Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Please recommend that private citizen George W. Bush be PROSECUTED FOR MURDER.

I'm not just talking about clicking the recommend icon at the end of this post. While I would certainly appreciate the exposure on the greatest page, I'm talking about a recommendation to people in a position of power who are capable of pursuing justice against an invasion that should never have occurred. That means writing a letter to the US Attorney General, any of the 50 state Attorney Generals or any of the 2,700 District Attorneys and recommending that they act as famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has advocated by charging George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice with the crime of murder.

I've written earlier about my experience meeting Vincent Bugliosi http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4816435 and his reasons for why and methods for how to prosecute Bush, Cheney and Rice for murder in regard to the 4,000+ American troops killed in Iraq. I reference this in my letter to Jerry Brown, the Attorney General of my current state of residence, California. This is a rough draft of the letter I intend to mail this week:


Dear Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr.,

On January 10, 2009, I attended a book signing and lecture by famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi at the North Hollywood Public Library. There to promote his most recent book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, Bugliosi spelled out the reasons why and the methods how George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice should be prosecuted for murder regarding the deaths of over 4,000 American troops in Iraq. Such a prosecution could be undertaken by the Attorney General of the United States, any of the 50 State Attorney Generals, or any of the 2,700 District Attorneys in the United States.

During his talk with a gathering of about 100 people, Bugliosi stated that he had spoken over the phone with you personally regarding his desire that you exercise the power you hold as Attorney General of the state of California to initiate such a prosecution. He mentioned that you asked him why he felt the charge of murder would be applicable in regard to the war in Iraq. Bugliosi said that he proceeded to explain the details of why such a serious charge is warranted against Bush, Cheney and Rice. While he indicated that you listened to everything he had to say, to this date you have not filed charges.

I would like to take this opportunity to urge you to take the initiative to file the charge of murder against Bush, Cheney and Rice. Remember they are now private citizens, there is no reason to wait for Congress to investigate and hold impeachment hearings. You have the power and since their deliberate fabrications to provoke an invasion of Iraq has resulted in the deaths of over 300 Californians, more than any other state, you have the moral obligation to lead the way and initiate the prosecution of these former officials for the crime of murder. I hope you still have your copy of Vincent Bugliosi's The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. While I encourage you to carefully read the book in its entirety, I specifically would like to single out the White Paper, the unclassified version of the NIE report issued by the CIA to Congress and the American public on October 4, 2002, as smoking gun proof that Bush, Cheney and Rice lied about the threat Saddam Hussein posed to this country, and thus are legally accountable for the murder of the 4,000+ American troops sent to die for their lies. Even if you just read pages 110-116 of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, you will understand how the White Paper omitted information and even inserted words not written in the original NIE report. Rather than summarize the NIE report truthfully, the White Paper deliberately distorted its conclusion that Saddam Hussein did not pose an imminent threat. Bush, Cheney and Rice are fully responsible for these distortions.

Please stay in touch with Vincent Bugliosi and work with him to manage an effective prosecution against Bush, Cheney and Rice for the crime of murder. While the mainstream media chatter might try to paint such a prosecution as vengeance, know that you serve the cause of justice. There can be no greater damage, no greater miscarriage of justice than to let the crime of murder go unpunished, especially when the conspiracy is orchestrated at the highest levels of our government. To do so would be to acquiesce, to affirm through silence that someone can be above the law. Please stand up against this injustice.

Sincerely,

Robert Paulsen



For anyone else on DU living in California who would like to write a similar letter, here is the mailing address:

Attorney General's Office
California Department of Justice
Attn: Public Inquiry Unit
P.O. Box 944255
Sacramento, CA 94244-2550


Pending official confirmation, I also have written a letter to send to United States Attorney General Eric Holder. I shall not be sending that letter now, the current Acting Attorney General is Mark Filip. But upon confirmation, here is a rough draft of my letter that I will mail to the new Attorney General:



Dear Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.,

Congratulations on your recent confirmation. As the chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government, I believe that you must hold true to the philosophical adage, "No Man is Above the Law". That includes the entire Executive Branch and everyone who has served under their command. Now that the Bush administration is no longer in office, the necessity of a lengthy investigation to determine whether anyone serving in the former administration committed a crime or misdemeanor that might initiate impeachment proceedings no longer exists. The necessity no longer exists because all former members of the Bush administration are now private citizens. A thorough criminal investigation to determine all the facts regarding criminal acts by former Bush administration members should be undertaken not for purposes of impeachment or censure in the Legislative Branch, but for indictment and prosecution in a court of law. In this pursuit of justice, I recommend that you arrest George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice on the charge of murder.

