But the biggest outrage is what’s happened in public.

We Made Goldman Sachs what it is Today

If it weren’t for our tax dollars and the cash flow that citizens provide for the United States Treasury, Goldman Sachs would have joined Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers in the graveyard of financial high flyers.
But they were saved. Bush Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson came to the rescue when he assured that one of Goldman Sachs most important customers, the AIG group, survived a financial mess of its own creation.

Our original contribution was in the $20 billion range but then our elected representatives helped Goldman even more when they jacked up the subsidy to $85 billion. That’s enough money to hire a workforce of one million people at a salary of $60,000 a year, plus benefits.

Had AIG tanked, Goldman would have been in very serious trouble. In September 2008, Paulson, a former CEO of Goldman met with Tim Geithner, soon to be President Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury, when Geithner headed up the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Goldman’s CEO was “the only Wall Street chief executive” at the critical meeting.

This back room meeting was exposed by Gretchen Morgenson in an outstanding New York Times article: “Although it was not widely known, Goldman, a Wall Street stalwart that had seemed immune to its rivals’ woes, was A.I.G.’s largest trading partner … A collapse of the insurer threatened to leave a hole of as much as $20 billion in Goldman’s side, several of these people said.”

While Lehman Brothers got nothing, AIG got some serious cash and survived, thus assuring Goldman’s survival. Secretary Paulson and Geithner came through with the guarantees. When Paulson left with Bush, Geithner showed up to take Paulson’s place at Treasury. The beat goes on.

It’s The Money Party at work. They have no permanent friends or permanent enemies, just permanent interests. Goldman’s interest was turning a sow’s ear, the financial collapse that they helped create, into a silk purse. Mission accomplished.

Goldman’s chief financial officer attributed the $39 million a day income to the firm’s reputation for “very, very strong culture of risk management.” Is he kidding? Their success is based on that $85 billion of our money that saved their asses. Goldman’s average $1.0 million per employee bonuses wouldn’t exist were it not for citizens paying for their survival.

Have you received your thank you card from Goldman Sachs yet?
Don’t hold your breath. But you can be sure that when they’ve screwed up what people are trying to pass off as a recovery, they’ll be back at our Treasury Department again for the next big bailout courtesy of you know who.

We have no government left. It’s simply a welfare agency for the most favored failed financial giants; a paper money producer to wrap the ugly truth in fictional dollars; a subprime governance scheme developing Potemkin Villages everywhere.

It’s socialism for the ultra rich and survival of the fittest for the rest of us.

Millions get sick, suffer and die without medical coverage. But Goldman bags $39 million a day in the Wall Street casino. Millions of hardworking citizens lose their jobs and can’t find work. But Goldman gives out bonuses averaging $1.0 million per employee. Their survival is based entirely on our assistance but when citizens need some help, there’s no room at the inn.

And count on it, nobody in power will do a single thing about it. Not one thing.

Fairness, equity, civility, good taste, discretion, opportunity, even the least degree of common decency — all dead — thanks to The Money Party.

The public knows which party bears the primary blame for all of this and they’re not about to forget any time soon. The Republican Party is headed for the political graveyard.

They’re not going to rely on past achievements though. Through their self-proclaimed national leader, the odious Rush Limbaugh, they’ve chosen to attack the first Latino nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, for being a “racist.” Former Oxycontin addict Limbaugh said, “She brings a form of bigotry and racism to the court.” He went on to say that nominating her was like nominating Klansman and Aryan Nation advocate David Duke for the highest court.

These charges are quite literally bizarre, particularly with Limbaugh calling anyone else a racist. Newt Gingrich has joined Limbaugh in a duet of stupidity. This is appropriate since Gingrich is the architect of the power and policies used by Republicans to drive the nation into its current crisis.

The political impact for Republicans will be devastating. Sotomayor is the first Latino nominated to the Supreme Court. Latinos represent the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States.

They’re the fastest group ever to assimilate to U.S. culture and achieve middle class status. Latinos went for Obama 67% to McCain’s 33%, and comprised 9% of the electorate in 2008. Among Latino youth, the fastest growing segment of the Latino population, the choice was 76% Obama compared to 19% McCain.

Sotomayor is also a woman nominee. Women comprised 53% of the electorate in 2008 and they went for Obama 56% to 43% for McCain. Many of those women are working and struggle with fools like Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich on a regular basis.

The Republicans are like an early adolescent frenetically trying on new identities, each seemingly stranger than the last. Led by the Southern wing, the party began by opposing the bailout for the big three U.S. automakers. Acting as though the nation doesn’t need any heavy industry or a few million people don’t need a job, their mask of fiscal rigor hid the fact that key southern states have the manufacturing base for major foreign automakers.

They then turned to Rush and, at the same time, held a national protest in April. Sparsely attended, this nationwide event acquired the unfortunate name of “Tea bagging.” It failed to produce anything more than some Jerry Springer quality footage for a brief spot on local news. Recently, the national Republican Party, backed by early presidential aspirant Gingrich, tried to rename the Democrats as the “Democratic Socialist Party.” There is no end in sight to this parade of irrelevant, out of touch efforts.

We’re now seeing the final phases of the Republican dance macabre. The Limbaugh-Gingrich anti-Latino campaign is so dangerous that some Republican senators, including right wing Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), are moving away from the slanders against Sotomayor. John McCain (R-AZ) also sees the implications for his party. He’s signed up to attend the National Council of La Raza conference this summer to counter the anti Latino rhetoric spread by other Republican leaders.

Democratic loyalists are acting as though the Republican demise is an accomplishment on their part. It is as though their understated — but very complicit — support of the Republican policies of empire and wealth transfer to the ultra wealthy will go unnoticed.

Congressional Democrats voted in the majority to authorize the Iraq invasion. They voted in the majority to fund the Iraq adventure long after the lies leading to war were well known. A majority of Senate Democrats voted for the Patriot Act. A Democratic controlled Senate allowed further government spying on personal communication (FISA Amendments) in 2008 and a third of Senate Democrats supported the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which gutted habeas corpus, and Democrats voted for the initial Wall Street welfare bill; also know as the bailout.

Right now, the Obama administration is responsible for doubling the Bush administrations cash transfer form the U.S. Treasury to Wall Street and the banks. Democrats failed to pass the only major bill to ease rampant foreclosures. This left 1.7 million families likely to lose their homes. Democrats did pass a credit card reform bill but forgot to cap those 29% interest limits that the banks arbitrarily assign.

There was an announced policy to leave Iraq. To date, all we’ve seen are plans to open up a new phase of the Afghan war with tens of thousands of troops simply switching job assignments from Iraq to an even more treacherous landscape. Ominously, we now have plans for super embassy in Pakistan to rival the fortress constructed in Iraq.

Democrats don’t want people to see pictures of Bush-Cheney torture from the prison at Guantanamo, probably because it occurred with funding that they helped provide. They don’t want to close that facility if it means housing prisoners in the United States. This forced their president into the extraordinary and troubling position of maintaining current prisoners in Cuba. As the Democratic Senators participated in the 90 to 6 vote to refuse President Obama funds to close Guantanamo, they were resolute in failing to mention that only 10 of over 400 prisoners there are charged with a violent crime. To borrow an appropriate response, You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, at long last? Apparently not.

Democrats won’t even talk about the deaths of over a million Iraqi civilians due to civil strife caused by the war that they funded. Failing to talk about it means it never happened, they hope.

Despite all of the alleged but obvious crimes of Bush-Cheney against people here and around the world, the Democrats want to “look forward” and bypass prosecutions of any sort against the Bush administration.

The Binary Fallacy

The binary fallacy is the crude dialectic that assumes that the two political parties are the only choices for voters and that what’s bad for one party will always be good for the other. As evidence for this, we have Nixon’s Watergate scandal followed by huge Democratic victories in congressional elections. President Carter’s economically distressed four years begat the Reagan revolution and so forth.

Democrat Party operatives see the collapse of the nation and attendant pain as working against the Republicans since they were in control when the decline was assured by Republican sponsored programs. The situation is so bad, they argue, no one will take the Republicans seriously over the near and midterm. Add the highly favorable demographics among youth, women, and the emerging Latino population and you’ve got the dominant political party of the next few decades.

Republican loyalists speak of the risks that the Obama administration has inherited. When he falters, as he may given the circumstances that Republicans know all too well, his failure will assure a Republican comeback they argue.

Both parties fail to realize two flaws in their embedded fallacy.

First, the fallacy became a manufactured truth over decades due to the rigged game of U.S. politics. Funding and access to major media presume membership in one of the two major parties. Third party candidates need to poll equal or ahead in the public opinion polls, as Ross Perot did in 1992, in order to get any media attention or money. When the system is heavily rigged to exclude third parties, then, of course, there are only two choices.

The second flaw in the binary fallacy is embodied by our current troubles. The fallacy does not take into account successful performance during extreme crises. We’re either in a depression or we’re in the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression. Times are desperate for tens of millions. The vast majority lives in fear of entering the world of the unemployed, homeless, and bereft. Iraq is the biggest foreign policy disaster in modern times. Our new plans for an Afghanistan adventure have the potential to equal Iraq in terms of national loss and increased threats of blowback.

One party created the current disaster. The other has embraced the broadest parameters of the policies that created the disasters that voters want fixed — wealth transfers to the ultra rich while the vast majority gets just about nothing plus mindless, counter productive fantasies of empire through war.

The two parties and the elitists who look down their noses on the overwhelming majority of citizens assume that the people will simply tolerate the creation of a catastrophe by one party and the perpetuation of that grave injustice to citizens by the other.

When you’re broke, you know it.

When you’re out of work, you know it.

When there are no jobs, you know it.

And when the country continues to fight overseas but does nothing to protect economic security at home, you know it.

The game is up. The party is over. The people have a fundamental right to survive, at the very least. If both parties continue to promote policies that leave out almost all citizens, as is now the case, there will be alternatives that look nothing like the current two political parties. The binary fallacy and the two parties that fail to address our crises will be no more. Relying solely on the failures of the opposing party while embracing their programs will soon be defunct.

The denial of assistance to citizens by Senators is ironic given the fact that the origins of the current economic crisis came from Senate legislative actions in 1999 and 2000.

While their avarice knows no bounds, their memory suffers.

Apparently these multimillionaire aristocrats of the Senate “gentlemen’s club” haven’t been watching the news. The International Monetary Fund declared that the United States is in a depression almost three months ago. Delinquency and foreclosure rates around the country are rising at spectacular rates. Unemployment has jumped by 3.3 million in the last five months. Economic growth has declined at a rate of 6.3% in the first quarter of 2009.

What part of economic crisis can’t they understand? Apparently all of it.

Memo to stingy Senators: Workers and their families are in serious trouble or about to be in trouble. That means they lack the money to pay for their homes (also known as shelter, a basic human need). These citizens did nothing to bring on this crisis.

You, the members of the Senate, are largely to blame and you know it.

One of the most revealing remarks came from Democrat Ben Nelson (D-NE) who said:

“Do I want to have my rate go up so that somebody else might be able to cram down” their mortgage payment?” asked Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., who voted against the bill.

Nelson has never been regarded as the sharpest tool in the shed but he’s set a new standard for ignorance with this remark. Nelson was worth at least $7.0 million as of reporting in 2008. Obviously he needs to skimp on every penny to stay afloat. He’ll offer no breaks for financially strapped citizens on the brink of ruin even if they are in trouble as a result of his support of Wall Street welfare. The bill would have no impact on his or anybody else’s mortgage rate unless they qualified for help. In those cases, the rate would go down.

The Durbin bill offered a reasonable change in bankruptcy law that would allow those in foreclosure to ask (simply ask) bankruptcy judges to invoke a “cramdown.” In that process, the bankruptcy court would set a lower interest rates and longer terms on loans. This takes the case out of foreclosure and allows citizens to keep their homes and the lets banks collect the money owed at a lower rate over an extended period. (See this for a real cramdown to benefit all citizens.)

The Durbin bill provided limited options since it presumed that homeowners at risk had the money to get in bankruptcy court; that the courts would be able to handle all those in need; and that the judge would accept the request for a cramdown to keep people in their homes. But the bill might have helped as many as 1.7 million homeowners.

Even with those limitations, Sen. Durbin was forced against the wall and had to negotiate the bill to a lower level of protection. The final bill rejected by the Senate. Associated Press reported: “The latest proposal would have restricted eligibility to homeowners already in foreclosure whose lender had not offered better terms. Homes would also have to be worth less than $729,000 and apply to mortgage loans originated before 2009.”

Durbin’s last stand would have provided protection some homeowners but know there’s now protection for anyone.

William K. Black is the chief fraud investigator who untangled the 1980’s Savings and Loan fiasco. His comments on the current economic meltdown are instructive and assign blame:

“We need some chairmen or chairwomen … in Congress, to hold the necessary hearings (on banking fraud) and we can blast this out. But if you leave the failed CEOs in place, it isn’t just that they’re terrible business people, though they are. It isn’t just that they lack integrity, though they do. Because they were engaged in these frauds … they’re not going to disclose the truth about the assets.”

Senators, you allowed changes in banking regulations that turned Wall Street in to a big casino for the “in crowd” and wiped out millions of small investors and retirement funds.

You failed to monitor the new freedoms you gave the banks and Wall Street after you stripped away citizen protections in law since the Great Depression.

You created the current depression.

And now, you’re so stingy you won’t even help a few of the many people victimized by the massive corporate fraud schemes, Ponzi schemes according to Black.

Is there any reason why even one single Senator of the 51 who voted down this assistance should remain in office to complete his or her term?

Is there any reason to hold back from recalling them where allowed or demanding their resignations in every state that they represent?

I can’t think of one. Can you?

Here’s what we can expect:

Surely habeas corpus will be restored in an unashamed expression of support for that centuries old protection of civil liberties.

No doubt, we’ll see a repeal of the Patriot Act. That step back to some degree of civilization is sure to come.

There will be a long overdue recognition that the first people in line for help from the government are the citizens of this great country who work overtime to just keep their heads above water.

That will happen at the same time that trillions in Wall Street welfare are stopped and replaced by actions that allow people to stay in their homes, pay for their health care, and send their children to college. No doubt about it.

We won’t be forced into mindless wars that obligate us to more deaths and the inevitable blowback from overseas adventures. Let the word go forth from Washington. The troops are coming home.

The Glass-Steagall Act will be restored and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 will be repealed ending the enabling acts for an era of greed.

No more talk about having too many “big picture” items on the agenda to allow working men and women to organize and fight for their rights in unions.

We’ll surely mount a massive program to save us all from the looming eco catastrophes due to climate change and pollution.

Elections will be transparent, open to all, and subject to public review and verification.

We will no longer countenance wire tapping, Internet snooping, and other forms of illegal surveillance by the government.

Don Siegelman’s conviction will be overturned while Susan Lindauer and all the other victims of Bush fascism will receive apologies for the vicious government harassment visited on them.

All it takes is Arlen on board and Al ready to hop the freedom train to the promised land of a government that serves the people and public servants that know the meaning of the word servant.

There can be no doubt that those who have erred and sinned against the people will be reborn into a new life as representatives of the nation that they serve. They will cast away their Money Party sympathies and hop on board.

Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Mark Pryor (D-AR) will start voting for the working people that they represent. The 21 FISA supporting Democratic senators will take the time to read the Constitution and change their ways. The Senate Committee on Finance headed by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) will actually investigate that $140 billion gift to banks allowed by the likely illegal Bush White House authored tax code changes. The Nelsons, Ben and Bill, along with 16 other Democratic senators will repent for their vote on that horrid bankruptcy bill.

And all of them will join in unison and say no more funding for illegal wars.

