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The corporate takeover of ‘reason’ and ‘science’

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

By David Miller | Those who say that they favour science and rationality can end up supporting the opposite.  Science and rationality retain a very significant force in public debate and is thus worth exploiting by vested interests.  The strategic use of science is a well used part of the armoury of the public relations industry.  Indeed it is true to say that the founding of the PR and lobbying industries were based on attempts to pervert rationality and science in the interests of vested interests.  The very earliest PR practitioners such as Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, were adept at this.  Bernays use of psychology was famously put to use in promoting cigarette smoking among women by styling them ‘torches of freedom’ and associating them with women’s equality and liberation. 

Bernays was amongst the first to make a profession out of what he called the ‘conscious’ and intelligent manipulation’ of the beliefs and behaviour of the public. Those who ‘manipulate this unseen mechanism’ of society were, he wrote, an ‘invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.’ ¹

Today the PR industry is still based on the same philosophy.  The promotion of ‘science-i-ness’ is an ever present talisman.  It has two cardinal principles. The first - seen increasingly following the neoliberal turn of the late 1970s – is that where science or truth will undermine corporate interests, the science or truth must be changed.  The second principle is to disguise the source of information where useful. When a message is likely to be disbelieved or treated with scepticism when said openly by a corporation or politician, the words must be put in the mouth of someone more believable and apparently disinterested.  This is the famous third party technique and has led to a whole swathe of scientists taking corporate money to promote corporate friendly science.

Because science is still such a resource it is imperative for powerful interests to try and co-opt, undermine, distort, influence or buy ‘science’.  This is now so widespread that the issue is openly debated in the scientific journals and there is a small but growing number of studies examining  the question of the potential bias introduced by corporate funding.²   From the 50 year battle to protect the tobacco industry to today’s strategic use of science in climate change denial, and to muddy the waters as obesity and binge drinking become crisis issues, scientists have been recruited as a resource. For example they receive research grants, are paid as consultants or have their names added to academic journal articles ghost written by PR operatives.  Some scientists are even kept on retainers by corporations or lobby groups and can be wheeled out to order.

The third party technique fits nicely into the co-option strategy.  Scientists whose research budgets are nicely swelled by corporate money can often be surprisingly willing recruits to speak on behalf of industry. A study of toxic industrial contaminants in farmed Salmon published in Science in 2004, was greeted with a chorus of condemnation in the press.  Many of the voices were described as academic scientists.  In fact almost all had financial links to the industry undisclosed in the press.  The study itself was well grounded.³   Nonetheless the industry campaign to remove the stain of poisoned Salmon from the public mind was largely successful.

In the US and UK the creation of ‘front groups’ is common.  These are organisations usually including a science-like term in their title such as ‘foundation’  ‘institute’ or ‘research’. In the UK the food industry has been able to sabotage healthy eating initiatives since the 1970s by – among other things - funding the apparently independent British Nutrition Foundation which is able to place representatives on a myriad of government committees.⁴ The International Life Science Institute sounds a bit scientific.  In fact it is a food industry lobby group funded by hundreds of the biggest food, pharma and chemical companies and was for years more or less directed by the Coca Cola company.  It was able to infiltrate the WHO process on dietary sugars by covertly funding some of the scientists involved.⁵ In January 2006 the WHO decided that ILSI ‘can no longer take part in WHO activities setting microbiological or chemical standards for food and water’, as a result of complaints about its lobbying tactics.⁶

The PR industry is at the forefront of creating and managing front groups today.  The Scientific Alliance turned out to be run from the offices of Foresight Communications a PR firm in central London and to be funded by Scottish quarry owner Robert Durward.  The Social Issues Research Centre ‘fosters the image of an ultraconcerned public spirited group’ and of ‘a heavy-weight research body’.⁷ It is also run by a PR/marketing company from the same address.  That company - MCM Research - used to announce on its website its approach to open and truthful communications: ‘Do your PR initiatives sometimes look too much like PR initiatives? MCM conducts social/psychological research on the positive aspects of your business… The results do not read like PR literature’.⁸ 

Of course the corporations can do little else than lie and attempt to co-opt science.  They require to extract maximum surplus from both labour and natural resources to be part of the global market.  Their problem is that these qualities of corporate operations are not very attractive to the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe.  As a result corporations and their PR agents must try to undermine or co-opt science. The only defence is transparency, enhanced ethics standards and public funding of research.