Murder? Perhaps you find the severity of the charge too shocking to consider. Is this the radical charge of vengeance from an ultra-liberal, what Bush himself refers to as "the angry Left"? Hardly. It represents the highly considered and esteemed legal opinion of famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. Always careful in his approach and moderate in his outlook, Bugliosi has used the same legal acumen that enabled him to successfully prosecute 105 out of 106 felony jury trials to write a book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. This book details how, by deliberately lying to Congress and the American public, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice are in fact guilty of the murder of over 4,000 American troops for which they can be held legally accountable, as well as the murder of anywhere from 100,000 to over 1 million Iraqi citizens, for which they may never face accountability in a court of law.

While Bugliosi does not discount the possibility that with a thorough criminal investigation and subsequent trial, additional charges of murder could be filed against other administration members such as George Tenet or Donald Rumsfeld, there already is enough existing evidence to arrest Bush, Cheney and Rice on the charge of murder. While I encourage you to carefully read the book in its entirety, I specifically would like to single out the White Paper, the unclassified version of the NIE report issued by the CIA to Congress and the American public on October 4, 2002, as smoking gun proof that Bush, Cheney and Rice lied about the threat Saddam Hussein posed to this country, and thus are legally accountable for the murder of the 4,000+ American troops sent to die for their lies. Even if you just read pages 110-116 of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, you will understand how the White Paper omitted information and even inserted words not written in the original NIE report. Rather than summarize the NIE report truthfully, the White Paper deliberately distorted its conclusion that Saddam Hussein did not pose an imminent threat. Bush, Cheney and Rice are fully responsible for these distortions.

Please read The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, contact Vincent Bugliosi and initiate an effective prosecution against Bush, Cheney and Rice for the crime of murder. While the mainstream media chatter might try to paint such a prosecution as vengeance, know that you serve the cause of justice. There can be no greater damage, no greater miscarriage of justice than to let the crime of murder go unpunished, especially when the conspiracy is orchestrated at the highest levels of our government. To do so would be to acquiesce, to affirm through silence that someone can be above the law. Please stand up against this injustice.

Sincerely,

Robert Paulsen

Here is the mailing address:

U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001


If you have any suggestions for amending these letters, I welcome your advice. But I encourage everyone here who believes that prosecuting Bush, Cheney and Rice for murder serves the pursuit of justice to write your own letters. Let those who represent justice in this country know where you stand!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4880790

Edited to add: Please check out http://www.prosecutegeorgebush.com/index.htm and find out how you can help make this possibility a reality.

Monday, January 12, 2009

An afternoon with Vincent "Keep Fighting" Bugliosi.

This past Saturday, January 10, I went to see Vincent Bugliosi at the North Hollywood Library. Arriving 10 minutes before the event, it was great to see him already there, signing autographs and chatting with people in line. His scheduled talk at 2pm would deal with the subject of his latest book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder, but he had no problem answering the questions of conspiracy theorists doubting his conclusions that Oswald acted alone. While I may disagree with Bugliosi on this subject, I disagree with a much a higher degree of respect than I would for Gerald Posner or any other kneejerk Warren apologist who deals with conspiracy theories dismissively as opposed to sourced point by point research as others have told me Bugliosi did in Reclaiming History.

There were probably around 100 people gathered for his speech. He spent about 45 minutes speaking about how to prosecute George W. Bush for murder, then spent about an hour and 15 minutes taking questions from the audience. It was definitely a lively, engaged crowd in agreement with his desire to put the Little Shrub behind bars. Not that he has any illusions that the road ahead will be easy. He pointed frequently during his talk to a newspaper clipping of the photo-op with President-Elect Obama with all the living ex-Presidents and Dubya. While Bugliosi has high hopes for Obama and admitted voting for him in November, he doesn't care for his talk of unity in the wake of eight years of criminal behavior if that unity means justice is denied. All of his efforts right now are focused on getting someone in power to file murder charges against Bush, Cheney and Rice. That someone would be incoming Attorney General Eric Holder, any of the 50 State Attorney Generals or any State District Attorney. He doesn't discount the possibility that in the course of trial deliberations, additional murder charges could end up being filed against Rumsfeld, Tenet or others that conspired to lie us into a war that led to the deaths of more than 4,000 Americans. But in the initial stages Bugliosi believes that in regard to Bush, Cheney and Rice there is more than enough evidence to charge them with murder and secure an indictment on the charge. What he is less certain of is whether the case would be allowed to go to trial after indictment. His assumption is that upon indictment, the case would immediately be challenged for it's precedent-setting, and the decision of whether to proceed to trial would be decided by the Supreme Court. Bugliosi stated that there are two Supreme Court justices, Scalia and Thomas, who are "a disgrace to their profession". They have already made clear how they would rule on such a case, he's not so sure how open the remaining seven would be.

