http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vincent-bugliosi/the-prosecution-of-george_b_102427.html

"in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That's just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he'd still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.
"

actually the impeachment was for lying under oath

Sounds like Arianna Huffington has a clone.

Any free thinkers left in this country?

The president doesn't just take people to war. Congress has to approve it. You gonna press charges against everyone in congress? Our soldiers death rate in this war is very small for a war. Only about 4%. Saddam also killed more of his own people then we ever did. Most of the innocents that died in this war were not from us. It was from car bombs and other things we did not cause.

Go ahead and cry and moan and try to blame everything on one man. All people like you ever do is place blame on someone, and try to misconstrue the facts.

Yes adju is correct. The impeachment for clinton was because he lied under oath, or perjury(which is a crime, going to war is not a crime).

You are absolutely right, Lying under oath is a crime.



"In early December of 2005, a New York Times-CBS nationwide poll showed that the majority of Americans believed

Bush "intentionally misled" the nation to promote a war in Iraq.

A December 11, 2005, article in the Los Angeles Times, after citing this national poll, went on to say that because so many Americans believed this, it might be difficult for Bush to get the continuing support of Americans for the war. In other words, the fact that most Americans believed Bush had deliberately misled them into war was of no consequence in and of itself. Its only consequence was that it might hurt his efforts to get support for the war thereafter. So the article was reporting on the effect of the poll findings as if it was reporting on the popularity, or lack thereof, of Bush's position on global warming or immigration. Didn't the author of the article know that Bush taking the nation to war on a lie (if such be the case) is the equivalent of saying he is responsible for well over 100,000 deaths? One would never know this by reading the article."

Congress is in fact just as guilty, because after they found out about the lies, they just continued to fund the mess anyway.

Go watch the new Documentary "Washington You're Fired"

The whole system is a joke,,,,

You know, the guy who prosecuted the Manson killers,Vincent Bugliosi , just wrote a book that shares the title of this thread.

He also had an article published, that has made the rounds into a few magazines and papers and of course all over the net. what the article's intention is, is to set the legal tone for actually being able to follow through with this.

Here it is� in its entirety, the first post only gives a fraction of what Mr.Bugliosi presents.

The Legal Framework for the Prosecution

That the king can do no wrong is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution. -Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765

No living Homo sapiens is above the law. -(Notwithstanding our good friends and legal ancestors across the water, this is a fact that requires no citation.)

With respect to the position I take about the crimes of George Bush, I want to state at the outset that my motivation is not political. Although I�ve been a longtime Democrat (primarily because, unless there is some very compelling reason to be otherwise, I am always for "the little guy"), my political orientation is not rigid. For instance, I supported John McCain�s run for the presidency in 2000. More to the point, whether I�m giving a final summation to the jury or writing one of my true crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. Therefore, my only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others. This is why I can give you, the reader, a 100 percent guarantee that if a Democratic president had done what Bush did, I would be writing the same, identical piece you are about to read.

Perhaps the most amazing thing to me about the belief of many that George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns. Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That�s almost too self-evident to state. But he deserves much more than impeachment. I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That�s just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he�d still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.

Let�s look at the way some of the leading liberal lights (and, of course, the rest of the entire nation with the exception of those few recommending impeachment) have treated the issue of punishment for Bush�s cardinal sins. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote about "the false selling of the Iraq War. We were railroaded into an unnecessary war." Fine, I agree. Now what? Krugman just goes on to the next paragraph. But if Bush falsely railroaded the nation into a war where over 100,000 people died, including 4,000 American soldiers, how can you go on to the next paragraph as if you had been writing that Bush spent the weekend at Camp David with his wife? For doing what Krugman believes Bush did, doesn�t Bush have to be punished commensurately in some way? Are there no consequences for committing a crime of colossal proportions?

Al Franken on the David Letterman show said, "Bush lied to us to take us to war" and quickly went on to another subject, as if he was saying "Bush lied to us in his budget."

Senator Edward Kennedy, condemning Bush, said that "Bush�s distortions misled Congress in its war vote" and "No President of the United States should employ distortion of truth to take the nation to war." But, Senator Kennedy, if a president does this, as you believe Bush did, then what? Remember, Clinton was impeached for allegedly trying to cover up a consensual sexual affair. What do you recommend for Bush for being responsible for more than 100,000 deaths? Nothing? He shouldn�t be held accountable for his actions? If one were to listen to you talk, that is the only conclusion one could come to. But why, Senator Kennedy, do you, like everyone else, want to give Bush this complete free ride?

The New York Times, in a June 17, 2004, editorial, said that in selling this nation on the war in Iraq, "the Bush administration convinced a substantial majority of Americans before the war that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to 9/ 11, . . . inexcusably selling the false Iraq-Al Qaeda claim to Americans." But gentlemen, if this is so, then what? The New York Times didn�t say, just going on, like everyone else, to the next paragraph, talking about something else.

In a November 15, 2005, editorial, the New York Times said that "the president and his top advisers . . . did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It�s obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein�s weapons and his terrorist connections." But if it�s "obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans" in taking them to a war that tens of thousands of people have paid for with their lives, now what? No punishment? If not, under what theory? Again, you�re just going to go on to the next paragraph?
I�m not going to go on to the next unrelated paragraph.