NOTES

1.  Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928, New York: Horace Liverwright.
2.  Kassirer, J.P. On the take: How medicine’s complicity with big business can endanger your health. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press: 2005.; Lesser et al. ‘Relationship between funding  source and conclusion among nutrition-related scientific articles’. PLoS Medicine 2007.; Jorgensen AW, Hilden J, Gotzsche PC. Cochrane reviews compared with industry supported meta-analyses and other meta-analyses of the same drugs: systematic review. BMJ 2006;333:782-5.;Veronica Yank, Drummond Rennie, Lisa A Bero, Financial ties and concordance between results and conclusions in meta-analyses: retrospective cohort study BMJ 2007;335:1202-1205 (8 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39376.447211.BE (published 16 November 2007); Jim Giles, Industry money skews drug overviews Nature 437, 458-459 (22 September 2005); DeAngelis, C. Comment on “Conflict of interest in medical research: facts and friction” in meeting proceedings, call to action: Managing financial relationships between academia and industry in biomedical research 2007; 15-16.;Peppercorn, J, Blood, E., Winer, E, Partridge, A. Association between pharmaceutical involvement and outcomes in breast cancer clinical trials. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2005.

3.  David Miller ‘Spinning Farmed Salmon (part 2 of 3)’, Spinwatch, 28 May 2008 http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/4953/8/

4.  Geoffrey Cannon The Politics of Food Century Hutchinson, London, UK, 1987. John Yudkin, Pure, White and Deadly, Penguin, 1988.

5. Sarah Boseley ‘WHO “infiltrated by food industry”‘ The Guardian Thursday January 9, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/jan/09/foodanddrink; Sarah Boseley ‘Sugar industry threatens to scupper WHO’ The Guardian Monday April 21, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/apr/21/usnews.food; Sarah Boseley ‘WHO ‘buried’ report to please food industry’ The Guardian Wednesday November 3, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/nov/03/media.advertising

6.  John Heilperin, ‘WHO to Rely Less on U.S. Research’, Associated Press, January 27, 2006.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/01/27/national/w150409S47.DTL

7. Annabel Ferriman ‘An end to health scares?’ BMJ 1999;319:716- ( 11 September ) http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/319/7211/716

8. Ibid.

A shorter version of this article was published in the New Scientist (subscription required) on 23 July 2008.  

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Could Coca Cola Distribution Network Save Children’s Lives?

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

Have Your Say: Could Coca Cola Distribution Network Save Children’s Lives?
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Iraq demands ‘clear timeline’ for US withdrawal

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

Iraq’s foreign minister insisted Sunday that any security deal with the United States must contain a “very clear timeline” for the departure of U.S. troops. A suicide bomber struck north of Baghdad, killing at least five people including an American soldier.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters that American and Iraqi negotiators were “very close” to reaching a long-term security agreement that will set the rules for U.S. troops in Iraq after the U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

Zebari said the Iraqis were insisting that the agreement include a “very clear timeline” for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces, but he refused to talk about specific dates.

“We have said that this is a condition-driven process,” he added, suggesting that the departure schedule could be modified if the security situation changed.

But Zebari made clear that the Iraqis would not accept a deal that lacks a timeline for the end of the U.S. military presence.

“No, no definitely there has to be a very clear timeline,” Zebari replied when asked if the Iraqis would accept an agreement that did not mention dates.

Differences over a withdrawal timetable have become one of the most contentious issues remaining in the talks, which began early this year. U.S. and Iraqi negotiators missed a July 31 target date for completing the deal, which must be approved by Iraq’s parliament.

President Bush has steadfastly refused to accept any timetable for bringing U.S. troops home. Last month, however, Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki agreed to set a “general time horizon” for a U.S. departure.

Last week, two senior Iraqi officials told The Associated Press that American negotiators had agreement to a formula which would remove U.S. forces from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009 with all combat troops out of the country by October 2010.

The last American support troops would leave about three years later, the Iraqis said.

But U.S. officials insist there is no agreement on specific dates. Both the American and Iraqi officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are ongoing. Iraq’s Shiite-led government believes a withdrawal schedule is essential to win parliamentary approval.