In the course of detailing how Bush could be prosecuted for murder, Bugliosi cited a lot of evidence that I'm sure most of us are already familiar with regarding why he should be charged with murder. But there was one piece of evidence that he cited as smoking gun proof that the decision to go to war was not a mistake rooted in faulty intelligence, it was a deliberate lie by Bush to promote a war of aggression. That piece of evidence has been referred to as the White Paper. On October 1, 2002, Bush received a classified NIE report from the CIA which confirmed that Saddam Hussein was not an imminent threat to the United States. Yet on the evening of October 7, even after being briefed by CIA director George Tenet that morning, Bush lied by stating the exact opposite to the American people. Bush later lied to Congress by preparing a declassified version of the NIE, which has become known as the White Paper. The White Paper edited words out of the original NIE that changed the meaning completely making what had not appeared to be an imminent threat seem imminent. There were also instances where words were added to the White Paper that weren't in the original NIE, producing the same adverse effect.

When it came time to ask questions, there was one question in particular that, after extremely extensive research five years ago on the Plame Threads, both H2O Man http://h2oman.blogspot.com/and I were curious to get Bugliosi's perspective on. I asked him what he thought of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame and if he felt Fitzgerald could have gone farther in prosecuting Cheney. Bugliosi said that he was "very disappointed" in the outcome of that investigation. He definitely felt that Fitzgerald could have and should have gone higher up the food chain.

After concluding the Q&A session, Bugliosi received applause from everyone present, then signed autographs for everyone who brought one of his books. (Or bought, the library was selling a number of his books there) As he was signing my copy of The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder, I told him about my American Judas blog and that I posted at Democratic Underground as robertpausen and asked what he thought the number one thing we could do to try to ensure that Bush, Cheney and Rice would be prosecuted for murder. "Keep fighting", he said emphatically. Write to your State Attorney General, write to a US District Attorney, write to Eric Holder. Stand up to the bullies. Bugliosi reiterated an earlier point he made in response to all the questions about what really stands in the way of justice. In spite of the fact that he is an extremely respected former prosecutor with a number of books that reached #1 on the NY Times Best Seller List, the reaction of the mainstream media in regard to The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder has been a virtual blackout. Whereas in the past, he would have no problem upon release of a book getting instant appearances on network morning talk shows and evening cable shows to promote the sale of a new book, his agent was turned down by virtually everyone. Did you see him promote The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder on The Daily Show? Rachel Maddow? Even Countdown with Keith Olbermann did not invite Bugliosi on to promote this important book. Some alternative radio channels, I believe he mentioned Democracy Now, did have him on their show. But MSM? Silence.

Why was everyone so afraid? What is the source of this fear? Bugliosi lays the blame squarely on the right wing. They have taken over the Republican Party. They used to be on the fringe, he mentioned that Eisenhower disdained them (referring to McCarthy no doubt) but now they are in charge of the GOP. The problem is that Bugliosi feels the Democratic Party still hasn't found the appropriate response to such destructive behavior to put them back on the fringe for good. He brought up the question of patriotism as an example. Whenever a right winger in some way questions the patriotism of a Democrat, the typical response is, "No, I'm not. I'm a patriot because..." Bugliosi believes the more appropriate response is, "No, you are not. You're not a patriot because..." Detail exactly how their idiocy destroys the country they claim to love. Whether they have the intelligence to truly comprehend is not the point, others who do have the intelligence will comprehend and the right wing will be on the fringe again.

Before leaving the library, I shook Bugliosi's hand and told him to keep fighting the good fight. He looked me square in the eye and said, "You keep fighting too!" I walked outside beaming with pride. When will I start writing letters demanding George W. Bush be charged with murder? As soon as that helicopter carries him away from the White House eight days from now.