This Week You Need To Know
Vice President Cheney Can Be Removed From Office Now!
In his webcast of July 2, Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. made it clear, once again, that the only effective way to stop the Chickenhawk drive to expand the war against Iraq into Iran, and elsewhere, is to target Vice President Dick Cheney, for his impeachable crimes, including lying to the President about intelligence.
"The reason we went to a war in Iraq, was because the Democratic Party was neutralized, by the belief, that Cheney had the evidence, that Iraq was getting nuclear weapons. Cheney knew there were no such nuclear weapons. Cheney knew the story about Niger 'yellow cake' going to Iraq was a fraud. And yet, with that knowledge, he pushed that argument, in order to convince the Congress to subside, and to allow the war to go ahead."
Yet, now that the "intelligence" about Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq appears to be a fraud, those Democrats who are upset are not targetting Cheney, but going after President Bush. LaRouche's rivals for the Democratic Presidential nomination are acting like fools who are not in the real world. Senator Kerry, as LaRouche pointed out in his webcast, is carrying out a shameful, Hamlet-like evasion, by targetting the President, instead of Cheney, on whom he had the goods. The same for Howard "Who?" Dean.
President Bush can't be impeached, LaRouche said, but Cheney can. "You can't impeach this President! You can't convict him of intent! He's not smart enough to know what his intent is! You want to stop the war? Get Cheney out! Any serious person knows that."
LaRouche is the only candidate for the Democratic nomination who is serious and has been dealing with the real worldand now, LaRouche's targetting of Cheney as the key culprit, is producing results. A "smoking gun" has appeared. Note the following crucial media coverage:
*July 6, 2003: Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV appeared on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press," and had interviews published in the New York Post and Washington Post, and an op ed in the New York Times, in which he disclosed that he had been the senior diplomat sent to Africa, to check on the story of Iraq's alleged attempt to purchase uranium "yellow cake" from Niger, and that he had not only reported that he had found no basis for the story, but was certain that his results were reported to Vice President Dick Cheney.
According to his own account, Wilson went to Niger in February 2002, at the request of the CIA, which told him that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. Wilson reports he spent approximately 10 days in Niger, and determined that "it was highly doubtful" that a transaction of Niger selling uranium to Iraq, had ever taken place. He briefed the U.S. Ambassador, and, once he arrived back in Washington, provided his evaluation to the CIA and the State Department African Affairs Bureau. "There should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission," Ambassador Wilson writes.
This was March 2002, after which the debunked report appears in the British government's September dossier, President Bush's State of the Union address, and, less directly, a "Meet the Press" interview by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Questioned by reporters, Ambassador Wilson says he considers it "inconceivable" that Vice President Cheney, who had originated the question, was not briefed on the results of his trip. "Someone in the Vice President's office had to know," he told CNN July 7. "If they'll lie about things like this, there's no telling what else they'll lie about," Wilson is quoted in the July 6 New York Post.
*July 8, 2003The Los Angeles Times publishes a commentary by Robert Scheer, who writes about the Wilson revelation under the title "A Diplomat's Undiplomatic Truth: They Lied." Scheer begins his article:
"They may have finally found the smoking gun that nails the culprit responsible for the Iraq war. Unfortunately, the incriminating evidence wasn't left in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces but rather in Vice President Dick Cheney's office."
LaRouche's Record
Those who have had the good sense to follow LaRouche, know that he identified the crucial role of Cheney in manipulating the war against Iraq, and called for his resignation, at least as early as September 2002. While a full record of LaRouche's campaign against the Chickenhawks appears on his website, www.larouchein2004.com, the following highlights are crucial:
*On Sept. 20, 2002 LaRouche issued a statement called "Iraq is a fuse, but Cheney built the bomb," in which he identified the "Cheney doctrine of 1990," a doctrine demanding a U.S. world empire, as the real source of the just-issued policy of preemptive war, contained in "The National Security strategy of the United States." LaRouche concluded that statement as follows:
"In summary, Vice President Dick Cheney's recurring wet dreams of a U.S. worldwide Roman Empire are, in and of themselves, the world's greatest single threat to the continuation of civilization in any part of this planet today. These facts demand that Cheney's prompt resignation be sought, and accepted."
*October 2002LaRouche's call for Cheney to resign is aired frequently on Washington, D.C. radio, in political ads taken out by an associate.
