One Utah

The House of Representatives usually takes Fridays off, but the leadership considers the impeachment of President George W. Bush to be such a high priority that the Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing is scheduled for Friday, July 25. /snark

Except that Chairman John Conyers isn’t calling it an impeachment hearing, despite the fact that this hearing is the result of Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s H.R. 1345 being referred to the Judiciary Committee in a House vote last week, and H.R. 1345 is actually an article of impeachment. Instead, it was first billed as “Hearing on the Imperial Presidency of George W. Bush” and is now on the calendar as “Hearing on Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations.”

This hearing is supposed to be about this article of impeachment: “Deceiving Congress with fabricated threats of Iraq WMDs to fraudulently obtain support for an Authorization of the Use of Military Force against Iraq.” No witness list has been published yet, however the Salt Lake Tribune tells us that former Mayor Rocky Anderson has been invited to testify. I don’t want to complain about Rocky, he’s a good attorney and knows how to lay out a case for the jury, but what does he know first-hand?

Secretary of State Colin Powell telling the UN Security Council about alleged Iraqi WMDs

There are better witnesses available, with first-hand information to offer the committee. I have a few suggestions, you can add your ideas in the comments…

1. George Tenet was the Director of Central Intelligence and headed the CIA in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. On Sept. 18, 2002, Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.

2. Colin Powell was the Secretary of State, and presented the Bush administration’s argument about Iraq’s alleged WMDs to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003. Powell now calls the UN presentation the worst moment of his career. All of the so-called evidence in the presentation later proved to be misleading or entirely fabricated.

3. Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA covert operations in Europe. According to Drumheller, the CIA, with the help of a friendly intelligence service, recruited Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri in Europe during the late summer of 2002. Sabri told the CIA in September that Saddam had no major active weapons of mass destruction programs.

4. Some members of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), the committee responsible for putting out the Bush administration’s arguments for invading Iraq. It was Michael Gerson, working with WHIG, who coined the phrase, “the smoking gun could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” WHIG included:

Andrew Card, White House Chief of Staff and head of the WHIG
Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bush
Karen Hughes, counselor to President Bush
Mary Matalin, political strategist on the staff of Vice President Cheney
James R. Wilkinson, Deputy National Security Advisor for Communications
Nicholas E. Calio, Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs
Condoleezza Rice, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor)
Stephen Hadley, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor (Hadley took the blame for President Bush’s false claim about Iraqi uranium in the January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address)
I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney and Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs
Michael Gerson, President Bush’s chief speechwriter
Rendon Group, a public relations firm headed by John Rendon
Scott McClellan, White House Deputy Press Secretary

5. Scott Ritter, United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Ritter publicly argued that Iraq possessed no significant weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

UPDATE: Ralph Nader sent a letter to Rep. Conyers to complain about not being invited to testify. The letter mentions that Friday’s witness list includes Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Presidential candidate Bob Barr, Bruce Fein and John Dean in addition to Rocky Anderson. Kucinich has hinted that an “unidentified government official of a U.S. ally” may be testifying.

This entry was posted Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Condolezza Rice, Disaster, George W. Bush, Impeachment, Iraq, National Politics, Proof Bush Lied, Rocky Anderson, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.