Bring It On – Moon of Alabama

June 16, 2005

Bring It On

Rep. John Conyers just finished today’s ‘hearing’ on the Downing Street Memo. Thanks to bloggers the memo now has gotten some serious traction in the U.S. too.

You will read the details and takes on that ‘hearing’ in tomorrows papers and I am not eloquent enough in English to give a decent short take of the C-SPAN stream, but some remarks may be allowed:

There were some 10 cameras in the room of that ‘hearing’, which was not an official Congress Hearing, but a pure Dem show in some basement room.

There were some 30 to 50 Dem representatives showing up over time and there was one witness (next to other good ones), John Bonifaz, that really got my attention.

Bonifaz, a lawyer, did lay out the reasoning and constitutional law for the impeachment of GWB, and to me it was a consistent and very reasonable line of thought he presented.

His line also has the undisregardable ability to let any Dem and Repub off the hock, even if they did vote for the war. Imagine, these poor honest folks are honestly shocked to learn they have been deceived by the President of the U.S. of A.!

Bonifaz reasoning: Bush officially lied to Congress when he sent a letter, demanded by law, to Congress, concluding that Iraq was an immediate security threat to the US. Such a lie results in a constitutional demand for impeachment. The Downing Streets Memos do proof on official paper that Bush’s letter was a lie. Thus Bush has to be impeached.

Conyers and his backers strategy is longer term. Before the 2006 election and a win of at least the House or the Senate majority there is no chance of any impeachment attempt. But with today’s hearing that process was started anyway and it will be kept up for the next 18 month at least. It may even be a center theme of the 2006 election.

The media is interested and has started to recognize some cadaver smell (compare the tone of the gaggle a year ago and now).

Such smell always sells. So they will jump onto that wagon – if not now, then tomorrow.

I see some hope of this to get some traction and -maybe- lead to some serious review about who started the slaughter why, and how it was engineered.

(A sidenote: A point in today’s hearing that will get lost in the 200 word AP, AFP or Reuters take, but is an important question. Rep. Kaptur did hint to National Guard combat engineering troops, definitely needed for an Iraq invasion, being put on unusual training schedules and exercises far, far before the time of an official war decision. That might well be a major point of future evaluations and a genuine American smoking gun – unlike a British memo.)

Posted by b on June 16, 2005 at 22:52 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Let the truth be proclaimed. Let the lions roar. Let the journalists broadcast the details of these finest hours of government. Let the vision of our forefathers be honored, in a government that holds its leaders accountable. These are historic times. Let the truth set us free.

Posted by: patience | Jun 16 2005 23:27 utc | 1

kudos to the San Francisco Gate and the AP
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/06/16/national/w153112D91.DTL

Posted by: patience | Jun 16 2005 23:30 utc | 2

A genuinely reluctant prep for a war that one genuinely seeks to avoid should look exactly like a secret decision to go to work falsely marketed as a reluctant, haven’t decided yet, prep.
From a different angle on the proof problem, as Mr. Wigmore is said to have said, a brick is not a wall.

Posted by: razor | Jun 16 2005 23:37 utc | 3

Posted this on a other thread, but it better belongs here.
Palast for Conyers: The OTHER ‘ Memos’ from Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue

Posted by: Fran | Jun 16 2005 23:39 utc | 4

Good! good! The last time that the US found itself on the wrong end of an unpopular war the dems then were also slower than the rest of the community to speak out.
While things are moving along let’s keep at the back of our minds that we shouldn’t idly let this parallel continue. I mean if it ends this war great but wouldn’t be better if as well as doing that we could try to ensure the same thing won’t happen in another thirty years.
Bernhard’s link to the John Bonifaz bio strangely depresses me. This certainly appears to be just another dem hack in training. He has got himself hard wired into the old boys network so it is difficult to believe he can have much investment in real change.
I long for the day when people have anough faith in themselves and their fellow humans that they stop looking to ‘leaders’. The ultimate irony of ‘leadership’ is that anyone who applies for the job has deemed themself unsuitable.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 16 2005 23:49 utc | 5

All your observations are welcome, especially since I fear it is likely we really won’t be able to find much about this hearing in our newspapers tomorrow…
Regarding your last point, it was more than just unusual training exercises that were going on long before the war was made “official.” We were actually bombing identified targets such as communcations centers and air defense systems, using the fig leaf of the “no fly zone” runs. Sorry I am not confident about how to link to this story, but you can go to http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm
and look at the article by Paul Rogat Loeb, “More Damning than Downing Street.”