Happy days are here again. Pop the cork!

Our financial system looks ruined beyond repair. The credit default swaps crisis is 40 or so times bigger than the real estate meltdown over subprime derivatives. The top 25 banks in the United States are loaded down with $13 trillion in credit default swaps and the deal is coming unraveled. If we accept the highly dubious assumption that the debt from the financial meltdown needs to be repaid by us, were looking at $43,000 a citizen right now. And we’re just starting.

It didn’t get that way by accident. There was special legislation that enabled the current crisis.

This was classic Money Party strategy and tactics.

The strategic goal was to turn Wall Street into a big casino for the “in crowd” of major investors, funds, and institutions. No rules and no regulations: “let the market take care of it” was the philosophy.

The tactics were easy. First you set up a scholarly group called the Law and Economics movement to give your scheme legitimacy. Then you give money and other favors to members of Congress.

At the right moment, you call in your congressional markers to let the banks start doing what they did to spark the Great Depression. Walk into the Wall Street casino loaded with cash and spend like they’re on coke. Your corny academic group has a couple of judges who decide a case that gives legal grace to the scheme. The casino is legit says the court. You then go for the whole nine yards by bringing back the long outlawed derivatives, subprimes, credit default swaps, etc.

The corporate media either ignores your “long con” altogether or covers it on their back pages.

Done deal! It’s the perfect storm to create economic chaos allowing the most massive transfer of wealth since the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 CE. It’s all about socialism for the rich and survival of the fittest for the rest of us.

But Congress and the Treasury Department will preserve the financial elite in perpetuity. Why? To begin with, they’d have to admit that they created the problem in the first place with their enabling legislation. Congress would also have to admit to absolutely zero oversight on this matter despite warnings.

Legislative, Judicial and Executive Branches — Acting in Unison Deliver the Goods

Three distinct events enabled the current economic chaos. The baseline requirement for the era of greed was satisfied in 1999 when Congress repealed key provisions of the Glass-Steagall act. That law was established during the first Great Depression. It tightly restricted the opportunities for reckless speculation by banks. They were barred from selling stocks and other speculative schemes. Title 1 of the Financial Services Modernization Act, 1999 says it all:

Facilitating affiliation among banks, securities firms and insurance companies

Commercial banks, brokerage firms, hedge funds, institutional investors, pension funds and insurance companies can freely invest in each others businesses as well as fully integrate their financial operations.

This was a bipartisan effort with the Senate version passing 90 to 8 and the House 362 to 57.

The once scorned derivatives had been the Holy Grail for “free” market radicals on Wall Street and elsewhere for years. They said that the restrictions on these products were unnecessary and stifled the free market (”free” for them). Even before Congress acted definitively in December 2000, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit struck down the ability of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to rein in ruinous high risk financial schemes on Sept. 1, 1999.

Reagan appointees Richard Posner, then chief judge, and current chief judge Richard Easterbrook were key movers. They’re also heavily involved with the Law and Economics movement, a right wing, free market movement that opposes almost all regulation in Pavlovian fashion.

Credit default swaps and other derivatives had been illegal for decades. In 1981, specific rules were set up to tighten restrictions against these schemes. But all that changed on Dec. 21, 2000 when the lame duck Congress passed the “Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000′” making these products legal. The legislation also barred the gathering of information that would serve as early warning on the legalized gambling on credit worthiness. Regulators were helpless in looking out for the public. Here’s the title of the House version of the bill:

To reauthorize and amend the Commodity Exchange Act to promote legal certainty, enhance competition, and reduce systemic risk in markets for futures and over-the counter derivatives, and for other purposes.

This is the vital wording modifying the Securities Act of 1933 that undid the economy:

“Section 2A–Swap Agreements The Commission is prohibited from — promulgating, interpreting, or enforcing rules; or issuing orders of general applicability.” The Senate and House bills were combined in to H.R. 4577, an appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education signed by President Clinton. Someone had a perverse sense of humor.

In other words, Congress legalized what had been illegal for decades and it secured the 7th Circuit’s opening gambit of handcuffing the SEC in dealing with the new high risk financial products. Congress fixed the game so that the short staffed regulatory agencies couldn’t monitor the market even if they wanted that function.

Good luck trying to find the legislative debate on this momentous change. There was none. The enabling legislation for this disaster was passed by an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives and by unanimous consent in the Senate.

It’s important to have a “Roll Call” for the sponsors of the “Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.” They made it happen.

Expect More of the Same

The bailout and other efforts to save Wall Street firms and the large banks are essentially an effort to deal with the problems of derivatives and other market failures. Wall Street got the court decisions and legislation it wanted and then promptly proceeded to create today’s disaster.

They sold these risky products and now they have to pay off. But they don’t have the money even with the current bailouts. Where will they get it? The federal government was the only sucker left to tap and that bet came through to the tune of $4.6 trillion. There’s $4.6 trillion awaiting further requests from the Federal Reserve

The culprits are still in place at failing financial institutions.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for political action to fix the situation. Both parties were in on this mess. Huge majorities in both houses of Congress voted for key legislation to allow the biggest bank heist of all time. But his time, it was the banks pulling the heist.

That’s why the bankers have to stay in place. To remove them, would be telling, as William K. Black said recently:

But the other element of your question is we don’t want to change the bankers, because if we do, if we put honest people in, who didn’t cause the problem, their first job would be to find the scope of the problem. And that would destroy the cover up.

But it was all legal, wasn’t it?

He has the help of a citizens group called ABA Publishing headed by Arminda and Bob Alexander with Jude Morford. The all-volunteer group recently sent Bugliosi’s cover letter and book to 2,200 local prosecutors across the country.

Bugliosi is offended by the prominence of proposed torture charges to the exclusion of what he argues is the much larger charge: murder.

Prof. Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University School of Law was asked what charges were the most likely if there’s ever a serious investigation into Bush administration criminal activities. Turley noted:

“The two most obvious crimes in this administration are the torture program and the unlawful surveillance program. Despite the effort to pretend that there is some ambiguity or uncertainty on these crimes, the law is quite clear.” (Blog of Legal Times, Dec. 23, 2008)

Torture and illegal wiretapping are important concerns to Bugliosi.

But murder is by far the larger crime with a much stronger case, Bugliosi argues.

The former top prosecutor demands justice for the deaths of 4,200 U.S. citizens, soldiers who gave their lives in a war based on calculated lies by the Bush administration. Their loss is the basis for his murder charge. While Bugliosi couldn’t find a way to attach the 1.2 million dead Iraqi civilians to the indictment, those deaths are part of the larger record of Bush crimes Bugliosi stated with passion.

I interviewed Vincent Bugliosi about his book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder in August 2008. He outlined his case in detail and the challenges he’d faced in getting the word out after the corporate media blacked out advertising and interviews on his groundbreaking book.

Recently, I contacted Mr. Bugliosi to explore his reaction to President Obama’s position on prosecuting Bush and others members of the regime and his opinion of the focus on a Bush prosecution for torture instead of the much more serious murder indictment.

Interview with Vincent Bugliosi
Conducted by Michael Collins
March 29, 2009

Michael Collins: Do you think that President Obama is reluctant to investigate and, presuming the findings we’d expect, prosecute Bush and others in his administration for their alleged crimes.

Vincent Bugliosi: President Obama was on the ABC news program This Week With George Stephanopoulos, and the issue came up about the prosecutions of the Bush administration, potential prosecutions, and he said words — I can give you his exact words. He said that he was of “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” (ABC News, Jan. 11, 2009) Now, the interpretation that has been placed on these words, and I agree with that interpretation, is that he does not intend to pursue George Bush or his administration for any crimes they may have committed.

This is in contradistinction to what he said months ago before he became president. He said words to the effect that if he became president, he would have his attorney general investigate the Bush administration to see if things that they had done involved crimes or just merely bad policy. He said if they involved crimes, he said no man is above the law, and the implication was that he would ask his attorney general to proceed forward, so he’s changed his position.

I was mentioning the interpretation on his words. The article in The New York Times that quoted him: “President-elect Barack Obama signaled in an interview broadcast Sunday that he was unlikely to authorize a broad inquiry into Bush administration programs like domestic eavesdropping or the treatment of terrorism suspects.” (New York Times, Jan. 12, 2009)

I have to say that I’m disappointed in the president on his apparent position that he doesn’t want the Department of Justice to conduct a criminal investigation.

MC: What would you say to the president if you had the opportunity?

VB: If I were to speak to President Obama, I would inform him of one thing and advise him of a couple of other things. I’d inform him, and I guess this sounds a little sarcastic, but I would inform him that when he talks about only looking forward and not backwards, I agree that most of his efforts have to be towards the future. I’m not quarreling with him on that, but you can’t forget the past.

When he says that he intends to give Bush a free pass simply because whatever crime Bush may have committed was in the past, I would inform him of something he already knows: that all criminal prosecutions, without exception and by definition, have to deal, obviously, with past criminal behavior. Obviously we cannot prosecute someone for a crime that they may commit in the future.

And if we prosecute for even petty theft in America, what do we do with Bush, who I’m very convinced took this nation to war under false pretenses and has caused incalculable death, horror, and suffering?

I would advise him of two things, kind of using his words against him. If indeed Obama’s sole emphasis seems to be the future, I don’t think anything could improve our image around the world more, restore our credibility more than prosecuting George Bush for his monumental crimes. We would be telling the world’s people that what George Bush did in taking this nation to war on a lie against a sovereign nation like Iraq, without any provocation whatsoever, was not the real America. That was only George Bush’s America. The real America would never do something like that. And then in the real America, no man is so high he is above the law, and even presidents have to be accountable for their crimes. So talking about the future, using President Obama’s own emphasis, I think it would be very advisable to bring Bush to justice if, in fact, he’s guilty, as I say he is.

Talking about the future, if we want to deter future presidents from taking this nation to another war under false pretenses, some president in the future that gets a funny thought, I think that deterrence would increase immeasurably if he knew what America did to George Bush, put him on trial for murder, and if he was convicted, of course, the punishment would either be life imprisonment or the imposition of the death penalty.

I gave you a long answer to the question, but I had always suspected that if there was going to be a prosecution in this place, it would be at the local level. The ideal venue is, in fact, the Department of Justice.

MC: Ultimately, isn’t it the responsibility of the attorney general to determine the crimes that are investigated and what aren’t? For example, if Obama called up Holder and said, “Lay off any prosecutions against the Bush crew,” Holder may take that advice or he may not. But wouldn’t he have to ignore the request?

VB: Well, there’s no question that independent of Obama, Holder has the authority to bring criminal charges against Bush, no question about it. There’s also no question that each of the 93 U.S. attorneys around the country have the power and the authority to do so, but let’s jump from there to reality. The reality is if there’s some U.S. attorney in Chicago that wants to do it, it’s possible, but he’s not going to do it without checking with his boss. You don’t take on the biggest most important murder case in American history without letting your boss know about it, you know — that is, not if you want to remain a U.S. attorney; and likewise with Holder. He has the authority and he has the power to completely ignore Obama, but the reality is what do you do? If Obama indicated that he was opposed to it, it would take quite a man to overrule the president.

MC: Where does that leave the cause of justice for those who died?

Since Obama’s not going to do anything and the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction, the reality is that the only game in town is what took place several weeks ago up in Seattle when Bob Alexander, just a regular citizen, but an American patriot, sent out with volunteers, copies of my book, The Prosecution of George Bush for Murder, to DAs all over the country, with a cover letter from me, asking the DAs to read the book, and, if they agreed that the evidence of guilt was clear and that there’s jurisdiction to proceed against him, I offered to help out in any way that I could, any way that they deemed — any way that they wanted me to, which would range all the way from being a consultant up to and including being appointed as special prosecutor.

MC: I’ve followed Professor Jonathon Turley of George Washington University, and he’s come out and said there are two clear crimes to prosecute Bush for. One is torture, which Bush has essentially admitted, and the other is under the statutes against illegal surveillance. I’m trying to understand why Turley doesn’t — and I don’t know if you’ve talked to him or not –

VB: No, no.

MC: I’m trying to understand where the murder charge is.

VB: I told you that I was disappointed with Obama. I have to take it a step further and say I am offended. I am offended by this movement by those who want to get, quote, even with Bush to just talk about torture. I find it very offensive. And I’ll tell you why. I’m not saying that Bush and his people should not be prosecuted for torture, but I want to get into that in depth in a while. But it should only be at most a footnote to going after him for murder. It should only be a footnote.

The New York Times said in an editorial a month and a half or so ago that there were two dozen verifiable cases of torture at Abu Ghraib. Let’s assume that that number is very conservative, very conservative. Let’s say there’s 100 cases; let’s say there’s 200 cases of torture that can be verified.

How do you compare 200 cases of torturing Iraqis with the unlawful death, if what I say is correct, of one million Iraqis and 4,200 American soldiers? How do you compare these two? Again, is there something that I don’t know? Is there something that I have to be told? How do you compare the two?

They can’t be compared, obviously, and yet all I hear is torture, torture, torture, torture, and I’m offended by that, not because I’m not saying that Bush shouldn’t be prosecuted for torture, but because what’s wrong with these people? To give Bush a free pass on taking this nation to war on a lie. The majority of American people believe that Bush took this nation to war on a lie, and I can’t tell you the number of times there’s been TV and radio shows and articles about the lies of the Bush administration in taking this nation to war. Now all of a sudden they want to forget all about that, these people, and just talk about torture, torture, torture, torture.

There was a cover story in, I think it was Harper’s Magazine about two months ago, about prosecuting Bush. Obviously, I bought the magazine, and I opened it up to the prosecution. What was it all about? Torture. The New York Times had a pro and con in the op-ed section about two months ago, pro prosecution to Bush, anti prosecution to Bush. So I looked at what the prosecution was about — torture. I’m offended by this.

Who’s fighting to bring about justice for the perhaps one million innocent Iraqi men, women, and children and babies in their graves? Actually, I shouldn’t say I’m going to bring about justice for them, or try to, because I was unable to establish jurisdiction to go after Bush for the deaths of the Iraqi citizens. I did establish jurisdiction to go after him for the deaths of the 4,200 American soldiers. In any event, it would be a symbolic effort to bring about justice for the million people in their graves. Let’s say that number’s high. In my book I say over 100,000. Certainly there’s over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, children and babies who died as a result of Bush’s war. Some numbers put it in excess of one million, and we know there’s 4,200 American soldiers.

Who’s fighting to bring about justice for those in their graves, decomposing in their cold graves right now as I’m talking to you, Michael? Who’s doing that out there?

MC: Right.

VB: No one seems to be interested in that. It’s all torture, torture, torture, torture, so apparently torturing 24 or 200 Iraqi citizens or Iraqi insurgents or what have you is more important than bringing about justice, let’s say, for 4,200 American soldiers who died in Bush’s war. So you can see where I am offended about that.

I’m not saying that Bush should not be prosecuted for torture.

Let’s talk about why it’s even more offensive to me than I’ve already told you. I’ve given you the main reason why I’m offended by it, that that’s all they talk about, as opposed to saying let’s go after him for taking this nation to war under false pretenses, and then let’s also add a count to the indictment for torture. Do you follow?

MC: Yes I do. Where does torture fit into the larger picture?

VB: I’m not saying he shouldn’t be prosecuted if he’s guilty of torture. I just don’t think it should be all that people are talking about. But let’s take it to another level. Who are these people who were tortured? Well, I guess virtually all of them were insurgents. There never should have been a war in Iraq. Iraq — there were no terrorists in Iraq, and when you go to war, a war against terror, you go against the terrorists, and there were no terrorists in Iraq, but we’re acting on a set stage here, so in Bush’s — in the Bush administration’s mind, once they were in custody there, they viewed — the Bush administration viewed these insurgents as enemies. So that’s their state of mind. If these insurgents are enemies, why would the Bush administration be authorizing torture? Well, to coerce from them intelligence information that would be helpful to America?

