Left of Centrist

On May 27, Vincent Bugliosi’s latest book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder” will be released.  Here is some of what Bugliosi has to say:

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There is direct evidence that President George W. Bush did not honorably lead this nation, but deliberately misled it into a war he wanted. Bush and his administration knowingly lied to Congress and to the American public — lies that have cost the lives of more than 4,000 young American soldiers and close to $1 trillion.

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A Monumental Lie

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In his first nationally televised address on the Iraqi crisis on October 7, 2002, six days after receiving the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a classified CIA report, President Bush told millions of Americans the exact opposite of what the CIA was telling him -a monumental lie to the nation and the world.

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On the evening of October 7, 2002, the very latest CIA intelligence was that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the U.S. This same information was delivered to the Bush administration as early as October 1, 2002, in the NIE, including input from the CIA and 15 other U.S. intelligence agencies. In addition, CIA director George Tenet briefed Bush in the Oval Office on the morning of October 7th.

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According to the October 1, 2002 NIE, “Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [chemical and biological warfare] against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war.” The report concluded that Hussein was not planning to use any weapons of mass destruction; further, Hussein would only use weapons of mass destruction he was believed to have if he were first attacked, that is, he would only use them in self-defense.
Preparing its declassified version of the NIE for Congress, which became known as the White Paper, the Bush administration edited the classified NIE document in ways that significantly changed its inference and meaning, making the threat seem imminent and ominous.

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In the original NIE report, members of the U.S. intelligence community vigorously disagreed with the CIA’s bloated and inaccurate conclusions. All such opposing commentary was eliminated from the declassified White Paper prepared for Congress and the American people.

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The Manning Memo

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On January 31, 2003, Bush met in the Oval Office with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In a memo summarizing the meeting discussion, Blair’s chief foreign policy advisor David Manning wrote that Bush and Blair expressed their doubts that any chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons would ever be found in Iraq, and that there was tension between Bush and Blair over finding some justification for the war that would be acceptable to other nations. Bush was so worried about the failure of the UN inspectors to find hard evidence against Hussein that he talked about three possible ways, Manning wrote, to “provoke a confrontation” with Hussein. One way, Bush said, was to fly “U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, [falsely] painted in UN colors. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach” of UN resolutions and that would justify war. Bush was calculating to create a war, not prevent one.

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Denying Blix’s Findings

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Hans Blix, the United Nation’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq, in his March 7, 2003, address to the UN Security Council, said that as of that date, less than 3 weeks before Bush invaded Iraq, that Iraq had capitulated to all demands for professional, no-notice weapons inspections all over Iraq and agreed to increased aerial surveillance by the U.S. over the “no-fly” zones. Iraq had directed the UN inspectors to sites where illicit weapons had been destroyed and had begun to demolish its Al Samoud 2 missiles, as requested by the UN. Blix added that “no evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found” by his inspectors and “no underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found so far.” He said that for his inspectors to absolutely confirm that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) “will not take years, nor weeks, but months.”

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Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief UN nuclear inspector in Iraq and director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the UN Security Council that, “we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.”

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The UN inspectors were making substantial progress and Hussein was giving them unlimited access. Why was Bush in such an incredible rush to go to war?

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Hussein Disarms, so Bush … Goes to War

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When it became clear that the whole purpose of Bush’s prewar campaign — to get Hussein to disarm — was being (or already had been) met, Bush and his people came up with a demand they had never once made before — that Hussein resign and leave Iraq. On March 17, 2003, Bush said in a speech to the nation that, “Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict.” Military conflict — the lives of thousands of young Americans on the line — because Bush trumped up a new line in the sand?

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The Niger Allegation

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One of the most notorious instances of the Bush administration using thoroughly discredited information to frighten the American public was the 16 words in Bush’s January 28, 2003 State of the Union speech: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The Niger allegation was false, and the Bush administration knew it was false.

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Joseph C. Wilson IV, the former ambassador to Iraq, was sent to Niger by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate a supposed memo that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake (a form of lightly processed ore) to Iraq by Niger in the late 1990s. Wilson reported back to the CIA that it was “highly doubtful” such a transaction had ever taken place.

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On March 7, 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei told the UN Security Council that “based on thorough analysis” his agency concluded that the “documents which formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic.” Indeed, author Craig Unger uncovered at least 14 instances prior to the 2003 State of the Union address in which analysts at the CIA, the State Department, or other government agencies that had examined the Niger documents “raised serious doubts about their legitimacy — only to be rebuffed by Bush administration officials who wanted to use them.”