Posted by: mismn | Jun 17 2005 0:07 utc | 6

This should link to mismn’s pointer

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 17 2005 0:17 utc | 7

This should link to mismn’s pointer

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 17 2005 0:18 utc | 8

Ooops now I know how those others have double posted. Bernhard’s protection against someone flooding the blog comes up stating there will be a pause before normal transmission then after one waits and then hits post again the damned thing is there twice.
Apologies to all esp those who I had previously considered to be even more technically incompetent than myself.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 17 2005 0:24 utc | 9

Yes, both Kaptor’s point about the possible deployment of troops prior to the invasion is important not to overlook, and also the female former ambassador’s statement (I don’t recall her name, but she resigned just prior to the invasion) about the bombing of iraq starting in the summer of 2002 — unprovoked hostilities prior to congressional authorization, also an impeachable offence.
Conyers is a hero to me.

Posted by: semper fubar | Jun 17 2005 1:08 utc | 10

On public television NewsHour tonight, Margeret Warner, interviewing Ray McGovern and Reuel Gerecht about DSM, begins by asking McGovern something like “OK, make your case, why should we care?” Very hostile. Then she defers to Gerecht some leading question, and he says: “Silberman-Robb addresses all these concerns…”
Well, besides proving why the death of PBS is a welcome event, the “meme” about the Robb report will no doubt be repeated by war apologists, but nevermind the investigation never addressed the intel stovepiping issue. Here’s the Report. For proof how disingenuous Gerecht is about the merits of the Report to disprove DSM, just do a wordsearch in the pdf: “Office of Special Plans.” You’ll be unsurprised to find no references. But, you know, “Phase II” of the investigations are on the way, eh, Mr. Roberts?
Oh well. Nothing will come of this. Nothing.
James Madison in private communication to Jefferson: “Belief in Democracy by the plebeians will assure our pleasant sleep…”

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 17 2005 1:11 utc | 11

If Warner and the PBS newly sycophants can keep the lid on this they are sadly mistken. They can keep yapping into the empty camera’s for as long as they want, no one is watching anymore.
PBS gained its reputation by broadcasting the NIXON impeachment hearings. Bush’s appointeee can try to shy from this duty but at the cost to themselves personally. The network effect of awareness can not be stopped. And the reality is that the truth is always sells more papers. The bill has come due and must be paid.

Posted by: patience | Jun 17 2005 1:24 utc | 12

Given Nixon and Bush II, perhaps (if it survives), the American Republic should do away with the office of President. A very nasty piece of work.

Posted by: Bollox Ref | Jun 17 2005 1:48 utc | 13

The truth always sells more papers?

Posted by: ralphbon | Jun 17 2005 1:48 utc | 14

LOL ralph,
So do those do more than stair back at the supermarket check out lines?
Aren’t the very racks they stand on and what goes in them highly controlled, under market? These papers you reference, not quite the same market as say the LA Times, or the Wall Street Journal.
And aren’t they just another arm of the same drudge/rush propaganda machine. Truth does sell, because it doesn’t have to be marketed.

Posted by: patience | Jun 17 2005 1:54 utc | 15

I’m watching a replay of the Conyers hearing…come onto it late. One of the reps just mentioned Spider’s Web, the book by former award-winning Financial Times reporter that goes back into the history of arming Saddam, etc. (it’s out-of-print, as far as I know. I luckily found a copy where I live, but you can probably find it via ABEbooks.)
And 11 votes, committee meetings called…obvious attempts by Republicans to disrupt the hearings.
I think it’s on c-span 2 later tonight, also. I want to tape it.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jun 17 2005 2:21 utc | 16

