needed in the long term, but moegg, you under-estimate the immediate power of truly coordinated consistent mass protest.

Posted by: patience | May 23 2005 18:30 utc | 12

Thank-you moe99.
🙂
“Do you really think we can get to 2006 without a major politcal, economic, or international disaster?” –patience
Never said that. All I am saying is the political will to impeach rests upon the majority party, ie Bush’s cowed and toady friends, in the House of Representatives. So yeah, not bloody likely.

Posted by: gylangirl | May 23 2005 18:32 utc | 13

Re truly coordinated and consistent mass protest. Wow. What’s that?

Posted by: gylangirl | May 23 2005 18:37 utc | 14

If you start with a truly coordinated and consistent mass protest I would not choose Bushs impeachment as the first priority. Even if it was succesfull it would only replace Bush with Cheney and I fail to see the gain in that.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | May 24 2005 0:44 utc | 15