MC: Right.

VB: Which does not eliminate the legal liability but diminishes the moral culpability.

But there was no justification whatsoever under the moon that was helpful to America in invading Iraq, nothing, zero, cipher. Hussein had nothing at all to do with 9/11. He was not an imminent threat to the security of this country. Bush and his people lied to convince the American people on both of those things, that he was an imminent threat and that he had been involved in 9/11. So that diminishes the torture thing even further.

The main guy we’ve got to go after, and there would be many named in the indictment, of course, many others, at least Rice and Cheney, of course, but I believe Rove; the main guy is George Bush. Why is he the main guy? Because he’s the one that authorized it. If he didn’t authorize it, none of these things would ever have happened. I don’t care who influenced him, if anyone at all. He said, yes, let’s do it.

MC: Since we last spoke, there have been more revelations on the outrages of the Iraq War, all a direct result of the lies Bush and Cheney used to sell the war.. How do those revelations build your case?

VB: While all of these revelations are very good, you have to know, Michael, they don’t mean anything at all unless we do something about it. The revelations by themselves, by definition, don’t go anywhere. And that’s why when people hear these revelations, you know, they’re prompted to ask, “What now? Where do we go from here?”

MC: Right.

VB: And, again, not boasting, it’s just a fact that The Prosecution of George Bush for Murder is the what now, where do we go from here book, the only book, out of the probably over 100 out there attacking Bush, that provides a legal blueprint for bringing George Bush to justice.

By all appearances, it also locks the country into years of a weak economy. That means unemployment, underemployment, and more suffering for those willing to work, but left out of the job market. It means lowered opportunities for those who do work and troubles for dependants and indigents. Vital national priorities including affordable health care and the massive effort required to save everyone form calamitous environmental catastrophes are now on hold or under funded.

We don’t have enough dollars. It was the banks versus the people and we just lost.

The theory is that without these payments, the banks will fail and we’ll all be in a world of trouble without them.

All of this depends on the questionable assumption that by saving the banks, we’re saving our economy.

To date, the government has given banks a total of $4.4 trillion dollars. That’s half of the accumulated debt for the federal government.

Citizens get the following from the recently passed $787 stimulus package: a voluntary program that allows banks to lower mortgage payments to help those with troubled loans; an extension of unemployment insurance beyond that provided by states; some innovative environmental programs; and, a much needed start on infrastructure repair. For those working and meeting their obligations, there little but a promise of rescue from calamity.

Here’s how the federal government and Federal Reserve Board have spent your money and obligated your debt.

Graph: The banks received $3.2 trillion through the Federal Reserve, a $700 billion bailout in October, 2008 and 2009 budget item for another $750 billion bailout. An unspecified number of citizens will benefit from the recently passed $787 billion stimulus bill.

All the failed banks had to do was wag their tails in unison and dollars flowed their way.

There has been debate on how to describe the current economic state: recession or depression. Reluctant to admit that we’re even in a recession, private banks, most U.S. economic gurus, and the federal government consistently uses the term recession.

If you’re living this experience right now in an area hard hit, you’ll be interested to know what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had to say. On Apr. 9, 2008, the IMF warned of a danger that the U.S. recession could become a depression. Nine months later, this February, it noted that the “Advanced economies are already in a depression.”

The program to avert a prolonged depression consists of massive infusions of money into the private banks. The recipient banks are, of course, the very same institutions and executives who brought us this economic catastrophe.

So right now, citizens are holding the bag for the money given to the banks, while the banks have no obligation to tell anyone where a majority of this money went or even to repay it.

The banks were expected to take our money via the federal government and create credit opportunities for citizens, credit that would boost the economy. Instead, they took the money and created much tighter credit. As a result, the dollars needed to save citizens from the suffering caused by a depression are not available for that purpose.

Even though citizens will see no benefit in the bank welfare program, they are allowed to anticipate years of economic hardship in order to pay for it. We are currently held hostage by false assumptions about the supposedly inevitable decline of the economy and the suffering that must follow. The most damaging assumption is that the public has to bail out private banks for losses due to massive negligence (at least) leading to their insolvency.

We have become indentured servants working to prop up a comatose financial system and the banks that crated this crisis in the first place.

Does it have to be this way?

The United States has the most productive workforce in the world, thirteen of the top twenty research universities anywhere, and plentiful natural resources. We can feed our selves reasonably well, provide health care for everyone if we choose, and address educational needs when they are recognized. In addition, we’re located between two very friendly countries and populations. That constitutes real wealth.

The nation and people possess everything needed to address the current financial crisis except one seemingly vital element, dollars. We lack the dollars in both the private and public sector to support needed public initiatives and the requirements of business. Citizens also lack the dollars to spend on essentials and non essentials, a critical step in bring the economy back to some semblance of stability.

What are the banks doing with all those dollars they’ve received from us? First, they won’t tell us because they don’t have to for all but the most recent $750 billion gift. Second, they’re in no hurry to make those dollars available for productive purposes. It raises a legitimate question. Do the banks even have this money anymore?

The suffering awaiting the ongoing economic collapse is guaranteed as long as we have faith in the necessity of preserving the current financial system and the assumption that underlies it: we need to pay the debt for what they spent and lost.

Why should we?

We have businesses, small and large, which meet important needs and provide services that are of value. We have citizens and organizations that want to acquire those goods and services. Paying the debt for financial institutions and investors who will do again what they’ve already done.

A great national debate should begin on what replaces the system that failed so miserably and it needs to start with the masses of people who actually do the work that produce our nation’s true wealth.

That advice was probably the best input that United States policy makers ever received (if they even noticed). It was freely offered and no one died in the process.

Why not give democracy a chance?

The Iraqis have a right to a direct vote on the options for U.S. troop withdrawal.

The ballot would be simple.

Should US troops leave Iraq? Yes No

If you answered Yes, how soon should they leave?

Immediately __ 6 months __ 12 months__ 18 months__

Iraqis have wanted the U.S. out of their country almost from day one. Various surveys show that a solid majority of citizens want coalition troops to leave within a year. In 2004, 86% of Iraqis wanted U.S. troops out — 41% immediately and 46% after a new government was established. At the start of 2006, 94% of all Iraqis supported their government setting a timeline for US withdrawal from immediate departure to a timed departure over two years. A few months later, even a poll by the US Department of State showed nearly 70% of citizens wanted US occupation to end.

Polls in 2007 and 2008 conducted by a variety of organizations demonstrate that a majority of Iraqis want foreign troops to leave.

Here’s why they’re upset. Over a million Iraqis have died in sectarian and other forms of violence kicked off by the US invasion. For the most part, this has been Iraqis killing other Iraqis, an outcome of the extensive civil strife that was predicted before the invasion.

In addition, the quality of life in Iraq is dreadful and the citizens do notice. Since 2007, large segments of the population describe a “declining quality/availability of (the) electricity supply, water, fuel, education, local government and medical care.” Harm to an immediate family member was reported by 17% of Iraqis.

But the Iraqis are no fools. They’ve lived with the darkest expressions of the Bush-Cheney White House since March 2003. Nearly 80% of all Iraqis believe that coalition troops won’t withdraw even if they’re asked.

Just a month after the citizens of the United States saw the neoconservatives and their dreams of empire leave power, a new plan was announced. Most US troops will be withdrawn by within 18 months. Thirty to fifty thousand will remain to help with security and the never-ending process of training Iraqi security forces.

Aren’t we missing a step?

Who asked the Iraqi people about the withdrawal schedule? As the self-proclaimed proponents for democracy and human rights, shouldn’t the United States inquire as to the will of the people before initiating any policy changes? Failing to do so means we’ve skipped a critical step. How democratic is that? It’s their country after all.

Did someone forget to raise those questions when the new plans were developed?

Relying on the ever-shifting positions of a very unpopular Iraqi government is useless in assessing the will of the Iraqi people. The only way to determine their will is through a national election. Should U.S. troops stay or go? If they should go, what is the preferred timeline?

Those who speak the language of empire might say that this modest proposal, democracy for Iraq, allows Iraqi citizens to determine US foreign policy.

The answer to that is simple. Right now US foreign policy trumps Iraqi domestic policy and democracy. Denying the vote to the Iraqis on this most vital matter denies their rights to self-determination and belies the role of the United States as a proponent of democracy.

A 2003 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on Iraq stated that:

“Iraqis remain a proud people. Gratitude over the removal of Saddam mixes with a strong strain of nationalism. Military occupation elicits complex reactions, and Iraqis, citing their long history of civilization, believe that they are capable of running their own affairs.” Committee on Foreign Relations, July 2003

That statement was made in 2003. It’s 2009.

Do we believe in the right of self-determination for the long-suffering people of Iraq? If so, at long last, let’s prove it by letting them chose their own fate.

Is this enough to stem the tide for those losing their homes? Will those “who have played by the rules,” as Obama calls them, be salvaged the indignities and financial oblivion that begin in earnest if they’re thrown onto the street? Or will those who broke all the rules profit immeasurably?

In order to understand the current situation, it’s necessary to take a hard look at some really ugly numbers from 2008 summarizing the “nonprime” home lending situation. (The data in this article is from Federal Reserve Bank of New York Dec. 2008 summary of “nonprime” lending).

The nonprime home lending market consists of 2.2 million “Alt-A” home loans to those with good credit who chose “innovative” adjustable rate mortgages plus 2.7 million subprime home loans to those with marginal credit who, often times, used funds to purchase a first home. The total 4.9 million nonprime loans were used to purchase homes that house around 12 to 15 million people.

Nonprime loans Dec. 2008 (Chart)

The total balance due for the five million “nonprime” loans is $1.2 trillion as of December 2008. The loans at risk (60 days overdue) have a balance due of $160 billion (40% for Alt-A’s, 60% for subprimes). Preserving home ownership for those at risk in just the nonprime financed homes will eat up the proposed $75 billion package and reduce the Fannie-Freddie funding increase from $200 to $115 billion dollars.

That presumes every cent pledged today was used for these 714,000 loans. What about the six million additional home foreclosures anticipated over the next two years? More will be needed or a comprehensive approach like a national cramdown may gain the attention of our public servants.

To understand how the future will look, let’s examine what happened in the nonprime market in 2008. The following graph shows the risk in just the nonprime loans. Traditional fixed interest loans are less vulnerable at the moment but when GM and Chrysler implode and as small businesses disappear, traditional loans will show up at risk in droves.

Loan Resets (Chart)

The nonprime lone market has 1.2 million loans at risk of entering foreclosure due to substantial arrears in payment. What will change to allow these people to catch up? There’s no credit line left, in most cases, and no room for a “second” in a home loan where the current value is less than the loan value.

If anyone tells you that we’re finished with the “subprime” crisis, recall these figures above. Over 800,000 subprime loan holders are currently at substantial risk for defaults and foreclosure.

The next wave of loan defaults and eviction risks will come from the Alt-A loans. They are, “typically higher-balance loans made to borrowers who might have past credit problems — but not severe enough to drop them into subprime territory — or who, for some reason (such as a desire not to document income) chose not to obtain a prime mortgage” (NY Federal Reserve) These are often borrowers who took Alan Greenspan’s 2004 advice seriously when he pitched borrowing through a “mortgage product alternative,” (e.g., ARMs), take some cash out, and spend that money (all to “help” the economy).

Small business owners, professionals, and corporate employees from generation X forward used the ARMs, and interest only loans to move into more suitable homes. Why not? Home prices were increasing exponentially. It looked like a good investment. And “the man” Greenspan said so.

The advice and loan programs have turned sour and many are now trapped in loans that will soon change dramatically. In the first few years of an Alt-A or subprimes, interest rates are kept low. In fact, some loans allowed substantially reduced “interest only” payments. It was all about getting people in homes to fuel a housing boom. The “affordability” of new homes pushed the market up in general and created artificial wealth. Now the party is over and these Arthur Greenspan specials are “resetting.”

When a nonprime loan “resets,” it adds an average of three to six points to the loan payment for Alt-A’s and subprimes respectively. It’s quite a shock.

At Risk Nonprime Loans (Chart)

“Average Margin” is a specified amount added to the rate of the mortgage when it “resets” a few years into the loan.

This chart shows the percent of nonprimes resetting in the coming years. In 2009, 630,000 combined nonprime loans will reset to a substantially higher interest, 320,000 in 2010. By 2011, all but 3% the subprimes will have reset. However, starting in 2011, nearly 40% of the Alt-A’s, 850,000 in all, are scheduled to reset. Families and individuals in these homes will have a home loan well over the assessed home value and a substantial increase in interest payments. They’ll be in a recession economy.

The loss of homes is not the sole manifestation of rampant fiscal mismanagement and systemic corruption. It’s a symptom of an economy going in to a steep decline after years of looting by insiders.

Why are we going through all of these gyrations and special programs to prop up a financial system that clearly created this exposure with full knowledge of the substantial risks? Why are we diverting funds to cover bad loans by U.S. banks and bad investments in securities based on those loans by financial interests overseas?

A partial answer is that the U.S. banks that knowingly made these bad loans must be preserved and have their investments preserved. Overseas banks and others who invested in special stock offerings based on this high risk housing bubble must see their investments preserved in some profitable form. (See the next installment of “The Money Party at Work” for a broader explanation.)

We may not know how this crisis will end but it’s clear how it started. Despite warnings from some of the most respected housing experts in the public and private sector, the die was cast by failed financial guru and Wall Street promoter Alan Greenspan in 2004 when he offered uncharacteristically clear advice to home buyers.

From Money Party to Citizens: Drop Dead!, Feb.1, 2008

In 2004, Greenspan told a credit union association crowd that “the refinancing phenomenon” had been supportive for the economy and that the use of home equity “helped cushion” declining stock prices. Then Greenspan showed his supposed genius with this advice to home buyers and owners:

“American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage. To the degree that households are driven by fears of payment shocks but are willing to manage their own interest rate risks, the traditional fixed-rate mortgage may be an expensive method of financing a home.” Understanding household debt obligations, Federal Reserve Board, Feb. 23, 2004

There’s a rational, reasonably immediate solution to a good part of the economic disaster. The banks won’t like it but you will. But first the sad facts.

There were 2.3 million default notices to homeowners in 2008, up 80% over 2007. It will be worse in 2009 with Option ARMs coming due (those favorites of Alan Greenspan).

Typically the nation’s economic leader, California, saw foreclosures increase by 160% in 2008. As a result three percent of California homes, 240,000 in all, became bank properties. These are the same banks that slithered up to the bar and demanded a double shot of the new elixir for failed financial institutions, federal bailouts. Put it on the tab.

To understand the full extent of the economic collapse, consider this. The current official unemployment rate is 7.2%. This includes those out of a job who have actively sought employment in the past four weeks. But this figure understates the level of economic distress. There are 1.9 million unemployed “marginally attached” workers not counted and 8.0 million underemployed workers seeking full time employment.

The total unemployed and under employed figure is 21 million U.S. workers.

Michigan, Florida, Ohio, and South Carolina are facing hard times similar to those in California. Your state is next. It’s a nationwide phenomenon.

Despite hundreds of billions in giveaways to the banks, there are no reports of a single U.S. citizen or family receiving a bailout from Washington to help them stay in their home.

What happens when you’re thrown out of your home or apartment and you have no job?

To begin with, you’re poor.

