Sidney Blumenthal’s latest piece in Salon:
On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.
Even more stunning is this:
Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.
There you have it, folks. President George W. Bush lied the nation into a war in Iraq. A war that has cost the lives of 3,752 American soldiers and 27,186 injuries. A war that rages on unabatted today with no exit strategy.
The question of impeachment turns on meeting the standard of the United States Constitution, Article II, Section 4: ”Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ridiculous comments of “Impeachment is off the table,” followed by, “Bush isn’t worth impeaching,” ignores the fact that President George W. Bush took this nation into a war predicated on false premises and motivated by a personal vendetta to kill the man who threatened his daddy.
Iraq under Saddam Hussein, represented to threat to the U.S. Lying the nation into war is clear grounds to order the Articles of Impeachment. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to follow the template left to us by the Founders in the United States Constitution then, Pelosi must step aside and resign as Speaker.Â