It seems that Congress has lost its collective spine
George W. Bush came to the Presidency and immediately appointed a cadre of convicted felons and their associates from the Iran Contra era to many extremely important government positions. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. Members of the Project for a New American Century, proponents of preemptive wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were immediately given more than a dozen strategic positions in the new Bush government. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. After 9/11, George Bush refused – for eighteen months - to investigate the causes of the worst attacks in history on American soil. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. Condoleezza Rice lied to the nation about never having imagined the use of hijacked airliners as weapons. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. Rice, Bush and Cheney had to be coerced to testify before the Kean Commission. Rice refused to testify under oath, and Bush and Cheney testified for a very limited time and only as a team. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. Rice admitted to the Kean Commission that the August memo had warned about possible attacks on AMERICAN soil by Al Qaeda, and yet the President remained on vacation at his ranch for the remainder of the summer. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. George Bush manipulated intelligence information in order to gain support for his plans to attack Iraq. That is an impeachable offense. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. Colin Powell lied to the United Nations in a fabricated presentation designed to gain support for a preventive attack against Iraq. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice lied over and over and over to the nation about Saddam Hussein’s WMD’s, his connection to Al Qaeda, and his plans to attack the US. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. George Bush wrested away your power to declare war by lying to the Congress about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. He promised to use military force as a last resort, after all other options had been exhausted. He lied to Congress. That is an impeachable offence. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. George Bush handed Haliburton, Dick Cheney’s former company, multi billion dollar, no-bid contracts in Iraq. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. George Bush sent Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted felon, and his source for false WMD information to Iraq with and team of 800 armed thugs. They staged the infamous statue toppling, and bilked American taxpayers out of billions of dollars in regular payments to set up a pro Bush interim government. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. In May of 2003, George Bush declared major conflict ended in Iraq. His mission was accomplished. Since then horrific chaos, death and destruction have followed. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. The Pentagon refused to allow photographs of returning flag-draped coffins, and refused to count civilian deaths in Iraq. Yet, they managed to stage the rescue of Jessica Lynch, which was exposed as a fabrication. AND YOU NEVER SAID WORD Our young men and women in Iraq were dying and being maimed because they had no armor on their Humvees to protect them from roadside bombs. They were sent to die without adequate body armor, radios, night goggles and flashlights. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians were killed by our so-called smart bombs and illegal weapons, including napalm and depleted uranium shells were used as standard weapons. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. Photographs and eye-witness testimony from the ICRC and other agencies proved that the US was breaking international law by torturing prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The problem was systemic and condoned at the highest levels of government. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. Private airliners were being used by the Pentagon to transport prisoners for interrogation in other countries that condone and practice horrific methods of torture. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. George Bush and his cohorts changed the rationale for going to war over and over, manipulating their mantras as each lie was exposed and new reasons were needed to justify their illegal war. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. There was no plan to keep the peace, no plan to stop the looting, no plan to deal with an insurgency despite the warnings of so many in the military. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. The chaos, increased, the deaths and the destruction grew, and the insurgency proved to be unending. But your President told you we were making progress. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. The Downing Street Minutes were leaked to the public months ago. The content of these nine documents made it clear that George Bush had planned an invasion of Iraq at all costs, and that he planned to ‘fix’ intelligence information to gain support for his war of choice. That is an unquestionable high crime that merits impeachment. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. The Downing Street Minutes remain ignored by the White House, and neither the Congress nor the media have demanded answers from the President. Rep. John Conyers was refused a meeting room for an airing of these important documents and had to hold his hearing in a tiny basement room. Such disrespect was unprecedented and inexcusable. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
This, dear Congress people, is the short list. But even in its brevity, it is a powerful indictment of your villainous roles in tacit support of the affairs d’etat of the Bush administration. But, to really get to you, to really make you sit up and look at yourselves with some pangs of conscience, the list needs a powerful finale, - one that makes all the other items almost pale by comparison. So here it is:
In March of 2003, someone in the White House committed a serious felony. He or she or they leaked the identity of a CIA operative to the press. This was done to punish Joseph Wilson, a man who had dared to expose George Bush’s lie about yellow cake uranium sales to Saddam Hussein. Despite the seriousness of this crime, George Bush did nothing to try and discover who was responsible. In fact, he refused to conduct any investigation of his own staff to uncover a felony under his roof. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. After three months of ignoring a crime by someone in the WH, the CIA demanded an inquiry of what they termed a crime. Only then was the case given to WH buddy and supporter, then AG John Ashcroft. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
Finally, after five months had passed, the case was handed to a Special Counsel working on behalf of the Justice Department. Two years and millions of dollars after the Novak article outing Valerie Plame appeared, George Bush has yet to call Karl Rove aside and demand an explanation. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
Two years and millions of dollars after the article appeared, George Bush has yet to come forward and tell us what he knew and when he knew it. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. YOU STILL REFUSE TO UTTER A SINGLE WORD!