You can live on the street, move in with relatives, or seek to rent a home or an apartment. After a foreclosure, your credit rating will probably disqualify you from most opportunities at the outset. If you’re in a warmer climate, you can live in a tent city which began springing up across the country last September.

You can and will enter an entirely new world where you’re exposed to a variety of risks that will make it very difficult to put your life back together again. Crime, infectious diseases, underpayment for work, and increasing social isolation are routine.

You can become a crime victim. In your new world, that of the poor, you will find that you’re among the group with the majority of violent crime victims.

You can seek and receive occasional “subprime” medical care in hospital emergency rooms. But the days of serious attention to an ongoing condition, arthritis for example, are over for you.

You can watch your life melt away and your family suffer, all without the prospect of any real assistance. Homeless shelters are full in most places. Public health programs have been overflowing for years. The “welfare state” simply doesn’t exist. You’re screwed.

Wall Street welfare was supposed to save us from all of this according to the Bush-Cheney scam artists. Those two and their henchmen doubled the national debt in just a few short years of concentrated looting. Somehow, the most recent Wall Street donations were supposed to secure failed financial institutions and generate a stimulus for the economy. No deal.

To add insult to that injury, a $140 billion tax cut for banks was written “into law” by a Treasury Department bureaucrat, a move that everyone consulted said was clearly illegal. Nothing was done about it. In fact, a key congressional staffer explained it this way: “We’re all nervous about saying that this was illegal because of our fears about the marketplace.” (Nov. 10, 2008)

Crime pays. Deception pays.

But the money to pay working people isn’t there thanks to the financial manipulations that made the very wealthy even wealthier and left the rest with little to nothing in return. There is no room at this inn for people who need a helping hand.

When Do the People Collect?

California passed a law that cut into foreclosures by requiring that the banks actually give a reasonable notice of default prior to tossing families onto the street. This program had an impact for a few months but foreclosures bounced back and kept growing.

Representative Marcy Kaptur, (D-OH), responded to the economic collapse of Toledo, Ohio (11% unemployment) with a sensible idea. Foreclosures and evictions are a commonplace event. Kaptur tells citizens to stay put, don’t leave your home if a foreclosure notice is issued. “Produce the Paper” is the theme. Due to the complexity of many bad loans, it can be very difficult to figure out which bank actually holds the mortgage or to even find a true loan document. Without that information, there are legal challenges that can force banks to delay or forgo eviction.

Time for a Nationwide “Cramdown”

The easiest solution, the most immediate, is a cramdown. What’s that?

In bankruptcy court, a judge can take the total amount of a mortgage and divide it into two parts. The appraised home value becomes the “secured claim” and “the amount over the current appraised home value” becomes the “unsecured claim.” The unsecured amount is discarded. The secured amount, i.e., current appraised value, becomes the homeowner’s only debt. This debt can be amortized over the life of the loan. Thus monthly payments go down, people have a much better chance of staying in their homes, and they have some disposable income for essentials. (see here)

Congressional Democrats and President Obama are arguing over legislation that would give bankruptcy judges greater options for “cramdowns.” Both sides of the argument are out of touch with the accelerating harsh realities of the U.S. economy as experienced directly by the citizens.

There’s no court that needs to hear this case. The nationwide cramdown should be negotiated directly by the Obama administration, in behalf of all citizens and the remaining banks. Obama’s two financial system insiders, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and chief economic adviser Larry Summers, would all of sudden become the good cop/bad cop negotiators shoving the banks in a corner and forcing them so submit to the plan.

Cramdowns were mentioned in the campaign as one of several options to address the needs of homeowners. Obama can resist the idea and those in Congress can ignore the scope of action needed. But the people will bring them back to reality very soon, just as they did on the specific issue of having someone in the cabinet so rich and aloof that he forgets to pay $126,000 in income taxes.

Meeting the urgent need for people to have a home means less social and economic disruption. There would be an immediate stimulus with more money available to spend in the real economy. This stimulus program would put money back in the economy in months not years.

Now is the time.

By filing this order, the government surrendered forever its ability to prosecute Lindauer as an “Iraqi foreign agent” and for lesser charges contained in the indictment, including a one week trip to Baghdad in March, 2002.

Lindauer made the following statement today, Jan 16, 2009: “I am disgusted by this case. They think that they have defeated me by denying my day in court. It could not be more wrong. If we can’t have a criminal trial, we’re going to have a civil trial for damages.”

Lindauer was arrested in March, 2004 shortly after offering to testify before a Bush appointed blue ribbon commission evaluating U.S. pre-war intelligence on Iraq. In late February, she informed the offices of two commission members, Sen. McCain (R-AZ) and Trent Lott (R-MS), that she could testify that U.S. pre-war intelligence was proactive and effective, not a popular view at that time.

Lindauer has adamantly maintained her innocence of all charges since her arrest. In addition to the “unregistered agent” charge, the government alleged that she had taken an unauthorized trip to Baghdad, and attended meetings with Iraqi intelligence agents at the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations. Lindauer planned an aggressive defense with evidence that showed both government knowledge and authorization of her activities plus a history of activity on behalf of U.S. intelligence.

Lindauer offered an affidavit concerning the Lockerbie bombing in 1998. Her statement was based on her discussions with Dr. Richard Fuisz, whom she named as her CIA handler. Dr. Fuisz was said to be “a major operative in the Middle East in the 1980s.” Since then the Scottish Criminal Cases Justice Commission has since uncovered irregularities in the evidence against the two Libyans convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

The initial indictment charged Lindauer with trying to influence United States policy by sending this letter to her second cousin, then Bush chief of staff Andrew Card. From 2000 until her arrest in 2003, Lindauer provided Card with 11 letters detailing the progress of talks to resume the U.N. weapons inspections and anti-terrorist cooperation offered with the United States by Iraq. The last of this series of letters to Card was the sole basis of the charge that Lindauer attempted to influence U.S. government policies, while acting as an “unregistered agent” for pre war Iraq.

The Card letter was the “high water mark” of the government’s charge of acting as a foreign agent according to former chief judge of the Southern District, Manhattan federal court, now Attorney General, Michael B. Mukasey. In that letter, Lindauer urged the Bush administration to stop plans to invade Iraq and to seek engagement through negotiation. Lindauer wrote that U.S. soldiers would face stiff opposition based on Iraqi hostility resulting from a lethal ten year embargo and daily bombing during the 1990’s.

She also advised Card that an invasion would create a new wave of terrorists threatening the security of the United States. This letter was hand delivered to Card with a copy, also hand delivered, provided to then Secretary of State Colin Powell.

“Above all, you must realize that if you go ahead with this invasion, Osama bin Laden will triumph, rising from his grave or seclusion. His network will be swollen with fresh recruits, and other charismatic individuals will seek to build upon his model, multiplying those networks. And the United States will have delivered the death blow to itself. Using your own act of war, Osama and his cohort will irrevocably divide the hearts and minds of the Arab Street from moderate governments in Islamic countries that have been holding back the tide. Power to the people, what we call ‘democracy,’ will secure the rise of fundamentalists.” (Susan Lindauer to Andrew Card, January 6, 2003)*

Lindauer has consistently maintained that she had been acting as a United States intelligence asset from the mid 1990’s until the invasion, supervised by handlers for the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency.

In the only open hearing on the case, award winning investigative reporter and former Congressional chief of staff, Kelly O’Meara, testified that she observed Lindauer meeting with Paul Hoven on a weekly basis over a period of 16 months. Lindauer maintains that Hoven was her second handler for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Investigative reporter Leslie Cockburn wrote that Hoven had “an enormous range of contacts in the murky world of special – i.e., clandestine – operations.”

At the same hearing, Parke Godfrey, PhD, an associate professor of computer science at York University, Toronto, testified that Lindauer had warned him on several occasions that a major attack would take place in Southern Manhattan in the fall of 2001. Dr. Godfrey claimed her warnings specified that the attack would most likely involve airplane hijackings and a reprise of the 1993 World Trade Center attack. She came to this conclusion based on work she describes with Richard Fuisz.

The Department of Justice argued that Lindauer was “delusional” for claiming a role as a U.S. asset. Lindauer described this as “guilt by pleading innocent.” In October, 2005, former Judge Mukasey ordered Lindauer to a federal prison facility at Carswell Air Force Base in Ft. Worth Texas for psychiatric evaluation to see if she would be competent to stand trial. Lindauer was confined for seven months, and then formally declared incompetent without a hearing, over her strongest objections. The allowable period for such evaluations is four months according to U.S. Federal Code.

Carswell staff acknowledged that there were no external symptoms of mental illness. However, they proposed that Lindauer should be detained indefinitely and drugged with Haldol until whatever time she could be “cured” of claiming that she had worked as a U.S. asset in counter-terrorism. Lindauer refused, and a lengthy court battle ensued. She was transferred to Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.

After four months confinement in Manhattan, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward O’Callaghan sought an order from Mukasey to incarcerate her for another four months and the use physical force to administer doses of Haldol or similar medications. This was despite an internal staff report by Carswell that there was no reason to justify forcible drugging since Lindauer was not a threat to herself or anyone else. Mukasey denied the prosecution request and ordered Lindauer to be released on bond on June 6, 2006.

Lindauer hired former prosecutor and Washington DC criminal attorney Brian W. Shaughnessy as counsel in mid 2008. Shaughnessy filed a motion to overturn the governments finding that she was incompetent to stand trial. Shaughnessy argued that Lindauer’s record of doing well on her own before and after her arrest and her direct involvement in her defense made the government’s continual claim of an inability to stand trial moot.

Bush appointee, Judge Loretta Preska ruled to uphold the government’s position on Lindauer’s competence on Sept. 15, 2008. Preska had been nominated for the federal appellate bench on Sept. 9, 2008.

Just a few weeks after Dr. Godfrey testified about Lindauer’s warnings on the 9/11 attack, Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward O’Callaghan left the District Attorney’s office to join the McCain presidential campaign. He began assisting Sarah Palin’s legal team in Alaska. Dr. Godfrey testified that he had told the FBI her claims were truthful a full year before the Justice Department detained her at Carswell.

Ms. Lindauer’s Attorney, Brian W. Shaughnessy pointed out that he could find no other instance where federal, state or local prosecutors have ever argued for a defendant’s incompetence to stand trial over the objections of the defendant and defendant’s Counsel, when that defendant was a successfully functioning member of the community and a full participant in her defense.

Lindauer lives in the DC metropolitan area where she is rebuilding her career and undertaking some writing projects.

He neglected his duty prior to 911 resulting in a devastating attack on the nation.

He started an illegal war based on lies that caused injury and death to tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and the deaths of over 1.2 million Iraqi civilians.

He ordered the illegal wire tapping of citizens, a clear violation of law.

He stopped scientific research causing the suffering unto death of those with illness and injury that could have been healed during his term.

The list goes on. Bush ruled like a tyrant with the wisdom of an adolescent sociopath.

Right now this man who should have been impeached and subsequently jailed for his crimes is planning last minute pardons and acts of clemency for his friends, co-conspirators, and others who meet his deviant criteria for release from legal obligations.

Highly motivated citizens and legislators are seeking legal precedents and rationales to stop Bush from pardoning his collaborators.

Hopefully, their efforts, one of which is impeachment, will meet with success. Allowing those who attacked the people to walk away free after the death, destruction and ruin they’ve caused will deny meaning to any efforts aimed at true reform.

The problem of presidential pardons goes well beyond George W. Bush’s ability to issue them. The absolute right of presidents to pardon any crime is archaic, arbitrary, and offensive to those who value human dignity, rationality, and the rule of law.

Pardons and Clemency Emerged from Tyranny and the “Divine Right” to Rule

Roman emperor Nero (left) “fiddled while Rome burned” and executed his relatives. As emperor, Caligula (right) showed his contempt for Rome by torturing citizens and appointing a horse to the Senate

Rome formalized the shift from a republic to an imperial state when Julius Caesar was elevated above all by the Senate. This allowed him to accumulate vastly expanded powers even though he was a “first among equals.”

The fiction of the Roman Republic remained but Julius Caesar and those who followed had extraordinary authority over policy and state action. The emperor even had the power to arbitrarily overrule the decisions of tribunes of the people and magistrates.

While Rome claimed to bring civilization to those it subdued, it was ultimately a lawless state given the powers usurped by the emperors. No citizen was safe if he or she offended the first among equals. No decision by the people meant anything if the emperor’s needs got in the way.

Roman dictatorship was replaced in Europe by hereditary royalty (with the exception of the Republic of Venice). During the middle ages, these rulers by accident of birth and raw power generated the notion of the “divine right” of monarchs. Subjects were to believe that God flawlessly conferred the right of kings to rule.

With the divine franchise, monarchs were able to determine who was arrested, tried, and convicted whenever it suited them. They were the state. These rulers had the absolute right to say who was and was not tortured and executed. There was some resistance to the notion of “the divine right.” Shakespeare echoed this in Richard the III when the Earl of Lancaster comments on Richard’s crimes:

“That England that was wont to conquer others
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself” (2.1.65-66)

The first English Civil War represented a full break with the assertion of divinely conferred rule. The conflict pitted the English middle class against the self-absorbed monarch, William I and his supporters. The army fighting the king was one of the first in history to openly debate policy and political structure in the midst of war.

“Agitator” John Wildman, the son of a butcher, drafted the “Agreement of the People.” The original transcripts of the debate (center) and agitator and trooper Edward Sexby who, with Wildman, led the debate in behalf of radical democracy..

The Putney Debates involved Oliver Cromwell on one side and the Levelers faction of the army on the other. The army proposed a new government based on a universal male franchise, strict proportional representation, and punishment for King William I for his crimes. They also specified the equality of citizens before the law, without exception:

That in all laws made or to be made, every person may be bound alike; and that no tenure, estate, charter, degree, birth, or place do confer any exemption from the ordinary course of legal proceedings whereunto others are subjected.
– “An agreement of the people,” Oct., 24, 1647

Cromwell prevailed against radical democracy. But the ideas didn’t die.

The American Revolutionary War was inspired in part by the political descendants of the Levelers. The outcome was compromised, to a degree, by the retention of the artifact of divine rule — the absolute right to pardon criminals of all sorts. As a result of the recent collapse of legislative balance against tyranny and cloaked as executive prerogative (much like the Romans suffered), we have a deviant leader with the power to negate what’s left of our most important laws with the stroke of a pen.

Bush negated legislation he disliked by issuing “signing statements” indicating his intent to ignore laws he didn’t care for. He will soon negate the history of his crimes by pardoning those who collaborated in the nations “conquest of itself” thus voiding any remainder of individual and collective protections.

Bush should be denied this power. But the issue isn’t confined to Bush. It’s about the ability of each citizen to expect equal treatment by the law and for all citizens to know in no uncertain terms that no one is above the law.

Election to the presidency is not elevation to a divine status. It should not be taken as a right to unilaterally declare war, torture, lie, and steal nor should it turn into a right to allow others to do the same without impunity.

The constitution should be amended to end this arbitrary and offensive practice now and forever:

There will be little is no opposition to the arranged marriage between corporate and government interests.

There will be no remedies for the problems that were created as a result of this arrangement.

There will be no accountability for the crimes committed over the past eight years. The looting of the United States Treasury will continue.

And the projection of power in behalf of corporate interests will continue when needed, unopposed, without regard to the well being of the nation as a whole or the interests of citizens. The Senate cave-in is a paradigm for past behavior by corporatist Democrats in both houses of Congress.

Lieberman’s retention of his committee chairmanship and caucus membership is all the proof we need that a majority of the Senate Democratic Caucus finds nothing objectionable to a member actively campaigning for the Republican nominee for president, live and in person. It doesn’t matter that Lieberman dismissed the Democratic nominee’s qualifications to be president. Could they be any more obvious?