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On October 5 and 6, 2002, the CIA sent memos to the National Security Council, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and to the White House Situation Room stating that the Niger information was no good.

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On January 24, 2003, four days before the president’s State of the Union address, the CIA’s National Intelligence Council, which oversees all federal agencies that deal with intelligence, sent a memo to the White House stating that “the Niger story is baseless and should be laid to rest.”

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The 9/11 Lie

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The Bush administration put undue pressure on U.S. intelligence agencies to provide it with conclusions that would help them in their quest for war. Bush’s former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, said that on September 12, 2001, one day after 9/11, “The President in a very intimidating way left us — me and my staff — with the clear indication that he wanted us to come back with the word that there was an Iraqi hand behind 9/11.”

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Bush said on October 7, 2002, “We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high level contacts that go back a decade,” and that “Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gasses.” Of Hussein, he said on November 1, 2002, “We know he’s got ties with Al Qaeda.”

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Even after Bush admitted on September 17, 2003, that he had “no evidence” that Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11, he audaciously continued, in the months and years that followed, to clearly suggest, without stating it outright, that Hussein was involved in 9/11.

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On March 20, 2006, Bush said, “I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack on America.”

If you think about it, right now this country has our gear shift set on P for primary.  But when it comes time to vote and we’ve shifted into N for November, we have to decide whether to put in R for reverse or D to go forward.  I prefer going forward, how about you?

Special AP Correspondent Walter Mears has written a compelling piece on Clinton’s failure to drop out of the race:

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Getting out is hard to do for any presidential candidate, doubly so when the name is Clinton. Hillary or Bill, graceful exits are not the Clinton style. Lose an election or an issue and they tend to dig in deeper.

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So while Hillary’s campaign game is almost up, while she can cling to the slightest chance of overtaking Barack Obama, she won’t concede the Democratic presidential nomination.

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It is pure guesswork, but consider what would be happening if the roles of Clinton and Obama were reversed, giving her an all but insurmountable lead. The party unity pressure on him to get out, if he hadn’t already, would be far more intense than the suggestions that Clinton go. They’d be depicting him as a spoiler. Some of Clinton’s people already see him that way - the first-term black senator who got in the way when Clinton was running on a strategy that presumed a quick victory.

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Besides, had Obama been the one on the ropes, getting out would have served his future as well as the party’s. At 46, he already has put his imprint on political history as the first black candidate to mount a major national campaign for the presidency. That would make him a formidable entry in 2012.

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At 60, Clinton is not too old to try again. But she may be too familiar; the long experience she claims also wears on the image.

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Then there’s money. To keep going, Clinton has loaned her campaign $11.4 million of the fortune she and Bill have reaped since leaving the White House at a time they were in debt. She complains about being outspent in the primaries, which is an unintended compliment to Obama’s remarkable ability to raise funds, largely from small donors.

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Reverse campaign finance roles and Obama would be long gone. He can’t write checks for that kind of money.

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Any campaign for the White House is consuming, demanding, incredibly rigorous. It becomes a lifestyle over the months and years it now requires. So giving up before the last fragment of hope is gone is a bitterly difficult step. In Clinton’s case, it means swallowing defeat after beginning as the consensus favorite, the candidate all but entitled to the top of the 2008 ticket.

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Uniting the party behind a candidate other than herself is not high on Hillary’s agenda. Neither Clinton has a record of catering to the needs of the Democratic Party. The C at the beginning of the name Clinton counts more than the D at the beginning of Democrat.

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When Bill Clinton came to the White House, the Democrats controlled the House and Senate. When he left, Republicans did. In 1996, he soaked up campaign dollars even though he was virtually guaranteed re-election, and other Democratic campaign organizations had to scramble for what was left.

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For all that, Hillary Clinton is losing narrowly, not overwhelmingly. She has indeed won in big states, as she recites at her campaign rallies. Campaigning on, as she says she will until there is a Democratic nominee, is neither far out nor quixotic. Obama is careful not to claim the mantle of presumptive nominee, saying he will win, not that he has.

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His lead in pledged delegates is insurmountable. To reverse it, Clinton would have to win three-quarters of the delegates still up for primary election, which isn’t going to happen.

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Nor is the fiction Bill Clinton talked about as he campaigned in West Virginia going to become fact. “They want you to vote in low numbers so she doesn’t get ahead in the popular vote,” he said in Sutton, W. Va., on Thursday.

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She can’t get ahead in the popular vote.

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That leaves the superdelegates, about 260 of them still undecided. They are Clinton’s last, best hope, but over the past week, Obama has been gaining, nearly erasing her earlier lead in that count.