FWIW, I think a lot of people are focusing on the wrong nuggets from the DSM. Bush & Co can deny their way into a stalemate on the “fixed around the policy” line, and they can wiggle their way around the lines concerning the perceived inevitability of war. They can claim that they didn’t regard the war as inevitable and were just prudently preparing against that unwanted contingency. They’ll be lying, but what’s that to them?
What the Bush crowd undeniably, and by rights impeachably, was lying about was the certainty of the presence of WMD. A catalog of these lies was helpfully prepared by Billmon in 2003.
Cheney, August 2002: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
Bush, March 2003: “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”
Rumsfeld, March 2003: “We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
In fact, there was plenty of doubt, and they knew it. It was expressed within the US government (eg, from miltary and State Dept experts regarding the aluminum tubes and by the CIA regarding the Niger yellowcake). And thanks to the DSM, we now know that Jack Straw and British intelligence considered the WMD case “thin.” That’s the line that adds unequivocal, high-calibre (albeit many-times redundant) evidence that Bushco were lying about certainty.
There was plenty of doubt about Iraq’s WMD, and Bush et al knowingly lied to Congress and the American people in claiming otherwise. We’ve got them dead to rights on this point, and I don’t understand why Conyers and the other good guys ‘n’ gals aren’t beating this drum continuously.

Posted by: ralphbon | Jun 17 2005 3:00 utc | 17

ralphbon
Well, doubt will be used by the administration in any defense of itself. Uncertainty is a virtue. “we did, after all, the right thing, despite doubts….” How touchingly human.
Also, your post demonstrates what now sadly passes as a demonstration of monstrously labyrinthine deceit. It’s too complicated, and therefore, boring.
Nah. This goes nowhere (even w/ domestic document leaks) except to record which democrats are on the right side of history.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 17 2005 3:17 utc | 18

This is the Age of the Redneck, in which ignorance is greatness, and lying is excusable when done to disarm the sissiness of intellectuals.
Every virtue of the Enlightenment is now false.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 17 2005 3:23 utc | 19

Just came over after reading Billmon’s Getting Traction. I didn’t see the hearing/forum today, so I can’t comment on the production values, but I also think the timing wasn’t that great. Mainly because they had the hearing too late in the day to get on today’s The Daily Show and there isn’t another new one until Monday which, even if it covers the DSM, will likely cover another aspect by that point. Something to consider when trying to get the word out, I’d say, as TDS is one of the few voices of reason in the corporate media.

Posted by: Planet B | Jun 17 2005 3:27 utc | 20

Fredric Jameson:

late capitalism has all but succeeded eliminating the final loopholes of nature and the Unconscious, of subversion and the aesthetic, of individual and collective praxis alike, and, with a final fillip, in eliminating any memory trace of what thereby no longer existed in the henceforth postmodern landscape.–from Late Marxism

Adorno, Situationists, et al. might be right. What to do?

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 17 2005 3:29 utc | 21

Slothrop wrote:
Nah. This goes nowhere (even w/ domestic document leaks) except to record which democrats are on the right side of history.
If it were up solely to the Americans, I’d agree, but there’s so much co-ordination w/the Brits that it’ll fly ‘cuz they won’t let it drop. Look what just came out – Brits admit US used Napalm in Iraq: US lied to Britain over use of napalm in Iraq war
American officials lied to British ministers over the use of “internationally reviled” napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.
Yesterday’s disclosure led to calls by MPs for a full statement to the Commons and opened ministers to allegations that they held back the facts until after the general election.
Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.
But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. “The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you,” he told Mr Cohen. “I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position.”
They may not be impeached, but the chance of Cheney being Repug nominee next time goes to zero. Further, with more stuff coming out all the time, it puts Repugs increasingly on the defensive, making it Extremely Difficult for them to get anymore of their radical agenda through. They’re not on top any more, and they’re not in control. Their power was intimidation. That’s going fast.