Lieberman spoke in support of Senator McCain’s candidacy in prime time at the Republican convention. He derided the importance of parties by saying,

“But when they (citizens) look to Washington, all too often they don’t see their leaders coming together to tackle these problems. Instead, they see Democrats and Republicans fighting each other, rather than fighting for the American people.”

This description of party conflict is a total lie as Lieberman well knows. The tyrant Bush got nearly everything he asked for from Congress without any noticeable opposition, even after the Democrats assumed the majority in 2006.

Lieberman went on to remind the assembled that George Washington had warned of the dangers of political parties. Then he told the audience, “Well, I’ll tell you what: I’m here to support John McCain because country matters more than party.” By implication, he argued that President-elect Obama did not put country before party.

What country is Lieberman talking about?

Is the country that saw nearly a trillion dollars (and counting) given away to corporate failures on Wall Street while millions lose their homes?

Is it the country that was tricked into supporting an invasion of Iraq to catch someone in Afghanistan? Wasn’t this the invasion that precipitated events resulting in the death of 1.2 million Iraqi civilians, caused tens of thousands of deaths and injuries to U.S. soldiers, and began the road to bankruptcy?

Is it the country that was attacked on 9/11 that never saw a real investigation other than the one choreographed by Condoleezza Rice’s former collaborator.

It is certainly the country in which the majority of citizens have little say while their government is looted by the corporate elite represented by Lieberman and those who endorse him.

He does well by his friends. When the Enron scandal broke and tens of thousands lost billions in that pyramid scheme, Lieberman’s Senate committee was in charge of investigating. But as The New York Times pointed out, Lieberman:

“[R]eceived $25,000 from Enron. Critics have also pointed out that Citigroup, Enron’s largest lender, is Mr. Lieberman’s top donor, giving his campaigns $112,000 since 1997, campaign records show. A longtime Republican strategist put it this way, ”Lieberman’s problem is simple — Enron’s biggest creditor is his campaign’s biggest contributor.” (Jan. 2, 2002)

Lieberman delivered. There was no serious investigation of Enron by the Senate. The people were without an advocate. All we got was a wink and a nod paving the way for the latest corporate thefts. This is the best clue to Lieberman’s morality and philosophy, the same morality and philosophy endorsed by the Democrats who welcomed him back to their “party” with open arms.

He does put one country first, corporate America. His record is riddled with this sort of self serving deals that benefit of those who pay his campaign bills and employ his ex staffers.

How serious can those 42 Senate Democrats be? Quite serious, actually. Most of them are guilty of the same betrayals that Lieberman committed. They’re just a bit less obvious than the low key male hysteric that they find so irresistible.

They are the hollow men and women who act as though political parties mean nothing.

They are the political zombies with feigned amnesia allowing them to forget the crimes of the past eight years, crimes to which they’ve been a party.

They represent the triumph of The Money Party:

“It is not about Republicans versus Democrats. Right now, the Republicans do a better job taking money than the Democrats. But The Money Party is an equal opportunity employer. They have no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests. Democrats are as welcome as Republicans to this party. It’s all good when you’re on the take and the take is legal.”

There were no provisions announced to bailout citizens facing foreclosure or help with their bad investments.

Congress plans vote on the legislation today, Monday, Sept. 29, if the leadership gets their way.

Calls to Capitol Hill are reported to be 30 to 1 opposed to legislation that bails out the rogue Wall Street investors. Public opinion polling has shown a majority opposed to the legislation, unless the question contains the unproven assumption that the economy will collapse in a few days without a bill. In a remarkable show of opposition to the bill, 1,200 marched down Wall Street Friday. There were also protests in Chicago and Ohio plus more planned for Monday, Sept. 29.

This public stance developed in spite of dire warnings of a national and global collapse of the economy should the legislation fail to materialize. These predictions are not universal, by far. A public appeal by 200 economists opposes the congressional rush to judgment, summarized in these terms:

“[W]e ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.”

Concerns About Proposed Bailout Bill

The original bailout proposed by the White House gave the Secretary of the Treasury unlimited discretion in doling out $700 billion and barred any Congressional or judicial review. The new legislation calls for “consultation” with the following entities. Please note that not one of those to be consulted is an elected official and that Congress is out of the loop.

CONSULTATION.– In exercising the authority under this section, the Secretary shall consult with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Corporation, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. (Title I, Sec 101, (b) “Consultation” page 7, lines 18-23 and pages 15, lines 23-24, and page 16, lines 1-9.)

The people get involved in the decision making process, presuming Congress is listening. Sec.115. Graduated Authorization to Purchase (pages 40 – 49) provides an option to overrule any particular bailout. Congress has 15 days after a purchase notice by Treasury to introduce a joint resolution disapproving of the bill. The resolution has a tight window to passage, three days, and is subject to a presidential veto. The “fast track” aspects of this guarantee the same types of hurried votes characterized by a majority of members failing to even read a proposed bill (e.g., The Patriot Act).

The bill requires that the Secretary of the Treasury report to Congress no more than seven days after a commitment to purchase a failed financial institution or at $50 billion dollar disbursement intervals. (Title 1, Sec. 105, Reports, (b) Tranche Reports to Congress, (b) Timing, page 19, lines 7-24 and page 20, lines 1-10) The only direct option Congress has is the above mentioned “Joint Resolution of Disapproval.”

The bill addresses overpayment for troubled firms with the intent of preventing “unjust enrichment.” This is done “by preventing the sale of a troubled asset to the Secretary at a higher price than what the seller paid to purchase the asset.” (Title I, Sec 101, (e) Unjust Enrichment, page 9, lines 15-18).

What if the price the seller paid for the asset was an inflated home price in a down real estate market at the time of a bailout? By paying higher than market value prices, not limited by the bill, “enrichment” would be guaranteed.

Even if that there were a real prohibition that failed firms not make out under this bill, there is an open gate to enrichment, firms in “conservatorship or receivership.”

“This subsection does not apply to troubled assets acquired in a merger or acquisition, or a purchase of as sets from a financial institution in conservatorship or receivership, or that has initiated bankruptcy proceedings under title 11, United States Code.” (Title I, Sec 101, (d), page 9, lines 18-23)

Thus, there can be what would be considered “unjust enrichment” if a firm just declares Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

How long will it be before people compare this generous bankruptcy provision for billion dollar firms with the draconian bankruptcy reform bill passed by Congress in 2005?

What if the Public Knew This?

On Saturday, Sept. 27, Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times reported a remarkable story that may further shake public confidence in the bailout and the man in charge, Secretary of the Treasury, Henry M. Paulson. The Secretary held a top level meeting at the New York Federal Reserve Bank with “the nation’s most powerful regulators and bankers.” There was only one Wall Street executive in the room, Lloyd C. Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, the investment banking firm Paulson ran as chief executive before joining the Bush administration.

Discussed at the meeting was the fact that AIG owed Goldman Sachs $20 billion and was about to default. Following the meeting AIG was bailed out to the tune of $85 billion dollars. Paulson’s former firm, Goldman Sachs, clearly benefited as a result of the AIG bailout.

How would citizens react to that, were it presented as part of the bailout debate?

They would probably be furious and demand that there be careful consideration and deliberation of this bill. They might even determine that it was blackmail with the people who caused the problem threatening a world financial meltdown if they don’t get their way. Then they would connect the dots between the bailout and the head dispenser of funds, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs. This firm received huge financial benefits from Secretary Paulson before this bill was even conceived.

The will of the people is just “collateral damage” if members of Congress determine that details like democracy and honesty are less important than the instructions of their leadership and the Wall Street firms that created this problem in the first place.

Washington DC — Senator John McCain can’t live without Sarah Palin but he can’t live with her either, at least not much longer.

McCain is much like Professor Rath in “The Blue Angel.” He’s infatuated with someone much younger and he has joined the carnival just to be near her. The Palin act travels from one town to the next attracting crowds of Bush-Cheney dead enders. She steps forward, with the confidence of a high school cheerleader while the full professor of perverse politics looks on with admiration and affection.

At the start of his campaign, he was unable to draw a crowd or deliver a speech that just about anyone found the least bit engaging. In early side by side coverage of a same day event, CNN showed Obama hitting one out of the park and McCain struggling to engage 200 onlookers.

The net effect of the Palin addition is in dispute. If you’re part of the Republican media shill brigade, it’s been terrific, a brilliant choice. Looking at it objectively, there’s been little impact on the ticket, unless you buy into the Gallup Poll that showed what looked like a McCain convention bounce. To “stand up” the bounce, Gallup simply added more Republicans to their sample, driving up McCain’s numbers. But if you’re candidate John McCain, you’re locked and loaded, exhilarated, and infused vicariously by your vision of Palin’s draw.

McCain was a man of special privilege. Despite his mild admonition for participating in the last financial meltdown due to his acceptance of gifts from savings and loan failure Charles Keating, McCain has been a press darling. He’s provided good box office for sound bites on a variety of issues. For a short time, he went against the grain of right wing madness. In his Norfolk, Virginia speech announcing his 2000 candidacy for president, he took on the worst elements of U.S. politics.

McCain also pulled off one of the great pieces of modern street theater, also in the 2000 primaries. He stood before the Russian embassy and castigated the New York Republican Party for taking his name off the primary ballot on a technicality. He was quickly restored to the ballot.

But time and the nonstop coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign began to wear on his patience. The press had actually criticized him, very lightly and not too often. He was not pleased.

Then he got Palin. Despite the array of initial criticism and the ongoing attacks on her character and political deviance, she’s shown that she can draw a crowd. McCain was infatuated. He followed her just about everywhere and continues to do so.

To a crowd of 7,000 people in Lancaster, PA, McCain said, “”With the help of this running mate, this stalwart and great American, we will always put our country first” Sept. 9, 2008.

The reality is another story. For the first time in nearly eight years, a cross section of the corporate media has opened up on the right wing establishment. The Post, a long time stenography pool for the Bush administration, ran a serious front page story on embarrassing family details. The New York Times editorialized along with the St. Petersburg Times. Now ABC’s Brian Ross and his Blotter investigative team are on the case.

You might remember Ross from “Foleygate”, the scandal that broke in late August 2006 and tarnished congressional Republicans right up until the 2006 mid term election. Ross broke the story. In less than one month, .he and his team produced over 20 stories on Foley and his relationship with congressional pages. Now he and his “Blotter” team are focused on Palin. On Sept. 11, 2008, we got Palin Backstab? Commissioner Praised Then Fired followed up with ‘Troopergate’ Inquiry Reaches Palin Husband on Sept. 12. Ross is approaching the pace of the Foley story.

In addition to corporate media news groups, the National Enquirer has a team on the ground in Alaska.

Palin’s Dominance Dooms McCain

What options does candidate McCain have right now?

He can strike out on his own for rallies and events. This is obviously necessary but represents a major gamble. His crowds will soon be compared to hers and we know how that will come out.

He can continue to follow Palin and bask in the glow of her crowd pleasing act. But to what end? The large media outlets will begin to comment on his dependant role as political house husband. He’ll be seen as clinging to Palin’s apron strings, afraid to leave the nest, etc.

The third option consists of riding out the numerous scandals that are Palin. Vindictive firings; charging the state travel for 300 days spend at her home; tens of thousands of airfares and other travel for her family; book banning; flitrations with the secessionist Alaska Independence Party; etc. There are so many developing scandals to choose from, including some that aren’t even hinted at currently.

Then there’s the Defenders of Wildlife devastating television ad on hunting wolves from airplanes and their micro documentary Aerial hunting in Alaska. These are tearing up the airwaves at YouTube with original posts and mirrors totaling over a million views by now. There are derivative videos that are equally devastating.

McCain took a “bridge to nowhere” thinking it was the path to his salvation. Given his total abandonment of any degree of consistency and civility in this campaign, it’s hard to have much sympathy. Palin was a bad move no matter how hard the Orwellian faction spins it.

Now Palin has McCain trapped. Very soon, he won’t be able to live with her. But without her, his decent into triple digit crowds and positions that represent a shrinking minority of the electorate will only cause the public to recall his infatuation with a woman who encouraged the slaughter of wolves and payment for their subsequent dismemberment.

On Wednesday, September 3, the White House announced a comprehensive aid package valued at $1.1 billion dollars to help the Republic of Georgia recover from the whipping it took after it attacked Russian peace keeping forces in South Ossetia, a breakaway province of Georgia near the Russian border. That region experienced a major war in 1991 and varying tensions since.

Russian personnel were in Georgia as part of a multi-national peace keeping regime created by the United Nations and endorsed by the European Union in 2006.

When the Soviet Union dissolved, Georgia was one the few Soviet republics to successfully declare its independence. This resulted in tensions with the Russian government and also generated real concern among those living in South Osettia. They’re not ethnic Georgians and have experienced periodic conflict with the government. As a result of war related violence in 1991, for example, 100,000 fled South Ossetia for refuge and safety in Russia.

South Ossetia held two national elections which endorsed independence form Georgia. The Georgians refuse to recognize this claim and, unlike Kosovo, which had no elections, there was little international support for the aspiring nation. As a result, there have been ongoing skirmishes and political conflicts between the South Ossetia and Georgia from 1991 on.

Tensions between Russia and Georgia had been building in recent months. On Aug. 7, 2008, the Georgian president issued orders to his negotiators to meet with the chief Russian negotiator.

We should find all the means to stop incidents and to stop the violence, to stop threats and creating of problems to the peaceful population. Of course, we will show maximum restraint, but we do not recommend anyone to continue provocations.
– Mikheil Saakashvili, Aug, 7, 2008, 12:45

A few hours later, the government of Georgia said it had “decided to restore constitutional order in the entire region” of South Ossetia” through military efforts. By the afternoon of Aug, 8, officials in South Ossetia confirmed that, “Numerous Georgian military units are moving towards the border [with the breakaway region]” and that Georgia was carrying out “large scale military attacks” against their country.

The TimesOnline (London) reported that this was the start of military conflict. They’re clear that the conflict was initiated by the military actions announced by the Georgian government on August 8, 2008.

“Russia and Georgia edged dangerously close to direct conflict today after Tbilisi (Georgia) launched an overnight offensive to regain control over the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

“Fighting raged around the city of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetians capital, as Georgian troops backed by tanks and warplanes pounded separatist forces. At least 15 people were reported to have been killed.”

Those who insist that Russia started the military phase of this conflict need only check in with the government of Georgia. On Aug. 8, 2008, at 12:35, a Georgia news agency reported that “A senior official from the Georgian Ministry of Defense said Georgia had ‘decided to restore constitutional order in the entire region’ of South Ossetia.” The release went on to say that Georgia took the military action after the South Ossetia refused to accept a cease fire.

Russian military actions came after the attacks on South Ossetia by the Republic of Georgia. The only people who fail to acknowledge this are found in the U.S. political and media establishment.

Today, we’re all Georgians!
– Sen. John McCain, Republican Presidential Candidate, Associated Press, Aug., 12, 2008

McCain’s battle cry drew little response form the general public. It did fall in line with Bush administration policies, however.

The leader of Georgia responsible for initiating the conflict, President Mikheil Saakashvili, is a U.S. trained lawyer who took power in Georgia in 2004 through the “Rose Revolution.” The Bush administration and private groups helped advance the claim that Georgia’s government had committed election fraud and lacked legitimacy.

George Soros, the activist billionaire, provided $42 million to oust the former government with the help of Freedom House, headed at that time by former CIA Director James Woolsey. Other private foundation funded “democracy” groups helped as well. Saakashvili had the foresight to hire Sen. John McCain’s current foreign policy adviser as his DC lobbyist, Randy Scheunemann.