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The tactics used in the offstage effort to persuade superdelegates could dent future Democratic unity. Clinton tactics are hard-knuckled. Her superdelegate chief, Harold Ickes, has been trying to recruit them by talking about Obama’s incendiary former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, saying that connection could alienate voters in the fall campaign.

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That, plus Clinton’s own campaign argument that Obama can’t win white, working-class voters, probably helps the Republicans against the likely Democratic nominee.

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The polls show that those voters have been with Clinton in the primaries, and she says that proves Obama is weakening among them. But she is talking about choices made in Democratic primaries, not between a Democratic nominee and a conservative Republican, Sen. John McCain, in the general election.

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Clinton isn’t through winning primaries. The dominance of white, older voters favors her in West Virginia, and she leads in Kentucky. Obama says he expects her to win in both states. His next realistic target is Oregon.

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Another Clinton target is to win reinstatement of her tarnished primary victories in Florida and Michigan, where primaries were held in defiance of party schedule rules and the delegations were disallowed. Neither candidate campaigned there, and Obama wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan. The Democrats have to figure out a settlement for those two states, since barring their delegates from the national convention in Denver would invite punishment in the general election. The Clinton campaign demands all the delegates she would have won in those two primaries had they counted, and so far is balking at compromise.

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Democratic rulemakers will consider the problem on May 31. That could settle it, or keep the whole hassle going.

In 1973 I graduated from Southport High School in Indianapolis.  Also in 1973, National Lampoon’s “Lemmings” had a road company version touring parts of the country.  Below is a video from that road show featuring John Belushi on bass guitar, Chevy Chase on drums, Christopher Guest on guitar, Paul Jacobs on guitar, and  Rhonda Coullet on vocals.  Of course John, Chevy and Christopher would all go on to eventually be regulars on NBC’s SNL.  Christopher would even go on to marry Jamie Lee Curtis and create the mega fake band, Spinal Tap.  Oddly enough, here he is in an earlier fake band - this group at one point even called itself “Megadeath” -  that’s a full ten years before the  headbanging Megadeth was formed!

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Who has raised more cash?  Barack Obama.  Who has won more pledged delegates?  Barack Obama.  Who has the most popular votes?  Barack Obama.  Who has won the most states?  Barack Obama.  And now, according to ABC news, Sen. Barack Obama now leads Hillary Clinton 267 to 266 among Super Delegates.  By the end of the day, Barack Obama will need less than 170 delegates to reach the magic number of 2025.

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On May 20, Barack Obama will probably declare himself the winner of the Democratic Primary and put his campaign’s focus on defeating John McCain.  On that date, Hillary will probably win Kentucky and Obama will win Oregon.  Already most news organizations and many politicians and political pundits are referring to Obama as the presumptive candidate.  Obama and the Democratic leaders want to allow Hillary an opportunity to bow out gracefully.  Let’s just hope she does it sooner rather than later.

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This morning, John Edwards all but announced he was going to endorse Barack Obama.  He didn’t say this, but you could pick up on his leaning by the rest of the interview.

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Hop over to EW.com to read the story that comes with this photo of Josh Brolin as George W. Bush for Oliver Stone’s film “W“.

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While on the surface, it may look like Indiana’s results were a win for Hillary Clinton, the big picture shows Sen. Obama on the verge of total victory. With only 22,000 votes separating the two candidates, Indiana was a tie, basically splitting the delegates in half. However, Obama won North Carolina by more than 200,000 votes, nearly ten times the Indiana split.

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Hillary Clinton is on the ropes. Obama now has more delegates and popular vote than Senator Clinton - even if you factor in Michigan and Florida. He has more money on hand and a fund-raising machine that seems to bring more money in at will. In addition, his ground force of volunteers easily dwarfs that of Senator Clinton.

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Obama has weathered the storm that hit over the past few weeks and is now an even stronger campaigner than before. The Rev. Wright controversy, the bitter comments, the Pennsylvania primary, and even the frackin’ flag pin resurrection only ended up being a slight bump on the road to the nomination. You will now witness a trickle of the more timid super delegates coming out for Obama. The campaign is a virtual lock for the Indiana Senator. Last night I heard former Allen County Democratic chair, Kevin Knuth - a Hillary supporter - say he doesn’t see how she can continue after last evening’s stunning defeat in North Carolina.

