You are not alone.
Mike Pope, Letters Editor, Tallahasee Democrat: But - for the importance of our international credibility and getting to the bottom of the forgery mystery - I think a Senate impeachment trial is warranted. Unfortunately, no member of the House of Representatives seems to be willing to risk the political capital necessary to file articles of impeachment.
Save the US Constitution, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/7663268.htm
Posted on Thu, Jan. 08, 2004
Last year's State of the Union?
Forget about it!
By Mike Pope
LETTERS EDITOR
U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd's recent town-hall meeting in
Tallahassee illustrated an abiding resentment over how
the Bush administration has manipulated - some would
say lied about - intelligence to justify the war with
Iraq. Boyd said that the president "made a mistake" by
attacking Iraq. Boyd is right, but the attack was only
part of the mistake.
The manipulation of intelligence in the months leading
up to the war was a more startling crime, one that
deserves more attention - especially as President Bush
prepares to confront the nation in his State of the
Union address on Jan. 20.
Is it fair to say that the administration lied? After
revelations that part of Bush's 2003 State of the
Union address was based on forged documents, the Bush
team seemed to fall into the worst kind of denial. The
most glaring example happened on the set of "Meet the
Press" on Sept. 28, when Condoleezza Rice was asked
how the corruption found its way into the State of the
Union.
Tim Russert recounted the history of the false
intelligence reports that Iraq had sought to buy
uranium from Niger to use in developing nuclear
weapons: The administration wanted to use questionable
documents to show that Iraq was a nuclear threat in an
October 2002 speech; the CIA told the administration
that the information was not reliable; the false
information wasn't used in the October speech but was
used in the more important State of the Union address
three months later. Between October 2002 and January
2003, Rice said, "I didn't remember" that the CIA said
not to use the information.
She didn't remember? Nobody in the White House
remembered?
The information in question was later determined to be
based on forged documents. Nobody seems to know who
forged the documents, but it took the International
Atomic Energy Agency only a few hours to determine
that the documents were forged. One letter, dated Oct.
10, 2000, was signed with the name of Allele Habibou,
a Niger minister of foreign affairs who had been out
of office since 1989.
Rice probably forgot about that.
Another letter, allegedly from Niger President Tandja
Mamadou, had text with inaccuracies so egregious, a
senior IAEA official told The New Yorker, that "they
could be spotted by someone using Google on the
Internet."
But Rice probably forgot how to Google.
I'll never forget watching Rice say - over and over -
that she didn't remember the CIA told her not to use
the information. I was speechless.
She forgot.
This is the same woman who lectured Rep. Boyd - who
served in Vietnam as an infantry officer - about the
lesson of Vietnam. Rice seems pretty confident of her
memory in this area, yet seems disturbingly aloof
about her memory problems concerning the 2003 State of
the Union address. This is the kind of willful
deception that Sen. Bob Graham said was worthy of
impeachment - if only we had a Congress that had the
backbone to seriously examine the matter.
By the standards set in the Clinton impeachment,
Bush's crimes and misdemeanors are worthy of
impeachment. Of course, getting testimony from folks
as memory challenged as Rice might pose a problem. But
- for the importance of our international credibility
and getting to the bottom of the forgery mystery - I
think a Senate impeachment trial is warranted.
Unfortunately, no member of the House of
Representatives seems to be willing to risk the
political capital necessary to file articles of
impeachment.
So, for now, we will have to watch President Bush
stand at the speaker's lectern to once again deliver a
State of the Union address. I doubt that he will
address the serious issue of forged documents and
knowingly deceiving the American people in last year's
State of the Union, but I think he should. If he can
remember.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Pope is the letters editor of the Tallahassee
Democrat. He can be reached at 599-2173 or
mpope@tallahassee.com.