There were well organized public protests in the capitol, a chorus of international pressure for change, and Saakashvili was swept into power.

With Saakashvili in charge, U.S. and European firms made major investments in the nation and then praised the new government for rapid economic growth accounted for by those investments. Improvements to ports and infrastructure for a U.S.- European oil pipeline, intended to bypass Russia, were a central focus of the investments.

Once in power, the proponents of democracy followed the path of those they’d replaced by turning the country into a virtual one party state. Charges of corruption like that under the old regime have become more common. There are also charges that Saakashvili and his party are engaged in election fraud like that of the previous rulers.

Nevertheless, U.S. support has been unwavering. On July 10, less than a month before Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia, Condoleezza Rice was in the Georgian capital lending U.S. support to Georgia’s “territorial integrity,” by which she meant the disputed area of South Ossetia.

Shortly after he attacked, President Saakashvili must have been further encouraged by White House orders to promptly fly 2,000 Georgian troops home from Iraq to help fight the Russians.

The Russians responded to the attack by Georgia in about the same way that the United States would be expected to respond if Cuba, for example, attacked U.S. military personnel conducting official business close to our borders. How hard was it to anticipate the disastrous outcome?

Hallucinogenic Politics

The volatile Georgian president held a bizarre press conference on Aug. 15 after it was clear that there would be no U.S. or other troops coming to his aid. Speaking at a joint press conference with Condoleezza Rice, Saakashvili blamed the Russian invasion on a NATO meeting in April 2008 where Georgia failed to gain admission to that organization. He said that Russia began a military buildup along the border that somehow made it clear that Russia intended to attack his tiny republic.

He skipped over some important events (like his troops attacking South Ossetia) and lashed out at the United States and Europe with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice next to him: “So who invited the trouble here? Who invited this arrogance here? Who invited these innocent deaths here? Who is – not only those people who perpetrate them are responsible, but also those people who failed to stop it.”

In a clear contradiction to his claimed knowledge of an imminent threat of invasion, the president of Georgia indicated that he had no idea that a Russian military action was about to take place: “When the thing started, I had to rush back, cut my holiday short when the tensions started to raise.”

The very odd gap in Saakashvili’s narrative concerns his orders for a Georgian attack on South Ossetia on Aug. 7, 2008. He knew that Russian personnel were present in South Ossetia. How could he forget about his order to restore Georgian “constitutional authority” by sending his troops on the offensive? What did he think the Russians would do? Did he actually expect that the United States would attack the Russians in response? And what kind of chief executive goes on holiday when he’s convinced that his country is about to be attacked?

After a joint press conference where he insulted the United States for inviting “these innocent deaths” by inaction, the Bush administration decided to give him $1.1 billion to repair the damage that resulted from the rash actions by the Georgian president.

So Why are We Giving Georgia $1.1 Billion Dollars?

Sen. McCain had a point when he said that “Today, we’re all Georgians.” In fact, the Bush-Cheney regime and the cooperating “democracy” groups gave birth, so to speak, to the current Georgian state.
Could it be that some of the patrons of those who helped create Georgia will benefit from the $1.1 billion dollar aid bill?

If so, then a portion of the billion dollars will subsidize those firms that made the initial investments after Saakashvili s rise to power. These folks were truly Georgians on Aug. 12 when Georgia was put in its place. They’ll surely be in line for the largess handed out by the fathers of Georgian democracy, the president and vice president of the United States of America.

The Russian response to Georgia’s attack on August 8 was predictable. They have a number of vital interests in the region. The provocation by the tiny Republic of Georgia was a gift. It created an opportunity to extend Russian influence in response to an attack on their peace keeping personnel. In retrospect, this outcome was probably guaranteed with the installation of an intemperate, rash leader who received nothing but praise as he replicated the policies and tactics of the corrupt regime that he helped remove from power.

Giving Georgia a billion dollars may simply recycle those funds to U.S. firms that are doing business there. In addition, this financial reward will reinforce the tactically challenged president of Georgia for his grandiosity and lack of restraint. It may even create the opportunity for yet another Russian smack down followed by outraged reaction from those whose tears are more likely from joy at the ever expanding opportunity to promote the cycle of war and rebuilding around the world paid for by the hard work and taxes of the citizens of the United States.

Most notably, Prados shows the depth of the deception perpetrated against citizens and Congress regarding the alleged threat to U.S. security posed by Iraq. It had appeared that the White House rewrote the Oct. 1, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and then issued that doctored report to Congress on Oct. 4, 2002. Prados reveals convincing evidence that the Oct. 4 White Paper had already been written by July 2002. He shows that it was only slightly altered after the final NIE arrived. This White Paper served as the basis for the war.

The unavoidable conclusion is that the Bush-Cheney White paper “justifying” the invasion was developed a full three months in advance of the intelligence data and analysis that should have served as the basis for that justification. The National Security Archive summed it up succinctly:

The U.S. intelligence community buckled sooner in 2002 than previously reported to Bush administration pressure for data justifying an invasion of Iraq,

The documents suggest that the public relations push for war came before the intelligence analysis, which then conformed to public positions taken by Pentagon and White House officials. For example, a July 2002 draft of the “White Paper” ultimately issued by the CIA in October 2002 actually pre-dated the National Intelligence Estimate that the paper purportedly summarized, but which Congress did not insist on until September 2002.²

The seemingly endless war in Iraq has become a total disaster on multiple levels for all involved. The awful toll in human deaths and casualties is largely ignored but real nevertheless. Over 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been lost in battle and tens of thousands injured. In excess of one million Iraqi civilians are dead due to civil strife unleashed by the invasion. The U.S. Treasury is drained and the steep decline in respect for the United States around the world is just beginning to manifest.

The United States political establishment responds with collective denial on a scale that’s incomprehensible. In the presidential campaign, the only sustained public commentary on the war comes from the Republican presidential candidate John McCain who makes the bizarre claim that U.S. is “surrendering” with victory in clear sight. McCain touts the surge without noting that 4.0 million Iraqis are “displaced from their homes.” Nearly ten percent of Iraq’s population is either dead or injured and there are 5.0 million Iraqi orphans.

This pathological view of victory claims the “surge’ is a success in the context of a devastated population in an obliterated nation lacking in the most essential supplies and services; a nation where death continues on a shopping spree

The report by Dr. Prados makes it clear that the executive branch was responsible for creating whatever information they found necessary to justify war and they did it by posing security threats from Iraq and demanding that intelligence briefers fill in the details

Summary of Findings by Prados, National Security Archive

A recently declassified draft of the CIA’s October 2002 white paper on Iraqi WMD programs demonstrates that that (the White) paper long pre-dated the compilation of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi capabilities.

Bush administration and the Tony Blair government began acting in concert to build support for an invasion of Iraq two to three months earlier than previously understood.

A comparison of the CIA draft white paper with its publicly released edition shows that all the changes made were in the nature of strengthening its charges against Iraq by inserting additional alarming claims, in the manner of an advocacy, or public relations document.

The draft and final papers show no evidence of intelligence analysis applied to the information contained.PR Push for Iraq War Preceded Intelligence Finding in Scoop Independent News, August 22, 2004.

One Final Hope to Avoid a Tragic War

Ultimately, the White House had what it wanted by July 2002. When the National Intelligence Estimate arrived from an intimidated intelligence community, there was still one hope of a rational outcome on the rush to war. The NIE delivered to the White House on Oct. 1, 2002 noted that the one scenario in which Iraq would attack the United States involved a U.S. attack on Iraq that threatened Saddam Hussein’s survival.

The following is brutally simple. The one way to cause the hypothesized (and erroneous) claims of Hussein’s intent to attack the United States is to go to war and threaten his regime. Therefore, refraining from war was the best way to protect the United States.

Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger cause for making war.

Iraq probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the U.S. Homeland if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge.³

That was deleted entirely. The July White Paper was “complete” and sent to Congress as the evidence justifying the invasion of Iraq.

In the most supreme of ironies, many members of Congress failed to even review the distorted White Paper before voting overwhelmingly to approve the invasion.

Is there any hope that this same legislative body can remedy the great wrong they helped create? Is there anyone who believes that this or any future White House will move with the urgency necessary to end this war? Will anyone ever be held to account for this series of premeditated deceptions?⁴

1. See “White Paper” Drafted before NIE even Requested, Scoop Independent News, Aug. 24, 2008.
2. National Security Archive in Scoop Independent News, August 24, 2008.
3. Key Judgments, National Intelligence Estimate, Oct. 2002.
4. See full report with links to primary evidence at Scoop Independent News.

The Prosecutor and the President

Vincent Bugliosi wants George W. Bush prosecuted for murder. There are others who are complicit in the crime, namely the Vice President and Condoleezza Rice, but Bush is the target of this famed former Los Angeles prosecutor (the Charles Manson case) and best-selling author (Helter Skelter and The Betrayal of America as two examples). He is undeterred by the virtual major media blackout on interviews and advertising. He’s taking his case directly to the people through alternate media and the internet.

Bugliosi constructs a devastating case in The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. As I write this review, it is still difficult to grasp my sense of shock at this title with this author’s name below it. A legendary prosecutor with a near perfect record in big cases, Bugliosi articulates one of the most revolutionary ideas imaginable in a mix of today’s otherwise vapid and obtuse political thinking. But first, the book and how the prosecutor makes his case.

He wastes no time in following up on the shock generated by the title. In the first sentence, we’re told:

“The book you are about to read deals with what I believe to be the most serious crime ever committed in American history — the president of the nation, George W. Bush, knowingly and deliberately taking this country to war in Iraq under false presences, a war that condemned over 100,000 human beings, including 4,000 American soldiers, to horrific, violent deaths.” (V. Bugliosi, p. 3)

The president “knowingly and deliberately” caused the deaths of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians and that’s called murder, plain and simple. This is not a hypothetical case that could happen under special legal interpretations. When the president leaves office, he is subject to the same law as the rest of us. Bugliosi explains the ability to prosecute the case against George W. Bush by a district attorney or states attorney in any local jurisdiction where a life was lost in the Iraq war. Federal prosecutors also have that option. Bugliosi’s detailed analysis of this phenomenon offers some of the best analysis in the book and the detailed end notes.

In the first chapter, “Opening up One’s Eyes,” Bugliosi explains how he was able to reach this conclusion and then encourages the reader to do the same. He attributes his huge success as a prosecutor and author to his willingness` to “see what’s in front of me completely uninfluenced by the clothing (reputation, hoopla, conventional wisdom, etc.) put on it by others.” (p. 5)

After the stage is set for an open minded look at recent history, we’re offered a series of incriminating quotations from Bush, Cheney, Rice, and others. Before the invasion, these statements had the power to shift public opinion in favor of the war. How could we tolerate a dictator, Bush asked, who “threaten(ed) the world with horrible poisons and diseases, and gasses and atomic weapons”? Iraq had “unmanned aerial vehicles” and was “exploring ways of using these to target the United States.” (p. 22) These and other inflammatory claims by Bush and his crew were not only wildly off target, he knew that they were when he made them, without any doubt.

By the end of the carefully constructed first two chapters, the prosecutor, known to devote several hundred hours to a closing statement for a jury, has the reader prepared to accept his charges. He pauses before beginning his core case to let us know the cost of these lies. Over a hundred thousand died in a war predicated on lies which were deliberately fabricated by the president.

These aren’t just any deaths, we are told. We are dealing with the murder of young, impressionable, patriotic Americans who joined the service for a variety of honorable reasons. They all shared one bond, loyalty to their country and a willingness to die for it in war. While Bugliosi shows highly appropriate concern for the dead Iraqi civilians as a result of the civil chaos caused by the Bush invasion, he notes that he could find no domestic law allowing a prosecution for those losses.

After the first three chapters we know the tragedy that requires a legal remedy and we are clear about the author’s motivation to seek justice on behalf of the fallen. He is righteously angry that this crime has taken place and determined to provide the means for justice. Bugliosi is indifferent to a virtual media blackout as a result of the comatose state of the political and corporate elite, manifested through the calculated denial of their network news readers and the Bush administration stenographers at the New York Times and Washington Post.

There are three dates that define the guilt of Bugliosi’s defendant:

On October 1, 2002, Bush received a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) representing all federal intelligence sources. Iraq’s imminent danger to the Unites States was described in this sentence: There’s no reference to poison dispensing unmanned aircraft, weapons sales to al Qaeda which would be turned against us, or other immediate dangers.

Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger cause for making war.

“Iraq probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the U.S. Homeland if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge. Such attacks–more likely with biological than chemical agents–probably would be carried out by special forces or intelligence operatives.” NIE, 10/2002 and (V. Bugliosi, pp. 104-105)

On October 4, 2002, Bush released a doctored summary of the NEI to Congress referred to as a White Paper. He left out the critical information — Iraq was deemed an imminent danger only if the survival of the regime were threatened by a U.S. attack. “Judgments” and other qualifying language in the NIE were converted to simple assertions of fact in the White Paper giving the case for war a seemingly unambiguous authority from the intelligence community.

In fact, the White Paper provided to Congress was diametrically opposed to the NIE which the White House received from the intelligence agencies on Oct. 1, 2002 and withheld from Congress. The critical trigger for an Iraqi threat to the U.S. was said to be just what Bush had proposed –.an attack that threatened the survival of Hussein’s regime. Rather than securing the nation’s safety, by the logic and advice of his own intelligence community, Bush put the nation at risk while concealing vital intelligence. White Paper – Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program and (V. Bugliosi, pp. 112-116)

On October 7, 2002, Bush spoke to an audience in Cincinnati, Ohio and claimed that Saddam Hussein was a danger to the United states with his “unmanned aerial vehicles” with WMD “for missions targeting the United States” (p. 105).

This is the critical evidence. It is unambiguous. Bush knew that Iraq was not an imminent threat to the nation, yet portrayed just that to gain approval for his war. It represents only a part of the detailed and overwhelming case presented in a determined, thorough, and totally engaging narrative that Vincent Bugliosi sets out to do what he promised.

He builds an overwhelming case against George W. Bush, lays out the jurisdictional and other legal issues that make this a viable case for prosecution, and argues that presidential accountability is a fundamental requirement to restore the status of “great nation” to the United States, so damaged over the past eight years.

But there’s a much broader significance to the prosecution, should it take place.

Each pair of boots represent a dead Georgia man because of the Iraq war.

The Birth of the Public Servant

While a trial and conviction of George W Bush for murder would be an event of momentous proportions, it would pale in comparison to enduring impact due to the precedent established. Presidents could no longer offer up the lives of soldiers and civilians sent to a war that was stated for anything other than national defense or imminent danger to the country.

Although the president had rotating rationales for the invasion, that act and occupation had little to do with protecting the United States. As Bugliosi said in a recent interview with this author, over 4,000 soldiers have died “not your war or my war or America’s war, but George Bush’s war.” The explanations offered by Bush have been discarded by all but the perpetrators and none of the financial or political motives suggested by others are acceptable justifications for the death and destruction caused.

Were there a prosecution and conviction, any future president would need to think long and hard before serving his political interests or necessities by filling the trough of financial backers and other chosen few no matter what they gave or promised. The president and his top aids would be accountable for a fundamental individual right that is obvious to us but not them: the right of each citizen to be free from death due to a president’s egotistical, political, or financial desires. Presidents would no longer be able to conceal the sin of premeditated murder by draping it in the fiction of necessary losses in the service of a larger national interest. The real basis for presidential decision making would be opened up to the scrutiny of communities through their local prosecutors.