Posted by: jj | Jun 17 2005 5:10 utc | 22

slothrop @ June 16, 2005 09:11 PM;
Well, besides proving why the death of PBS is a welcome event, the “meme” about the Robb report will no doubt be repeated by war apologists, but nevermind the investigation never addressed the intel stovepiping issue. Here’s the Report. For proof how disingenuous Gerecht is about the merits of the Report to disprove DSM, just do a wordsearch in the pdf: “Office of Special Plans.” You’ll be unsurprised to find no references. But, you know, “Phase II” of the investigations are on the way, eh, Mr. Roberts?
McGovern gave a very forceful/emotional response to this at the hearings, stating repub claims…”all this has been investigated” are demonstrably false. He mentioned Robb report, Roberts’ backtracking on promise for a post election investigation into white house/pentagon use of intel… he was thorough and persuasive IMO.
Personally, I was impacted by McGovern’s accessment that CIA intel folks had gone soft/become yes men. He said that “in his day”, these people would have walked out in protest before swallowing the company line. He also said if Bolton is confirmed, many who remain will exit (a reference to Bolton’s liberal interpretations of intel).
After seeing McGovern entirely ignored for 3+ yrs by US MSM, I’m happy to see him get a day in the sun…. he’s got integrity, and he’s really put his ass on the line as well.
Bonifaz made the point as well, also emphaticaly.
IMO Roberts is among most spineless Senators in memory… a cowering brown nosed coward.
I agree w/Bernhard re Bonifaz’s testimony: he was articlulate, informed, and stated his case well. I thought he had significant impact. I also sense/agree… some hope of this to get some traction and -maybe- lead to some serious review about who started the slaughter why, and how it was engineered. But I’ve had such hope before, so I won’t count my chickenhawks before they’re hatched^^^
I guess it’s a good thing Conyers heeded Billmon’s advice and kept Howard in the back room. 🙂

Posted by: JDMcKay | Jun 17 2005 5:36 utc | 23

New thread up on subject, but it’s more than inappropriate to post this on a thread in which Billmon ridicules the Dems. by referring to them as females in different form. OK, we get the point, you despise females. Enough said. Join Kos.
Anyway, on the subject of females w/Courage & Insight, Karen Kwiatkowski has a new post on Lew Rockwell. Clearly, she hasn’t retired solely to the well-earned joys of her horse farm. She nails the MSM & says we should learn from the Iraqi resistance. (Will this be posted on militaryweek.com??)
A warped political-media borg warning us that resistance is futile.
The mass state, while obscenely expensive, dangerous and even ridiculous, is the present reality of the United States. Imminent federal biometric ID cards courtesy of the REAL ID Act are just one more symbol of this ongoing massification and American totalitarianism. The Congress won’t impeach – to impeach its heart, its hands, or its head is to commit suicide. A pleasant fantasy for the rest of us, but that is all.
Interestingly, the Downing Street Memo is actually being reported by CNN and FOX News. It is being discussed in the major papers. Congress intends to examine it.
Hearing it mentioned on the half hour by CNN Headline News has not dispossessed me of the belief that a state suicide is impossible.
Thus, my gentle thoughts are increasingly turning to murder. Murder of the state. In self-defense, of course!
LRC’s Butler Shaffer, eminently wise as always, points out that “we would be better advised to confront our own existential cowardice. Political leaders amass power only through our moral exhaustion; they are strong only because we have allowed ourselves to become weak.”
To murder the state you need strong citizens who understand their rights, have honed their abilities and stocked their mental and physical arsenal, and have adopted the quiet determination and moral confidence that often appears as fearlessness, but is not.
We might take a lesson from the growing Iraqi insurgency and the response of that nation nearly destroyed by our pretext-laden invasion and the American neo-Jacobin possession of that country… .
Link
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Does anyone think it’s Significant that DSMs are leaking via a Rupie Rag rather than via Guardian or Independent? Could he actually have realized how dangerous this admin is? If so, watch out… as FAUX goes, so goes Cheney-Bu$hCo.

Posted by: jj | Jun 17 2005 6:27 utc | 24

jj @ June 17, 2005 02:27AM:
TextDoes anyone think it’s Significant that DSMs are leaking via a Rupie Rag rather than via Guardian or Independent? Could he actually have realized how dangerous this admin is? If so, watch out… as FAUX goes, so goes Cheney-Bu$hCo.
Probably not significant, as the reporter was at the Independent when most of the memos were leaked to him and moved over to the London Times recently. Plus the Times is not a typical Murdoch rag.

Posted by: McGee | Jun 18 2005 5:54 utc | 25

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