In early December of 2005, a New York Times-CBS nationwide poll showed that the majority of Americans believed Bush "intentionally misled" the nation to promote a war in Iraq. A December 11, 2005, article in the Los Angeles Times, after citing this national poll, went on to say that because so many Americans believed this, it might be difficult for Bush to get the continuing support of Americans for the war. In other words, the fact that most Americans believed Bush had deliberately misled them into war was of no consequence in and of itself. Its only consequence was that it might hurt his efforts to get support for the war thereafter. So the article was reporting on the effect of the poll findings as if it was reporting on the popularity, or lack thereof, of Bush�s position on global warming or immigration. Didn�t the author of the article know that Bush taking the nation to war on a lie (if such be the case) is the equivalent of saying he is responsible for well over 100,000 deaths? One would never know this by reading the article.

If Bush, in fact, intentionally misled this nation into war, what is the proper punishment for him? Since many Americans routinely want criminal defendants to be executed for murdering only one person, if we weren�t speaking of the president of the United States as the defendant here, to discuss anything less than the death penalty for someone responsible for over 100,000 deaths would on its face seem ludicrous.** But we are dealing with the president of the United States here.

On the other hand, the intensity of rage against Bush in America has been such (it never came remotely this close with Clinton because, at bottom, there was nothing of any real substance to have any serious rage against him for) that if I heard it once I heard it ten times that "someone should put a bullet in his head." That, fortunately, is just loose talk, and even more fortunately not the way we do things in America. In any event, if an American jury were to find Bush guilty of first degree murder, it would be up to them to decide what the appropriate punishment should be, one of their options being the imposition of the death penalty.

Although I have never heard before what I am suggesting � that Bush be prosecuted for murder in an American courtroom � many have argued that "Bush should be prosecuted for war crimes" (mostly for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo) at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. But for all intents and purposes this cannot be done.

*Even assuming, at this point, that Bush is criminally responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 people in the Iraq war, under federal law he could only be prosecuted for the deaths of the 4,000 American soldiers killed in the war. No American court would have jurisdiction to prosecute him for the one hundred and some thousand Iraqi deaths since these victims not only were not Americans, but they were killed in a foreign nation, Iraq. Despite their nationality, if they had been killed here in the States, there would of course be jurisdiction.
**Indeed, Bush himself, ironically, would be the last person who would quarrel with the proposition that being guilty of mass murder (even one murder, by his lights) calls for the death penalty as opposed to life imprisonment. As governor of Texas, Bush had the highest execution rate of any governor in American history: He was a very strong proponent of the death penalty who even laughingly mocked a condemned young woman who begged him to spare her life ("Please don�t kill me," Bush mimicked her in a magazine interview with journalist Tucker Carlson), and even refused to commute the sentence of death down to life imprisonment for a young man who was mentally retarded (although as president he set aside the entire prison sentence of his friend Lewis "Scooter" Libby), and had a broad smile on his face when he announced in his second presidential debate with Al Gore that his state, Texas, was about to execute three convicted murderers.
In Bush�s two terms as Texas governor, he signed death warrants for an incredible 152 out of 153 executions against convicted murderers, the majority of whom only killed one single person. The only death sentence Bush commuted was for one of the many murders that mass murderer Henry Lucas had been convicted of. Bush was informed that Lucas had falsely confessed to this particular murder and was innocent, his conviction being improper. So in 152 out of 152 cases, Bush refused to show mercy even once, finding that not one of the 152 convicted killers should receive life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. Bush�s perfect 100 percent execution rate is highly uncommon even for the most conservative law-and-order governors.

What does this have to do with lying under oath?

Who may I ask cares he is only in office for another 8 months.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the correlation is, that Clinton faced impeachment for lying under oath, while the arguement is that Bush and companies lies, while I don't think any were under oath, led directly to the deaths of thousands of Americans and many more people overseas. The idea being which lie was worse? Lying about oral sex or lying to start a war.

YOu daid it he DIDN"T lie UDER OATH

a lie is a lie is a lie

and if in public office (tho it isnt it should be) that any lie should be a crime because you took the oath of office

just a thought

but hey

what do i know

I never said that I knew he hadn't lied under oath for a fact, just that I didn't think any of his numerous lies were in fact under oath.

However, I don't know what the laws are in DC, but here if I tell a big old whopper and that fib directly results in someones death, I can in fact be prosecuted for nothing less than manslaughter.

Under further review, if I had known that my lie put lives at risk, then I'm facing murder charges, because I knowingly put lives at risk, by being deceitful and chose to be deceitful anyways.

everyone in the bush entourage refuses to answer anything under oath

All that it says is that americans think Bush misled them. There is no proof that at that time he knew it was a lie (to my knowledge anyway). As far as the law is concerned. I don't believe its a crime to lie, or we would all be in jail.

That being said, all politicians mislead people at some point. Their can't be double standards.

I for one don't think this war was in vain. I think stopping Saddam was a great thing. I also don't believe that I have the knowledge to say if and when we should pull out. I could hunt and search all over the net and find a million different sites with different information about the war and I can't trust that to give me the real facts. I won't trust the politicians and I won't trust the media. I will trust our generals and our soldiers.

ok torture...do you really think the photos looked tortureous to anyone...humiliating yes....torture noway....
there is things that are better left out of public view...this was one and had nothing to do with torture......I have worked with s2 units
and would gladly get whatever info was needed to protect my country in any way possible........
you can disagree....but your still living here..free

Dont let the door hit ya in the @ss on the way out now!!

bye bye!

I would say the parents of 4.000 soldiers killed, almost as much suicidal because of depression after 4 TOD in Iraq, and about an UNKNOWN number of amputees and double amputees / blinds / you name it...Besides the hundred of thousand of iraqui civilian killed in the past years?