The long standing conflict between individual rights versus collective rights would be resolved as well. By having to serve each member of the public by refraining from unnecessary war making, the chief executive would need to show restraint thus eliminating the requirement for an oversized military establishment designed as an imperial presence throughout the world. The tools of diplomacy would devolve to shared interests rather than coerced solutions forced on weaker states. And this would not just be for major wars.

The United States has engaged in over 40 military incursions since World War II. Unless a president could be assured that no one soldier died, he or she would be wise to have a solid justification for defense of the nation for any military action in order to avoid an indictment carrying a hefty sentence. The president would also have the example of a convicted and sentenced ex president who was vulnerable ddue to nonstop lying about the rationale for war.

The national defense was sorely lacking during the 9/11 attacks, despite an awesome world wide military potential. Similarly, the administrations successful efforts to exempt themselves from the consequences of international war crimes tribunals since 2003 occurred while the potential existed for domestic prosecutions as Bugliosi outlines in this book. It poses a much more serious and final threat to willful leaders who casually use their citizens as fodder in their wars to benefit the narrow goals of financial interests that fear real competition on an even playing field.

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. 11.¹

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: 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.

Michael Collins: Right.

VB: With Manson, as an example, because he’s the most well known, by far, of all my murder defendants, I simply viewed him as an extremely evil person who had committed horrendous murders and therefore forfeited his right to live. He deserved the death penalty, and I told the jury, “If this is not a proper case of imposition of the death penalty, no case ever would be.” I even challenged the jury. I said, “If you’re not willing to come back with a verdict of death in this case, then we should abolish the death penalty in the state of California. How many people would you have to kill to get the death penalty?” And they did come back with a verdict of death.

I also looked upon Manson as someone who, if he walked out of court, was going to continue to kill.

But let me tell you this: For the first time in my career, it’s very personal with George Bush, and I’ll tell you why. If I prosecuted him and Cheney and Rice or whoever else, Cheney and Rice it would not be personal. I would seek the death penalty against them, for sure. They deserve to suffer the ultimate penalty for what they did, no question about it. But it would not be personal. I’ll tell you why it’s personal with George Bush — because the evidence is overwhelming, overwhelming. It cannot be disputed.

If anyone tries to dispute it, they’re going to make a fool out of themselves if I have time to rebut what they’re saying. The evidence is overwhelming that while young American soldiers — I’m talking about 18, 19 year old kids who never had a chance to live out their dreams — are being blown to pieces by roadside bombs in Iraq, this guy, George Bush, was having a lot of fun playing, joking, laughing on a day to day basis and enjoying himself to the very utmost. The evidence is overwhelming to that, and that’s what’s made it personal with me, the fact that he could do what he did, this monstrous individual, and still have fun on a daily basis when kids are being blown up, and you see Bush and he’s smiling and laughing and joking and tap dancing. It’s unbelievable.

MC: The pictures in your book were compelling, especially those with him laughing. Of the 21 or so individuals that you’ve successfully prosecuted for murder, where does Bush rank?

VB: Well, he’s — let me — you’ve asked a different type of question. Manson was very evil. I wouldn’t say Bush is evil in that he doesn’t want to kill people. But I will call him a despicable human being who’s extremely coldhearted and couldn’t care less, couldn’t possibly care less that thousands upon thousands of people are dying horrible, violent deaths because of what he did, couldn’t possibly care less. How could he care less if he has done what he has done, enjoyed life the way he has and said the things that he did? He’s extremely arrogant and extremely self centered. I don’t think he has any redeeming human characteristics. He’s a despicable human being. But I don’t think he wants to kill anyone. He just doesn’t care.

MC: He doesn’t care.

VB: Whereas Manson, if he had a chance, he was going to kill as many people as he could. You know, Bush, he has shown no hesitancy in saying things like this over and over again, and I’ve said this before and I’ll repeat it now. Try to imagine Roosevelt, Truman, LBJ, Nixon during their respective wars saying things like this. They would never do it. It would not happen. You see photographs of their face during war, and those photographs reflect — the photographs of their face reflect the grimness of the war. It’s a very serious time. It’s not time for fun and laughter.

Also, as I’m uttering these words, try to keep in your mind that at the very moment I’m uttering these — at the very moment that George Bush said these words, think about the death and the horror and the suffering and the sea of blood and the screams and the mutilations of the body, the beheadings going on in Iraq as he is saying these words. These are some of the quotes: “Laura and I are having the time of our lives.” “I’m in a great mood.” “I’m feeling pretty good about life.” “It’s going to be a perfect day.” Now, that remark that he made, “I’m feeling pretty good about life,” that was at a December 2007 press conference.

Here’s someone who has taken this nation to a war that has cost us over one trillion dollars so far with no end in sight. He’s virtually destroyed an entire country, the country of Iraq, and most of all and most importantly by far, and it bears repeating, he’s criminally responsible for over 100,000 people dying horrible, violent deaths. And he says he’s feeling pretty good about life. It’s mind boggling. It’s incomprehensible. And there’s no question that this man is enjoying life

(His media strategist) Mark McKinnon told the New York Times in 2005 right in the midst of this horrible war that he couldn’t recall ever seeing Bush more calm, relaxed and happy, words to that effect. Bush, right in the midst of all this horror and death, told reporters at the ranch, after a hearty breakfast, what his plans were for the rest of the day, and he said, “I’m going to have lunch with Secretary of State Rice, talk a little business, take a little nap. I’m reading an Elmore Leonard book right now. Knock off a little Elmore Leonard this afternoon, go fishing with my man, Barney,” Bush’s dog, “have a light dinner and then head for the ballgame — ” or, “head to the ballgame, so it’s a perfect day.”

MC: A perfect day?

VB: “So it’s a perfect day,” he said. And when I read those last words by Bush, I said to myself, I said, “No, you son of a bitch, if I may call you that, Mr. President, you’re not going to have a perfect day, or I should say you’re not going to have another perfect day for as long as you live, if I have anything to say about it, because I’m going to put a thought in your mind (of prosecution) that you’re going to take with you to your grave. It’s the least I can do for the thousands of young American soldiers that came back from your war in a box or a jar of ashes and for the thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women, children and babies who died horrible deaths because of your war. That’s the least I can do.” I almost said those exact words to myself when I heard him say that he’s going to have a perfect day. About putting a thought in Bush’s mind, I’m referring, of course, to my proposed prosecution of Bush for murder and the fact that there’s no statue of limitations for the crime of murder.

MC: (Regarding the mainstream media blackout of his book)

VB: They don’t want me on.

MC: How many best sellers have you had? Three or four, right?

VB: Oh, well, I’ve had three that got up to number one on the New York Times. No American true crime author has had more than one. I’ve had three, and then I’ve had other best sellers. Till Death Do Us Part was a best seller. Reclaiming History for one week was a best seller. That was a book that, you know, weighed seven and a half pounds and cost $57.

MC: What do they say? Do they have an explanation, or is it just –

VB: Well, I can tell you what my publicist said that — before the book came out they start booking you, and they would call these people and say, you know, “We’re representing Vince Bugliosi,” and right away, “Oh, yeah, I know Vince. We’ve had him on the show. He’s a good guest. What’s the new book?” The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. And you can — they kind of indicated to me that they could just sense the shriveling on the other end of the line. And they said, “Well, let me get back to you on this. This may be a little difficult,” or, “I’ll have to get back to you on this.” And then, of course, they just stopped responding to emails and everything, and that was absolutely across the board. They would not have me on. It got so bad — it got so bad that ABC Radio refused to take money from my publisher to take out a radio spot.

MC: Oh, you’re not allowed to advertise either?

VB: Yeah, on ABC Radio they would not take the money.

MC: That’s a first.

VB: Which is, I think, kind of mind boggling. I don’t know. It just seems to me that it’s mind boggling. And then, of course, as you know, I had a very difficult time getting the book published. I never had trouble before. I had to fly back to New York City, knock on doors, and it was obvious that the publishers I met with thought the book was very marketable, and they seemed to be sympathetic with what I was saying, but it was equally obvious that they were frightened. They would say things like this to me: “Mr. Bugliosi, are you sure you want to publish this book?” And one of them put it in black and white, typed it, or maybe an email, “Too hot too handle.”

MC: Has anybody bothered you since it was published?

VB: No. No, there hasn’t been anyone that’s bothered me. But, in any event, I finally found a courageous publisher over at Vanguard Press. And then we get down to the audio level. That’s something I never gave a thought to, ever. It was automatic. Reclaiming History was Simon & Schuster. This time, Peter Miller, my agent, called me and said, “Vince, I can’t find any audio company in America that will do the audio on the book.” We finally got the BBC to do it, thank God. That’s the one — that tape is the one that that congressman from the South heard driving back to the South from Washington, D.C. (see Part 1). There’s a documentary on my book being produced at the present time for the big screen. The producers couldn’t raise one penny in America for the book.

MC: Not a cent?

VB: The money came in from Canada. So it may sound presumptuous of me to say this, but this, I think, is an important story, because it is a snapshot glimpse of a nation, I think, in serious decline, with freedom of speech and expression supposedly being our most cherished constitutional right, and we say we’re, what, the land of the free and the home of the brave? What has happened with my book, I think, throws into question the present vitality of both of these assumptions.

Three people independently of me told me essentially the same story, and it’s something I hadn’t thought about, and what they said is, “Mr. Bugliosi, the reason they’re not having you on television is because of who you are.” And I said, “What do you mean by that?” And they said, “Well” — three people independently at separate times and essentially the same words. Obviously they didn’t use the same words, but essentially the same words. They said, “If some nut wrote a book with a title like this, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, (we) would probably have him on because it’s colorful, it’s entertaining, it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t go anywhere. But you’re a very serious person, and you write very serious books.” And in all of my true crime books — and I wrote about the biggest crimes of the twentieth century, the Manson case, the Simpson case, the Kennedy assassination — I prove my case beyond a reasonable doubt.

So the right wing certainly does not want me on their shows talking about prosecuting the guy they love so much for first degree murder, where he may end up on death row. And even if they haven’t read the book, they know my reputation in the area of criminal law, and they know what I do in my other books. They probably feel it’s the same type of book. He’s proving his case beyond a reasonable doubt, so they don’t want to give voice — they don’t want to help me give voice to my message. And these three may be right.

The reality is that if you’re unknown and less effective, you can get published and heard. If you’re well known and highly effective, you’re not allowed to disagree.

For a book of this nature, people take me seriously, because I write very, very serious books, and I can say this. This book is identical to every other true crime book I’ve ever written. Some people have said it’s my greatest true crime book. I’m not going to say that one way or the other. It’s certainly my most powerful, explosive book.

What I’m saying, Michael is that this book is identical. I present the evidence with powerful inferences and the law, the applicable law. I present the evidence and the applicable law to prove my case. That’s the only way I’m capable of writing.

MC: 130,000 have sold right now, or it’s probably above that, isn’t it?

VB: I really don’t know what the number is, but the book is a best seller. It’s number ten this week on the New York Times, and that number is not a particularly high number for me, but I can tell you that the publisher is ecstatic about it, because they say, “Vince, come on. This is incredible. You’ve been essentially blacked out by the mainstream media, and you’re still a New York Times best seller.”

Why am I a best seller? Well, one reason is the tremendous word of mouth the book has been given. Number two, people like you, Michael, who are giving me a voice to convey my message to the American people. And progressive radio. By the way, that New York Times article, my publicists were high fiving it back there before it came out. They thought it was going to open up the media to me, because of the New York Times article. I’m proud of them, because they’re at the pinnacle of the mainstream establishment, and they’ve kind of chided the rest of the media for blacking me out. It did not open up the media at all, or hardly at all. I was on one show — what’s the — not McDougall.

MC: On television?

VB: Cavanaugh, Scavanaugh –

MC: Oh, Scarborough.

VB: Scarborough. I was on the Scarborough show early in the morning.

CNN came to the house and talked to me for a couple of minutes on the blackout, very, very little, and then they wanted to do a regular interview with me. And they were disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful. They interviewed me for around 20 minutes, taped it, and then they put four and a half minutes out there that basically almost converted it into a pro Bush piece

What they did is they totally bastardized the 20 minutes. And this was CNN. Now, people have asked me, “What’s the genesis of all this?” And I’m no authority on this, because I haven’t studied contemporary history, but I can tell you just my sense, it’s the despicable right wing in America. They have transformed this country into a nation where people like myself — and many other people said the same thing — for the first time ever do not feel 100 percent comfortable. They have transformed us into a nation where someone as honorable and decent as Mario Cuomo could say, “I respect Rush Limbaugh,” an uncommonly loathsome individual.

MC: I had not read that until I read it in your book. I was stunned.

VB: Yeah. If I may be so presumptuous, Mario Cuomo does not respect Rush Limbaugh. That would not be humanly possible. Limbaugh is just endlessly reprehensible. And yet he said that, and I think he said it because he’s sufficiently intimidated to say that. People yield to fear. They capitulate to fear, and they cater to the source of the fear. The left fears the right in America. Why? Well, the far left and the far right are both daffy, zany, but there’s a big difference. The people on the far left are not mean people. They may be crazy, but they’re not mean. The people on the far right are mean spirited, horrible human beings. They’re rotten from the top of their head to the bottom of their feet. And the left fears the right in America. That’s why the left leaning stations, networks and cable, will not have me on, because they’re fearful of being savaged by the right if they have me on.

MC: Well, and then there’s the element of corporate ownership too, because if CNBC or NBC has you on, their parent company, General Electric, might feel a little heat.

VB: Right. Right.

MC: And you talked about that in the book. Has anybody accused you of class warfare yet? That’s what they always do.

VB: Class warfare, no. No, I haven’t heard that yet. I do want to say this, that I’m much older than you, and in the America that I grew up in, we’ve always had the far right, but in my day they were on the fringes. They were an embarrassment. They were an absolute embarrassment to people like Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, even the first President Bush. But now they’ve taken over the party. They’ve always been out there, but they used to be on the fringes, and they’ve taken over now.

Since Bush is a conservative Republican and so are they, anything he does, anything at all, including murder, is just fine with them, just fine. Can you imagine what these people would be doing to Clinton if Clinton had done the same identical thing that Bush did with respect to Iraq? They would be skinning him alive if they had a chance. So these are phony, despicable human beings. They’ve taken over the party. They’ve terrified the nation. And I went off on a riff, but I think they are the ones responsible for my being blacked out, the fear of the right in America.

Now, you talk about corporations. That’s true, but what about — and I’m not going to mention names right now, although in due time I’m going to out these people either on TV or radio or in the second edition of this book. And they know who they are. What about the people out there who are members of the left who are not terrified of the right and they call Bush a murderer, a criminal and everything else? If it was all corporate, why would their corporations permit them to do that, would they permit them to do that? And these people are not having me on either.

MC: The people on the left?

VB: They’re on the left. They’re not afraid of the right. This is a small group of people, and they won’t have me on either. These are the people with whom I’m very angry, very angry. I’m not angry with the liberal people who are frightened of the far right, because I’m not in a position to be angry with someone who’s terrified. I don’t respect them, necessarily, but I’m not angry with them, because they’re frightened. They’re terrified of their own shadow. But I am angry with those who are not terrified of the right and their corporations apparently — the ones who are in charge or own the network they’re with (which) apparently is not handcuffing them — or what would the word be –

MC: Gagging.

VB: Gagging is the word. They’re not gagging them, and yet they won’t have me on either.

