You can vote yes. Or you can vote no. But we cannot remain silent.
Should Vice President Cheney be impeached? Consider the evidence and then vote in the National Cheney Impeachment Poll, and it will also send your personal message to Congress at the very same time.
In his appearance on Meet The Press yesterday, George Tenet AGAIN confirmed that the purpose of the now infamous "slam dunk" meeting was to assess if they could SELL the war without just cause in Iraq to the American public. Tenet confesses that he was NOT being asked at the time to vouch for the quality of the intelligence. They never cared whether there was any actual support for their arguments, only whether they could get away with bum rushing the rest of us. So, what Tenet MEANT by the words "slam dunk" was they were sure they would be able to stuff their cooked intelligence down our throats.
This is incredibly damning stuff. In his book Tenet has unleashed the intelligence community equivalent of "If I Helped Them Do It". They were not having a policy debate about the strength of the case against Iraq. They were having a sales meeting of con men to plot how far they could go in cheating the American people out of our lives and the contents of our treasury. And they had already decided to go all the way. "Slam dunk" was not an intelligence assessment, it was a SALES PROJECTION of their fraudulent product.
Of course, anyone who's been honestly and fairly paying attention has known at least since the exposure of the Downing Street Minutes that we were misled into the Iraq quagmire, by an executive branch that could not be bothered with either the actual facts or a serious policy debate about them. They were determined to "fix the facts around the policy", and that's exactly what they did, as we only learned far too long after the fact. And Tenet is yet another primary percipient witness to confirm the heavy hands of the vice president in leaning on CIA analysts to deliver the intelligence he had specifically ordered.
You remember how Cheney has always argued that the president shouldn't have to produce for Congress (or anyone else) records relating to White House deliberations, because according to him that's the only way he can get frank, confidential advice. Executive privilege is their incessant mantra. So how is it that details of the "slam dunk" incident were LEAKED from a meeting attended only by those in the innermost of circles? Tenet was STUNNED that the White House should betray his confidence, especially for the sickeningly cheap purpose of trying to lay all blame on him, when he was just going along for the ride.
Apparently that's what so galled Tenet enough for him to spill the beans on his own complicity (beside an O.J. size book advance). Dick Cheney, in his typical coward's fashion, was trying in the media to hang their entire wrong-headed strategic debacle around Tenet's neck, like a medal of blundering incompetence to go with his medal of freedom. "Tenet told us it was a slam dunk," Cheney shot back on TV when challenged on their decision to attack Iraq, as the five time military deferment king again tried to duck public responsibility.
Dick Cheney has a long history of planting leaks of information and then trying to use them as supporting evidence for his own purpose. In the run up to the Iraq War he would leak stories to the New York Times which were then slavishly published verbatim. Remember how his chief of staff Scooter Libby would spoon feed them to Judith Miller. Then Cheney would get on the Sunday talk shows quoting those same stories, pointing to them as credible confirming sources. We also now know he was the mastermind behind the exposure of Valerie Plame, permanently crippling one of our best REAL intelligence assets, because he was afraid he husband would blow the cover off their phony war. And there are even strong suggestions that contacts from his office were directly involved in the forgery of the Niger documents themselves, which were at the heart of the flimsy casus belli.
As courageously drafted by Dennis Kucinich in H.Res. 333, the first and most central ground stated for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney was that he led the charge in fabricating a case for invasion of Iraq, based on phony weapons of mass destruction. Now almost as if it were timed to coincide with that initiative, former CIA head George Tenet reveals they was NO hard evidence for war, but that Cheney just kept exaggerating the threat anyway. And even now Tenet offers nothing more compelling than a Ouija board or Miss Cleo to back even his assessment up. This is without question the most momentous issue of our time, and whether you agree that Cheney should be impeached, or not, your voice is needed to speak out now, and tell Congress what they should do about it.
Tenet was neither the victim of a bad rap, nor the unwitting excuse for invasion. Instead he was a willing co-conspirator, happy enough to play along with the war fever and collect his ill-gotten medal of freedom. But the criminal kingpin of the whole sordid affair was none other than Richard B. Cheney. And that truth can no longer be hidden by even this most secretive of administrations. What will it take for Congress to impeach him and put him on trial in the Senate for highest of all high crimes, launching a war of immoral and unjustifiable aggression, that has cost more Americans their lives than died on 9/11 (and upwards of a million Iraqis), based on NOTHING but deliberate and calculated lies?
What it will take.. . . and all that is required . . . is your voice, and the voices of your friends, neighbors and acquaintances. VOTE now in the National Cheney Impeachment Poll and send your personal messages to Congress at the same time. In a little over a week we have had over 30,000 submissions already. We need everyone who has ever submitted an action page to cast their vote in this one. There's no reason why we can't present Congress with a million votes or more on this. We're GOING to do it. And when we do, impeachment hearings WILL become a reality on Capitol Hill.
internet activist with the mission of generating as many policy messages to Congress as possible
Incredible. Tenet was head of our so-called "intelligence" agency, yet he can't see the duplicity of his statement. I could almost understand this if he were a bush appointee, given all the other of the idiot's picks, yet he believes we're stupid enough not to see through this obvious duplicitous explanation?
Like the Nazi's at Nuremberg these obviously demented people will go to their graves never seeing the error of their ways. One can only hope that they suffer the same fate.
by
Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 20 diaries, 1781 comments)
on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 7:30:47 AM
I have heard Tenet's explanation twice and could not believe my ears either time. Excuse me. He admitted to a conspiracy to lie to Congress and defraud the American public.
by
Amanda Lang (23 articles, 13884 quicklinks, 431 diaries, 593 comments)
on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 10:59:00 AM
and it's been this way for centuries and centuries.
Politicians have always lied to their countries and "their" people - in order to aggrandize themselves with wealth and power. Why should we think that American politicians would be any different?
The founding fathers sure didn't. That's why they created a Constitution that was supposed to severely limit what the politicians would be able to do. Unfortunately, there's not enough honest ones out there that would actually follow the rules.
This is something that isn't a partisan issue...a good read on this subject:
We will hang the banner of the Republican Party around Dick Cheney's neck. It says the party of Debt, Denial and Death. I am so angry with everyone who voted or allowed these thieves in the door. I want to cram that Banner down their throats as they are dragged to prison. War Criminals all. They hid behind political policies when in fact they are harbingers of Death and Destruction due to immense Ego and Greed
by
cluelessfl (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 184 comments)
on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 1:28:54 PM
The best activism: pushing pixels or boycotts/buycotts?
I think the public outcry over the OJ Simson book on how he migt have killed Nicole is a perfect example of how grass roots activism can take effective action. The people were disgusted and told the publisher so. The book was pulled, OJ was denied a voice and denied the publicity and money.
So if it's wrong for Tenet to profiteer off his book, somehow claiming he tried to prevent the war but stopping well short of admitting his role in perpetrating a hoax, why aren't we telling Harper Collins?
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