Of Treason, Bribery, and high Crimes and Misdemeanors

I'll preface this post by saying that this is not a radical departure from the point of this blog. However, I am no political activist. This story is a serious issue that the weak-kneed media is not giving due attention to. Consider this my first "editorial" post: if CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and other media outlets are going to sweep this story under the carpet, then I will be one of the sources that treats this issue with the gravity that it truly carries. If this blog will truly call itself "The Truth for Youth," this story is an example of that truth. If you have not heard about the report of the Bush Administration's deception of the American public, please scroll to the bottom of this post and click the top or bottom link to familiarize yourself and then read on.


The headlines are out. The trumpet has been sounded. The drums are beating. Treason, treason, treason.

Nine hundred and thirty-five. That is a large number. Imagine if you had a friend who, over the course of two years, lied to you... let's say for comparison's sake, fifty times. Imagine most of these lies were about another friend of yours, and they were so well done and believable that you were utterly deceived and destroyed your relationship with your second friend. Imagine that five or six years later, another one of your friends finds out that all of those things your first friend said about the second were lies. You would be pretty mad at the lying friend, right? If you still maintained contact with them, better yet if they were a close friend, you would probably lose all trust in them and likely become their enemies. Yet, they have already made themselves your enemy when they lied to you all those years ago.

This is the context of the Bush Administration's lies to America.

This is the most serious galvanization of the trust of the American people in history, period.

The Centre for Public Integrity calls it "an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanised public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." A campaign consisting of nine hundred and thirty-five specific cases of duping the American people into believing Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. For the record, nine hundred and thirty-five equals one to two lies per day for three years from the Bush Administration. At the time, most of the readers of this post were in their early teens, so the magnitude of this situation is significantly harder to grasp; we have no real frame of reference for this "campaign." However, it does not take a political science degree to know when an unprecedented act of corruption has occurred. To use a familiar colloquial phrase, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand (with a primer) that this campaign of deliberate lies sets a most dangerous precedent for the American people.

A reference to "galvanization" and any other thing would cause serious uproar. Again, if your friend was found lying to you even fifty times you would cut off ties with them, so why, in a matter of global importance, is a war that was started by nine hundred and thirty-five lies not being prosecuted?

Why has our spineless Congress not taken action? Where is the conviction of politicians in Washington when an executive, which I might remind you the Founders intended to be constantly restrained, is allowed to run rampant: lying to the American people, lying about those lies, and orchestrating a war based on those lies? Where is the voice of the American people, and why has it not risen up and demanded action against this tyrant we call our President? I hate to be rhetorical, but what is a tyrant if not a leader of a nation who lies to his people for his own gain?

Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States of America reads, "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

At this point, I would like to establish my right as an American citizen to interpret the Constitution. Of course, my interpretation has no real world weight; that power lies solely with the Supreme Court. However, I will give non-Supreme Court interpretation precedence with a quote from transcript dated from year ago, January 16th, 2007. It deals with the suspension of habeas corpus for prisoners from Guantanamo Bay.

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Senator Specter (R-Pennsylvania): Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The constitution says you can’t take it away, except in the case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus, unless there is an invasion or rebellion?

Alberto Gonzalez, (Former) Attorney General: I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn’t say, “Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.” It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

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Alright, so now that we have established that non-Supreme Court justices can have almost comically misguided interpretations of the Constitution, I will try my hand. (For the record, "habeas corpus" is the right to challenge someone when they accuse you of a crime of being mistaken about it- that principal is a tenet of our legal system and by extension, our democracy.)

If the Constitution states that the President should be impeached in the case of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors," then I suppose we have to define treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors. Treason, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is "the betrayal of a trust." Well, actually, the Constitution defines treason in Article 3, Section 3. "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." For the sake of argument, we will say that because the President and his cabal have not explicitly levied war against the United States, so treason is out. Bribery, the next possible charge, is "the act of promising, giving, receiving, or agreeing to receive money or some other item of value with the corrupt aim of influencing a public official in the discharge of his official duties." While there are plenty of allegations towards the President but more often the Vice President about the war and the amount of money the individuals are making off of it, there is no definitive proof, so we can disregard bribery as well. Now, "high Crimes and Misdemeanors." This phrase, during the Constitutional Convention itself, was picked up, tossed around and thrown through the ringer, so even today it is open to debate. The charge against Bill Clinton was perjury; lying under oath. So, if the President of the United States and his cabal, the group of people Americans would refer as the leaders and the people who frame the public debate/opinion simply due to the nature of their offices manage to fabricate claims of weapons of mass destruction a total of nine hundred and thirty-five times, is this a crime? I believe it is a crime, a negligence of the office of President of the United States. The Leader of the Free World cannot have an unpunished track record like the one we currently are allowing it to have. The American people cannot be taken seriously with this report out if no action is taken in the future. This campaign of lies will reflect down on the integrity of America; the next time we have a threat and it is real, we will be without allies. Skepticism is part of human nature and this is no different, once we cry wolf once, the likelihood of international support is diminished significantly, if not entirely, by this incredible blunder by the Bush Administration.


Martin Bormann, Karl Donitz, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Hans Fritzsche, Walther Funk, Hermann Goring, Rudolf Hess, Alfred Jodl, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Konstantin von Neurath, Erich Raeder, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Fritz Sauckel, Baldur von Schirach, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, Julius Streicher. All names of men prosecuted at the Nuremberg Trials for the crimes of "participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of crime against peace," "war crimes," "crimes against humanity," or "planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace."


Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan. Names of men and a woman who must be held accountable for their lies against the American people, regardless of their knowledge or lack of knowledge about the lies they were committing. At the very least, an extensive investigation must be done NOW, not after the administration leaves, but NOW, today, January 23rd, 2008.

Regardless of your stance on the war, the fact remains that the pretense for war was the Weapons of Mass Destruction and the imminent threat that the Bush Administration proposed Saddam Hussein was. President Bush in 2005 said "much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong." He went on to say "it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power." This is the flimsy justification for the lies against the American public, and does not change the fact that we entered this war believing we were dismantling a serious threat to the American people, not to unseat Saddam Hussein.


The argument is clear. Treason has been committed, the government of the American people has been sold out to criminals, and Congress must act, or the American people will soon be acting for it.


**NOTE: These are MY views and MY VIEWS ONLY. I, Josh, the author of this post will take all criticism. If you don't agree with these views, please don't punish my fellow editors by ignoring our blog. Just ignore me. Thank you.


Sources used:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23098129-401,00.html?from=mostpop
http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/Default.aspx?src=home&context=overview&id=945

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/washington/23database.html?ei=5124&en=8874f78501ec940b&ex=1358830800&adxnnl=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&adxnnlx=1201140338-N6cIDyP/LZsVYAnjAbOOhA

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/19/gonzales-habeas/

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A2Sec4