This website, in conjunction with the 72-minute documentary film LEADING TO WAR, details how the Bush administration made its case to the American people for military action against Saddam Hussein’s regime, leading to the Iraq War which began in 2003.
WEBSITE CORE CONTENT
On each page of the main part of the website is a menu of seven topics. These topics analyze the wide-ranging strategies and rhetorical techniques used by the administration in marketing the idea of a war with Iraq, in addition to examining the pre-war claims made by the Bush administration as presented in the film.
The core of the analysis is presented in six topics that provide a comprehensive examination of how the Bush administration led the United States to war:
A Mechanism for War – how the Bush administration constructed an elaborate mechanism to propel the nation to war
Rhetoric and Spin – the skillful manipulation of language and facts
War Through Rose-Colored Glasses – the assurances made to the public about how the war would unfold
Abuses and Misuses of Intelligence – the cherry-picking and misrepresenting of intelligence
A Mythic Reality – the creation and promotion of a ‘mythic reality’ in order to persuade the public to support a war against Iraq
Items of Note – other points of interest
The seventh topic explores the statements made in the epilogue of the film:
Bush Administration Claims vs. The Facts directly examines the important pre-war claims made by the administration: that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq sought to acquire yellowcake uranium from Africa, that there was a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and others.
Relying on numerous government and press reports, this section shows how President Bush and his administration publicly presented intelligence as reliable and solid – even though behind the scenes they knew this intelligence to be disputed, or even false.
The final part of this section, The Costs of War, provides a partial summary of the tragic toll of the Iraq War: in terms of lives lost, the mentally and physically injured, the millions of refugees, and the financial cost.
THE FILM
You can watch LEADING TO WAR for free on this website, via streaming or download, or you can purchase a DVD of the film, which can be shipped anywhere in the world. The film is subtitled in 19 languages in order to reach a wide audience, and is formatted to play on any DVD player (Region 0).
The film consists entirely of archival news footage – without commentary, without voice-over – beginning with President Bush’s State of the Union address in January, 2002 (the “axis of evil” speech), and continuing up to the announcement of formal U.S. military action in Iraq on March 19, 2003. Covering these 14 months, the film presents selected interviews, speeches, and press conferences given by President Bush and his administration.
VERIFICATION OF SOURCES
To verify the facts presented on this website, most of the original information sources are either linked externally or have been copied into a file which is accessible by clicking ” [link to source] ” which appears next to all cited text.
In addition, the website includes the original and unedited source news transcripts from which the film material was chosen – so that the words spoken can be viewed in their broader context.
DOWNLOADS
The content of each web page is downloadable as a PDF. A link “[link to a PDF of this page]” can be found at the bottom of most pages of this web site. To download the PDF, right-click on the link and choose “Save Target As…” to begin downloading the file to your computer.
Judge Napolitano in C-SPAN with Ralph Nader – Part 1/6
Judge Napolitano in C-SPAN with Ralph Nader – Part 2/6
Judge Napolitano in C-SPAN with Ralph Nader – Part 3/6
Judge Napolitano in C-SPAN with Ralph Nader – Part 4/6
Judge Napolitano in C-SPAN with Ralph Nader – Part 5/6
Judge Napolitano in C-SPAN with Ralph Nader – Part 6/6
Bush Should Have Been Indicted
By David Edwards
Fox News’ senior judicial analyst made some surprising remarks Saturday that may go against the grain at his conservative network.
July 15, 2010 “Rawstory” — In a interview with Ralph Nader on C-SPAN’s Book TV to promote his book Lies the Government Told You, Judge Andrew Napolitano said that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should have been indicted for “torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrant.”
The judge believes that it is a fallacy to say that the US treats suspects as innocent until proven guilty. “The government acts as if a defendant is guilty merely on the basis of an accusation,” said Napolitano.
Nader was curious about how this applied to the Bush administration. “What about the more serious violations of habeas corpus,” wondered Nader. “You know after 9/11 Bush rounded up thousands of them, Americans, many of them Muslim Americans or Arabic Americans and they were thrown in jail without charges. They didn’t have lawyers. Some of them were pretty mistreated in New York City. You know they were all released eventually.”
“Well that is so obviously a violation of the natural law, the natural right to be brought before a neutral arbiter within moments of the government taking your freedom away from you,” answered Napolitano.
“So what President Bush did with the suspension of habeas corpus, with the whole concept of Guantanamo Bay, with the whole idea that he could avoid and evade federal laws, treaties, federal judges and the Constitution was blatantly unconstitutional and is some cases criminal,” he continued.
“What should be the sanctions [for Bush and Cheney]?” asked Nader.
“They should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted for torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrant,” said Napolitano.