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Speaking of Allen County, our AC4O (Allen County For Obama) team certain did its job. Obama won Allen County by over 9000 votes, taking every precinct in the county, including Republican stronghold Aboite. The AC4O group has worked hard in this part of the state and was truly a well oiled machine. My hat goes off to my fellow AC4O team members. A more dedicated, enthusiastic, and motivated team you could not ask for. A special shout out to Sofia Rodriguez who got the AC4o ball rolling. She is a powerful force to reckon with.

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Last evening, many of us gathered at La Margarita here in Fort Wayne to celebrate our tiny victory for the campaign. There were shouts of joy and pride as we watched the percentage between the two candidates shrink before our eyes - 12 points dropped to 10. 10 quickly moved to 8. This continued until the slim margin of two percentage points was reached. Below are a few shots taken during last evening’s celebration.

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Today Barack Obama and his family came to Fort Wayne, IN for a pitch-in, pot luck picnic. Of course, I made sure my whole family showed up.

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The previous evening, we had a couple of out-of-state Obama volunteers stay at our home, in addition to Sheri staying up to nearly 3:00am making enough pasta salad to feed an army. This morning, someone from Obama headquarters called to make sure we were coming and asked if we were going to stay and work the event. Sheri told them yes. The previous day, she had told another volunteer that we would be coming as a family and asked if it was alright to bring the kids. “Sure!”

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We left home about 12:25pm and drove the five minutes to Headwaters Park along with over 80 cups of pasta and three kids in tow. We brought the pasta to the rear entrance only to be stopped and told that kids would have to wait until the gates opened at 2:30. Anyone who knows our family understands we have Dustin, who suffers from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, in addition to a five-year old and a four-year old. Sheri went back to the car and waited with the kids while I took the pasta in. I returned to the van because all the volunteers had to leave while the bomb sniffing dogs mad the rounds.

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Later, I returned for instructions and asked one of the volunteer leaders if Sheri and the kids could help me out at the front as I signed in new volunteers. He said it was fine, so we went in - after going through an airport style security check point - and headed to the front gates to prepare for the throng.

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Sheri went over to the food line to help get the pasta salad prepared properly and ran into some problems with an over zealous volunteer. Sheri berated the woman for speaking to a volunteer in that manner. The next thing you know, she is being told to step away and wait for the secret service. Needless to say, Sheri was concerned she had gone too far, but in reality, they had chosen our family to have our lunch next the Senator Obama and his family. I was pulled off the gate and after a briefing from a member of Obama’s Senate staff, we were lead behind the ropes and seated along with a few others, including community leader, Denise Porter-Ross.

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We had a pretty good time watching the long lines pass right past our table and took a certain delight in the looks on the faces of people who knew us. One volunteer called my cell phone and asked me how we rated. I explained that we were probably picked because we were volunteers and had children with us. She said she assumed I had donated a large chuck to the campaign. Uh, yeah. Sure.

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We waited and waited while over two-thousand people made their way through the serpentine line to the food. Yet we were not allowed to leave the area to get our own food. We were told food would be brought to us. Unfortunately, we had to wait until it was close to time for the Senator to arrive before our trays were brought to us.

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We knew once the Secret Service officers started multiplying that the time was near. They brought the food to the tables along with a few bottles of water. Then we hear the roar of the motorcycles as the motorcade approached the pavilion.

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The Illinois Senator was introduced and came in flanked by his wife Michelle and their two daughters, Malia, nine, and Sasha, six. Michelle spoke first and explained how great it was to have the family together. It marked the first time the four had appeared together on the campaign trail since Iowa back in January. Michelle reached down and asked Sasha what everyone needed to do on Tuesday. Sasha replied, “vote for my Daddy.”

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After Michelle and the girls left the stage, Obama - who, according to the latest Zogby poll is leading Clinton in both Indiana and North Carolina spoke to the enthusiastic crowd. He discussed the distractions, Hillary’s gas tax holiday, and how this race was about the people. It was your basic Obama stump speech, but hearing it live is always inspiring.

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After his speech, he worked the line then came directly to our table. He shook my hand and when I asked if I could get a photo with him, he smiled a huge smile and said, “absolutely!” While my wife was snapping the picture, my son Harrison ran over and hugged Obama’s legs. The Senator reached down, lifted a beaming Harrison up and asked him his name and how old he was. Sen. Obama spent nearly five minutes with us, discussing our lives and children. He even complimented McCartney on her red and blue toenails and fingernails. It was an amazing moment. I didn’t even realize that news cameras were snapping away at our little chat until I saw all the cameras after Obama picked Harrison up.

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Once Obama enters the White House in January, my children will have photos of themselves with the first black President of the United States. It was indeed a historic day for our family.