Bush, Manson, and the Media Blackout
An Interview with Vincent Bugliosi - Part 2
"More dead since the war was declared won.
A war based on lies and deceit." Image cc
Michael Collins
Washington, DC
(Also see Part 1)
If a man carefully plans and executes the killing of another, we call him a murderer, arrest and try him, then send him off to the nearest death chamber. In many states, individuals convicted of three felonies are subject to an automatic life sentence under a program quaintly referred to as the "three strikes and you're out law." Justice for ordinary citizens in the United States may not be swift but when executed, it is final and unforgiving.
But when a national leader fabricates evidence to support the reasons for war thus causing death to thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilians, what do we do? We give him 24 hour a day, 7 day a week protection, a stretch limo and a deluxe plane with all the gas he'll ever need, and a house full of history and helpers in the middle of the nation's capitol. We call him "Mr. President."
Renowned prosecutor and best selling true-crime author, Vincent Bugliosi, has a different idea in his book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.
In 2001, the newly elected president began planning the Iraq invasion and occupation described by his Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill:
"From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," says O'Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic 'A' 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11." (CBS News, Jan. 11, 2004).
Investigative reporter Ron Suskind recently reported that faked letters linking Iraq to the 911 attack were coming from the White House. The Bugliosi book explains how the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate was distorted to mislead Congress and citizens into thinking that Iraq was an imminent danger to the United States. The evidence used to support the Iraq invasion was not just flawed. It represented deliberate distortions and deletions that mislead the nation into a war that had little, if anything, to do with national defense.
This has happened before. The Viet Nam War began in earnest with a major escalation after a reported attack on two United States naval vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin that never occurred as described. The incident was a fabrication to justify a major war. It took four decades for the truth about that "attack" to emerge.
Unlike President Lyndon B. Johnson, George W. Bush lives in a time of quickening, a digital age based on the citizens free network, the Internet. In just weeks, highly motivated citizens began to expose the absence of any rationale for war. This started the unraveling.
What is the outcome for our leaders after their war produced deaths and injuries reaching the tens of thousands for United States soldiers plus more than a million deaths of Iraqi civilians lost in civil chaos produced by the war?
I interviewed Vincent Bugliosi on Sunday, August 3, 2008 for 90 minutes. Part 1 of this series conveyed Vincent Bugliosi's core case for prosecuting George W. Bush for murder. In Part 2, Bugliosi discusses the nature of the current president compared to other's he's prosecuted, the fears that allow the right wing to paralyze the nation, and the mainstream media lockout of this book, so unlike the open embrace he's received for prior works.
INTERVIEW Part 2
Vincent Bugliosi (VB): I've prosecuted a lot of murderers, and it was never personal with me. By that I mean I wasn't emotionally involved. Certainly the survivors of the murder victims, it was personal with them. They were emotionally involved, but prosecutors are not supposed to get personal. They're not supposed to get emotional, because the sense is that it could cloud your vision.