“I’d like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you’re under oath, lying is not a crime. At least not an indictable crime. It’s a moral crime,” he said.
This isn’t the first time that Napolitano’s comments have veered away from the standard talking points at Fox News. He has predicted that Arizona’s controversial immigration law will be blocked by the court. Napolitano also said Arizona’s governor would “bankrupt the Republican Party” fighting for the law.
8 mars 2010
A man named Splitting the Sky, tried to arrest former President George W. Bush for war crimes. He crossed police lines on one of President Bushs visits to Canada and was arrested. He now faces crim…
A man named Splitting the Sky, tried to arrest former President George W. Bush for war crimes. He crossed police lines on one of President Bushs visits to Canada and was arrested. He now faces criminal charges in court, the trial began today.
Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.
By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank
Last Updated: 8:21AM BST 28 May 2009
Iraq prison abuse: Abu Ghraib abuse photos ‘show rape’
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Barack Obama attempts to block alleged torture photos
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.
The Bush administration’s Torture 13. They authorized it, they decided how to implement it, and they crafted the legal fig leaf to justify it.
By Marcy Wheeler
On April 16, the Obama administration released four memos that were used to authorize torture in interrogations during the Bush administration. When President Obama released the memos, he said, “It is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”
Yet 13 key people in the Bush administration cannot claim they relied on the memos from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel. Some of the 13 manipulated the federal bureaucracy and the legal process to “preauthorize” torture in the days after 9/11. Others helped implement torture, and still others helped write the memos that provided the Bush administration with a legal fig leaf after torture had already begun.
The Torture 13 exploited the federal bureaucracy to establish a torture regime in two ways. First, they based the enhanced interrogation techniques on techniques used in the U.S. military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program. The program — which subjects volunteers from the armed services to simulated hostile capture situations — trains servicemen and -women to withstand coercion well enough to avoid making false confessions if captured. Two retired SERE psychologists contracted with the government to “reverse-engineer” these techniques to use in detainee interrogations.
The torture 13 also abused the legal review process in the Department of Justice in order to provide permission for torture. The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) played a crucial role. OLC provides interpretations on how laws apply to the executive branch. On issues where the law is unclear, like national security, OLC opinions can set the boundary for “legal” activity for executive branch employees.
As Jack Goldsmith, OLC head from 2003 to 2004, explains it, “One consequence of [OLC’s] power to interpret the law is the power to bestow on government officials what is effectively an advance pardon for actions taken at the edges of vague criminal statutes.”
OLC has the power, Goldsmith continues, to dispense “get-out-of-jail-free cards.” The Torture 13 exploited this power by collaborating on a series of OLC opinions that repeatedly gave U.S. officials such a “get-out-of-jail-free card” for torturing.
Between 9/11 and the end of 2002, the Torture 13 decided to torture, then reverse-engineered the techniques, and then crafted the legal cover. Here’s who they are and what they did:
1. Dick Cheney, vice president (2001-2009)
Dick Cheney
On the morning of 9/11, after the evacuation of the White House, Dick Cheney summoned his legal counsel, David Addington, to return to work. The two had worked together for years. In the 1980s, when Cheney was a congressman from Wyoming and Addington a staff attorney to another congressman, Cheney and Addington argued that in Iran-Contra, the president could ignore congressional guidance on foreign policy matters. Between 1989 and 1992, when Dick Cheney was the elder George Bush’s secretary of defense, Addington served as his counsel. He and Cheney saved the only known copies of abusive interrogation technique manuals taught at the School of the Americas. Now, on the morning of 9/11, they worked together to plot an expansive grab of executive power that they claimed was the correct response to the terrorist threat.
Within two weeks, they had gotten a memo asserting almost unlimited power for the president as “the sole organ of the Nation in its foreign relations,” to respond to the terrorist attacks. As part of that expansive view of executive power, Cheney and Addington would argue that domestic and international laws prohibiting torture and abuse could not prevent the president from authorizing harsh treatment of detainees in the war against terror.
I don’t know how else to interpret his obviously self-destructive grandstanding this weekend. But think of the long view for a moment. Here is a former vice-president, who enjoyed unprecedented power for eight long, long years. No veep ever wielded power like he did in the long history of American government. In the months after 9/11, he swept all Congressional resistance away, exerted total executive power, wielded a military and paramilitary apparatus far mightier than all its rivals combined and mightier than any power in history, tapped any phone he wanted, claimed the right to torture any suspect he wanted (and followed through with thousands, from Bagram to Abu Ghraib) and was able to print and borrow money with impunity to finance all of it without a worry in the world. But even after all that, he cannot tolerate a few months of someone else, duly elected, having a chance to govern the country with a decent interval of grace.
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