*On March 25, 2003 LaRouche issued a statement entitled "War, Hitler and Cheney," in which he charged the following:
"The pivotal feature of that warfare, into which an already bankrupt United States has just been plunged, is the de facto usurpation of the function of a still-sitting President by Halliburton's Vice President Cheney, and by a gang of his organized-crime-linked lackeys polluting not only the Departments of Defense and State; but also polluting, and virtually castrating elected and other leaders of the nominal opposition, the Democratic Party.
"Whatever wrong the under-qualified President Bush has done, he remains the poor patsy from whom the pack of Cheney-Rumsfeld lackeys have managed to gain almost anything they wished, so far. However, this would not have been possible had the Democratic Party itself not fallen under the top-down control of the same behind-the-scenes forces which control Dick 'Lady Macbeth' Cheney."
*On April 9, 2003, LaRouche's campaign issued a mass pamphlet entitled "The Children of Satan: The 'Ignoble Liars' Behind Bush's No-Exit War," to mobilize Americans against the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Strauss cabal, which, the pamphlet documents, actually instigated the war. Some 800,000 of these pamphlets are now in circulation, and have caused major reverberations from Washington, to New York City, to London and Zurich.
*On June 7, LaRouche's campaign issued a statement entitled "LaRouche Says Charges Against Cheney Constitute Grounds for Impeachment," in which the charges of Cheney's role in the Niger "yellow cake" story are aired, and the candidate is quoted saying "Let there be no mistake about it. The nature of these charges constitute hard grounds for impeachment. The question has to be taken head on. It is time for Dick Cheney to come clean. I want to know exactly what Dick Cheney knew and when he knew it. The charges are grave and specific and leave no wiggle room. Determining who knew what and when is, at this time, an urgent matter of national security."
One month after that statement, the momentum is finally building. But the other Democratic Presidential candidates are still silent. Is there really any question as to who is the only Democrat qualified to be President of the United States?
Documentation: The Evidence Points to Cheney
Here are excerpts from the press coverage of the revelation by Joseph C. Wilson IV, former U.S. Ambassador and National Security Council officer, that he was the ex-diplomat who was sent to Niger in February 2002, at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA, to probe allegations that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium precursors for nuclear weapons production from the African nation.
Joseph C. Wilson IV, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," New York Times, July 6:
Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?
Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat....
In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake, a form of lightly processed ore, by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.
After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.
In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's....
The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq, and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington.... It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.
Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired....
Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.
Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure....
In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country. Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.
The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.
Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government....
The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. (It's worth remembering that in his March "Meet the Press" appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.") At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted.
Robert Scheer, "A Diplomat's Undiplomatic Truth: They Lied," Los Angeles Times, July 8:
They may have finally found the smoking gun that nails the culprit responsible for the Iraq war. Unfortunately, the incriminating evidence wasn't left in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces but rather in Vice President Dick Cheney's office.
Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson publicly revealed over the weekend that he was the mysterious envoy whom the CIA, under pressure from Cheney, sent to Niger to investigate a document now known to be a crude forgery that allegedly showed Iraq was trying to acquire enriched uranium that might be used to build a nuclear bomb. Wilson found no basis for the story, and nobody else has either.
What is startling in Wilson's account, however, is that the CIA, the State Department, the National Security Council and the vice president's office were all informed that the Niger-Iraq connection was phony. No one in the chain of command disputed that this "evidence" of Iraq's revised nuclear weapons program was a hoax.
Yet, nearly a year after Wilson reported back the facts to Cheney and the U.S. security apparatus, Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, invoked the fraudulent Iraq-Africa uranium connection as a major justification for rushing the nation to war: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa."
What the president did not say was that the British were relying on their intelligence white paper, which was based on the same false information that Wilson and the U.S. ambassador to Niger had already debunked. "That information was erroneous, and they knew about it well ahead of both the publication of the British white paper and the president's State of the Union address," Wilson said Sunday on Meet the Press....
Nor has the U.S. administration told its public why it ignored the disclaimers from its own intelligence sources. In order to believe that our president was not lying to us, we must believe that this information did not find its way through Cheney's office to the Oval Office.
In media interviews, Wilson said it was the vice president's questioning that pushed the CIA to try to find a credible Iraqi nuclear threat after that agency had determined there wasn't one.
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