MC: Right. Well, it’s self censorship perhaps, or self preservation. I heard Orson Welles years ago, and this is a partial quote, but he said: ‘In Europe during World War II, people betrayed their friends to save their lives. In America, during the McCarthy era, people betrayed their friends to save their swimming pools.” I’ve never forgotten that. They may take a pay cut, they may not get to ride in the jet next to the chairman, but the point you bring up is absolutely vital in that you’re talking about people, all of those around him (Bush), serving him and saying, “I guess this is just — this is what happens during a war.”

VB: That’s what they say. I have talked to conservative acquaintances of mine, and I say, “Do you feel bad at all?” Because I do. Whenever I hear of Iraqis or Americans getting killed over there, it immediately depresses me. I said, “If you hear about a hundred innocent Iraqi civilians in a mosque or a market blown to pieces over there, don’t you get upset?” “No, no.” they say. “Why? That’s what happens during wartime.” Let me tell you about these people. I don’t want to embarrass them, but I can tell you — I can give you a 99 percent guarantee they don’t even care when American soldiers are blown to pieces. They don’t care.

But they don’t want to bring him to justice, and they don’t want to give me a voice to bring him to justice. So, no, you’re right. There are millions of Americans that (would be) supportive of what I’m doing, if they knew about it. I would say that 90 percent of American people don’t know this book is even out there.

MC: Well, maybe the answer to that is in this: the mainstream media has deliberately censored, as badly as Bush has, the truth about Iraq all along. Yet today 70 percent of the people oppose that (war). Where did they get the information? They got it from friends and family who got it from the Internet and from union halls and from discussions. The Internet is really, as you’re finding out, a powerful alternative.

VB: Well, I find out indirectly, because people print stuff off of the Internet and they send it to me. But I don’t have a computer myself. But I do get stuff from the Internet all the time.

Read Part 1.

1. CBS News, Jan. 11, 2004.

A brutal dictator, — with ties to terrorism — will not be permitted to dominate a vital region and threaten the United States.

– George W. Bush, plotting the crime, plans the misleading 2003 State of the Union speech then delivers the lies to citizens and the Congress

In his new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, Vincent Bugliosi makes a devastating, well documented case that President George W. Bush is guilty of murder as a result of the lies he told to justify the invasion of Iraq.

As a Los Angeles prosecutor, Bugliosi represented the state in 105 major cases and won 104, including each of his 21 murder cases. Since his first book, Helter Skelter, he’s been one of the top true crime writers with three number one bestsellers and numerous awards.

In his best known case, Bugliosi’s prosecution led to Charles Manson conviction for murder even though Manson was never at two of the crime scenes when the victims were murdered. While he has not been on hand for any combat, should Bush appear before a judge and jury charged with the murder of U.S. soldiers, Bugliosi is confident that he can provide the arguments and evidence required for a first degree murder conviction.

Bugliosi’s argument is simple. Bush wanted a war with Iraq. He had to show that a preemptive invasion of Iraq was justified. To do this Iraq had to be an imminent threat to the United States. There were two major problems. Bush couldn’t prove any connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. More importantly, his own intelligence estimate found that the only scenario in which Saddam posed an imminent threat to the United States was through a preemptive attack on Iraq that threatened Saddam’s survival, i.e., the Bush proposal.

That was a minor obstacle. Bush cheated. He simply reversed the findings of the National Intelligence Estimate (NEI) of 2002, classified the original document, and provided Congress with a doctored version to support his claims. By doing this, Bush pushed through an illegal invasion which he had to have known would cost U.S. lives. That, Bugliosi argues, is an act of murder committed against each and every U.S. soldier killed in the war.

I interviewed Vincent Bugliosi on Sunday, August 3, 2008 for 90 minutes. He was gracious and generous with his time. Totally focused on this project, he is working seven days a week to spread the word and find at least one prosecutor to take the case for the prosecution of George W. Bush.

INTERVIEW Part 1

“Apparently its okay for George Bush to take this nation to war on a lie, to be responsible, criminally responsible for well over 100,000 deaths, but it’s not okay to prosecute him. Not only isn’t it okay to prosecute him, it isn’t even okay to talk about prosecuting him. This is unbelievable what’s going on in this country. How can we have a country where they permit a president to do what he did and they do absolutely nothing to him except to try to protect him?” Vincent Bugliosi

Michael Collins: You recently published The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. This is a deadly serious charge from a distinguished prosecutor. What’s the core of your case, the essence of it?

Vincent Bugliosi: The essence of the case against George Bush is that he deliberately took this nation to war in Iraq on a lie, under false pretenses, and therefore, under the law, he is guilty of murder for the deaths of over 4,000 young American soldiers who have died so far in Iraq fighting his war — not your war or my war or America’s war, but George Bush’s war.

I can tell you that if the case went to trial, the central, overriding issue at Bush’s trial, would be whether or not he took this nation to war in self‑defense as he claimed he did: that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and therefore he was an imminent threat to the security of this country, so we had to strike first in self‑defense.

If Bush could prove this — he doesn’t have the burden of proving it, by the way, but he certainly would assume that burden — that would be his defense. The prosecution has the burden of showing that he did not act in self‑defense. But if the evidence showed that he did act in self defense, that would be a legal justification for all of the deaths during the war in Iraq.

If the prosecutor, on the other hand, could prove that he did not act in self‑defense and he took the nation to war under false pretenses, then all of the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq would become unlawful killings. All of those killings would become unlawful killings and therefore murder.

I spent a great amount of time at the L.A. County Law Library and the Ninth Circuit Library here in L.A. working on the issue of jurisdiction, because I realize that even if someone is guilty of murder, if you don’t have jurisdiction to prosecute them, you don’t have a case, really. I was unable to establish jurisdiction for the over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, children and babies who have died so far in Bush’s war. He is guilty of those murders, but I could not establish jurisdiction against him for those murders. But I definitely established jurisdiction on a federal, state and local level to prosecute Bush for the murders of the 4,000 young American soldiers that have died so far in Iraq.

MC: You outlined some very specific events that happened in October 2002 and discrete pieces of evidence, one concerning the weapons of mass destruction. Can you just describe those and explain why they’re so central?

VB: As I testified before Congress, I have documentary evidence that when George Bush told the nation on the evening of October 7, 2002, that Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of this country, he was telling millions of unsuspecting Americans the exact opposite of what his own CIA had told him just six days earlier in a classified report on October 1 — that Hussein was not an imminent threat. That classified report was the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002. But it even gets worse than this. On October 4, three days after the October 1 classified report, the Bush administration put out an unclassified summary version of the classified report so they could give it to Congress and the American people. This unclassified version came to be known as the White Paper, and in this White Paper the conclusion of U.S. intelligence that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the security of this country was completely deleted.

Every single one of these all-important words was deleted from the White Paper, so Congress and the American people never saw any of this, and I don’t know how things can get too much worse than what I’ve just told you.

It was because of what I just told you that I got a call on the morning of June 16 here in Los Angeles at my home from a very conservative Republican Southern congressman who voted for the war. He was one of the most outspoken supporters of the war. He told me this. “Bugliosi,” he said, “I heard your book on tape, and I’m now convinced that George Bush deceived Congress,” or “misled Congress,” I think was his word, “misled Congress into war.” And he said, “I’ve already bought several copies of your book, and I’ve passed them out to colleagues, and I told them, ‘Read the book. We’ve been lied to.’”

What was he was talking about? He saw that the White Paper did not contain the most important conclusion of all in the classified document, that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the security of this country. He also learned that the classified document stated many of its conclusions, not the one I just told you, but many of the conclusions in the area of weapons of mass destruction as opinions, using words like “we assess that” or “we judge that Hussein had,” let’s say, biological weapons. The White Paper that this congressman was given, those words of qualification were completely deleted and it read, “Hussein has biological weapons.” He also learned that there were several important dissents from U.S. intelligence agencies with respect to nuclear weapons in the classified report. But in the White Paper that he was given, all of those dissents were deleted.

This is just — you know, I hate to use the word terrible over again, but it’s just absolutely terrible, and the question is how evil, how criminal, how perverse, how sick can George Bush and his people be? And yet they got away with all of this. As I’m talking to you right now, there are well over 100,000 people — some estimates go in excess of a million — well over 100,000 precious human beings who are in their cold graves right now because of it. But so far, George Bush has gotten away with murder and we, the American people, cannot let him do this. He’s gotten away with murder, and no one is doing anything.

MC: What are the members of the mainstream media and the upper tiers of power doing to bring Bush to justice?

What they are doing — they are doing something. They’re trying to protect him. They’re actively trying to protect this guy. Why would they want to protect this monstrous individual who took this nation to war on a lie with the incalculable horror and suffering and sea of blood and screams and mutilations and beheadings he has caused? Why would they want to protect him? They had no hesitancy in going after Clinton for doing absolutely nothing. Clinton has consensual sexual activity outside of marriage, lies under oath to cover it up.

No self‑respecting prosecutor would ever dream of going after Clinton for this. So he did absolutely nothing, and yet, as I’ve pointed out many times, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, Clinton was savaged by the mainstream media, including the so‑called liberal New York Times and Washington Post. He was impeached by this monstrous, grotesque, obscene Ken Starr. The federal government funded a seven‑year, $70 million effort by Starr to destroy the Clinton presidency. They wanted to hang him in the town square at noontime. No one wanted to protect him. But they want to protect this morally defective, amoral, terrible, despicable human being, George Bush. I have nothing but contempt for George Bush, and yet the mainstream media is out there trying to protect him. I’m not saying there’s any conspiracy involved here by the mainstream media to keep me off all these shows. It’s just that each member of the mainstream national media feels the same way about it.

MC: Right.

VB: They do not want me talking on national television about prosecuting George Bush for murder. So apparently its okay for George Bush to take this nation to war on a lie, be responsible, criminally responsible for well over 100,000 deaths, its okay for him to do that, but it’s not okay to prosecute him. Not only isn’t it okay to prosecute him, it isn’t even okay to talk about prosecuting him. This is unbelievable what’s going on in this country. How can we have a country where they permit a president to do what he did and they do absolutely nothing to him except to try to protect him? I don’t understand that. Where am I missing something?

I was telling my wife a couple of days ago, I said, “You’ve heard about these cold case files,” and she said, “Of course.” And they even have a TV series, I guess, on it. But I’ve known about them for years down at the DA’s office. Very commonly you’ll have just one victim of a murder, just one victim, and you’ll have a detective assigned to the case pursuing the killer for 10, 15, 20, 25 years, and then after he retires, some other detective takes over. Some of these cases go on for 30, 35, 40 years. The Black Dahlia case in Los Angeles, I think, goes back in the ‘30s. They’re still investigating it 75 years later. And frequently we read in the newspaper that the killer is found back East. He’s living under an assumed name and he’s brought back to Los Angeles and he’s prosecuted. Just one victim and you have this detective tenaciously and endlessly pursuing this case.

So I said to her, “There may be as many as one million victims, not one victim, but one million victims in their cold graves right now decomposing as a result of George Bush’s monumental crime.” And I said to her — “What person in authority on the face of this globe is representing these one million people in their graves, fighting to bring about justice for them, pursuing the person, the guilty person who put them there?” And she said, “You.” And I said, “No, you didn’t hear what I said. I said what person in authority is going after the killer of these million people?” I said, “I don’t have the authority of an emaciated moth. I don’t have any authority.”

I’m searching for someone who does have authority to bring George Bush to justice. I want to find that one courageous prosecutor out there, whether he’s in Fargo, North Dakota, or Tampa, Florida, who will bring George Bush to justice.

But when you juxtapose the one victim, maybe she’s found lying in a pool of blood in her kitchen in L.A. 30 years ago, and you have this detective for 30 years trying to bring about justice for that murder, and then you have a million people dying over there, and there’s no one presently that I know of on the face of this globe who’s fighting to bring about justice for these people in their graves, and it’s mind‑boggling to me. Am I missing something here?

MC: Does Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) support your efforts? (Conyers is Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary where Mr. Bugliosi gave testimony on July 25, 2008 in hearings on the Kucinich impeachment resolution).

VB: All I know is that he called me and he said he’s reading the book and he likes it very much. I got the definite sense that he was supportive of what I’m trying to do. And, as you know, when I testified before Congress, I think it came across in body language and many other ways that he was on my side.

MC: When he held up your book?

House Committee on the Judiciary Chairman holds up Vincent Bugliosi’s book prior to testimony by the former prosecutor. Bugliosi was barred from specifically naming the president by the rules of Congress. This is the only Judiciary or other congressional hearing during which a sitting president has been accused of murder. (Video)

VB: He held up the book, and when they wanted to shut me down once or twice, he prevented that. I can tell you (that) he did not specifically say to me, “I agree that he should — Bush should be prosecuted for murder, and I hope he is prosecuted for murder.” He didn’t use those words. But the definite implication was that he was very supportive of what I’m doing in the book and he liked the book, but he did not take that additional step.

Now, I’ll tell you who did take that additional step, the congressman, the congressman from — I don’t want to mention the state, but a congressman in the South. He said, “Mr. Bugliosi, come November I’m going to be out in the public with you, and I want to be at your side when George Bush, hopefully, is indicted for first degree murder.” Now, here’s something else when I’m talking about these million people out there.

MC: (On the absence of mainstream support to bring Bush to justice.)

Here’s another incredible statistic. I’m trying to bring about justice for those people in their graves. I have no authority to do that, but I’m a private citizen trying to do that. What other person who’s a member of the mainstream (is supporting this effort) — I’m not talking about progressive radio, because they’re just as much — well, they’re better Americans than the right wing, but they’re not mainstream. They’re supporting me. But what person, what other person in this entire country who’s in the mainstream — politicians, prosecutors, the national media, celebrities, many of whom hate George Bush and believe he took this nation to war on a lie — who has come forward from the mainstream to say, “I support Vince Bugliosi”? You know what the answer is? I think it’s zero.

Only one person who’s a member of the mainstream has come forward, but not publicly, and said, “I support you, and I want Bush to be prosecuted for first degree murder.” That’s the congressman from the South, but he hasn’t gone public.

MC: Right.

VB: But when we remove him, is there one other person -

MC: You have not received one other endorsement?

VB: I can’t think of it. I’ve got — progressive radio.

MC: Well, sure.

VB: But what I’m thinking of is, you know, a prominent celebrity or a prosecutor. Or someone at the network or cable or someone at a daily newspaper. I’m talking about a main newspaper, not a small paper or a review of the book. No one that I know of. And that came to my mind just last night, kind of an extension of the cold case thing, and I said to my wife, “Is there someone out there that I don’t know about that’s come forward?” There’s got to be someone out there in this country that’s got the courage to say, “Bugliosi is right, and I endorse what he’s doing.” And if there is that person, I really don’t know who that person is. There’s only one person who’s a member of the mainstream who has come forward to support me, and that hasn’t been publicly. I’m talking about the congressman. He’s making no secret of it on Capitol Hill. He carries the book around with him. He’s been passing the book out. He’s contacted several people in the media, high up in the media, and asked them to interview me. I’ve spoken to one of them already, very high up, establishment media. He’s working behind the scenes big‑time, but I think he’s coming up for reelection. But he is the only person that comes to my mind in this entire country.

MC: That’s stunning.

VB: And the majority of the American people, a poll showed, believe that Bush intentionally misled this country into war. Where is the outrage? Doesn’t anyone have the courage to stand up and say, “I support Vince Bugliosi”? So far it’s zero, and that just came to my mind last night.

People are always saying how courageous I am, and I’m not courageous. When I tell people, “No, it’s all out of anger,” they say, “Well, yeah, a lot of people are angry, but they don’t have the courage to do anything about it.” And I started to think about that, and as applied to me I think this: I have had fears, in taking on the U.S. Supreme Court, taking on the President of the United States, but my anger overcomes that fear. Do you follow?

Continued in Part 2