American officials have been less optimistic because of major differences on key issues including who can authorize U.S. military operations and immunity for U.S. troops from prosecution under Iraqi law.

The White House said discussions continued on a bilateral agreement and said any timeframe discussed was due to major improvements in security over the past year.

“We are only now able to discuss conditions-based time horizons because security has improved so much. This would not have been possible 18 months ago,” White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Sunday. “We all look forward to the day when Iraqi security forces take the lead on more combat missions, allowing U.S. troops to serve in an overwatch role, and more importantly return home.”

Iraq’s position in the U.S. talks hardened after a series of Iraqi military successes against Shiite and Sunni extremists in Basra, Baghdad, Mosul and other major cities.

Violence in Iraq has declined sharply over the past year following a U.S. troop buildup, a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq and a Shiite militia cease-fire.

But attacks continue, raising concern that the militants are trying to regroup.

The suicide bomber struck Sunday afternoon as U.S. and Iraqi troops were responding to a roadside bombing that wounded an Iraqi in Tarmiyah, 30 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

Four Iraqi civilians were killed along with the American soldier, military spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Stover said. Two American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were among 24 people wounded.

No group claimed responsibility for the blast but suicide bombings are the signature attack of al-Qaida in Iraq.

“This was a heinous attack by al-Qaida in Iraq against an Iraqi family, followed by a cowardly attack against innocent civilians, their security forces and U.S. soldiers,” Stover said.

Elsewhere, a suicide car bomber attacked the Kurdish security department in Khanaqin, 90 miles northeast of Baghdad. At least two people were killed and 25 wounded, including the commander of local Kurdish forces, Lt. Col. Majid Ahmed, police said.

Ethnic tensions have been rising in northern Iraq amid disputes between Kurds, Turkomen and mostly Sunni Arabs over Kurdish demands to annex the oil-rich city of Kirkuk into their self-ruled region.

Sawarah Ghalib, 25, who was wounded in the blast, said he believed military operations under way south of the city in Diyala province had pushed insurgents into the Khanaqin area.

“I did not expect that a terrorist attack to take place in our secure town,” Ghalib said from his bed in the Khanaqin hospital. “Al-Qaida is to blame for this attack. Operations in Diyala have pushed them here.”

In Baghdad, six people were killed in a series of bombings on the first day of the Iraqi work week.

The deadliest blast occurred about 8:15 a.m. in a crowded area where people wait for buses in the capital’s mainly Shiite southeastern district of Kamaliya. Four people were killed, including a woman and her brother, and 11 others wounded, according to police.

A car bomb later exploded as an Iraqi army patrol transporting money to a state-run bank passed by in Baghdad’s central Khillani square, killing two people including an Iraqi soldier and wounding nine other people, a police officer said.

Another Iraqi soldier was killed and five were wounded by a car bomb in Salman Pak, about 25 kilometers south of Baghdad, police said.

___

Associated Press writers Hamza Hendawi, Kim Gamel and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad and Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah contributed to this report.

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Why the Drug War is a Crime against Humanity Explained

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

Like the Iraq war and the “war on terror”, the so-called “drug war” is a government contrived “war” based on lies that generates massive profits for a few while causing massive suffering for many.

The drug war is futile by design (and thus never-ending) because it doesn’t “fight” drugs—quite the contrary—it strongly encourages production and distribution of prohibited drugs by guaranteeing extremely high profits.

But the most insidious and evil aspect of the drug war is it manufactures its own enemies by criminalizing the most basic of human rights—the right of sovereignty over your own body. The drug war could not exist without first inventing a bogus crime.

Our government wastes billions of tax dollars each year harassing and jailing millions of decent, productive Americans for a government-invented “crime”. The use of drugs (even dangerous drugs like alcohol and nicotine) simply doesn’t meet any reasonable definition of “crime”.

Real crime requires action that harms another. Real crime requires both a victim and a perpetrator. For example, robbery harms another and has both a victim and a perpetrator. Only a corrupt, depraved government could invent a crime you commit against yourself.

If you use certain drugs, our government claims you’re both a criminal and a victim at the same time. Since the perpetrator can’t be separated from the victim, the victim is further punished for the “crime”. This pathetic perversion of justice is vigorously championed by our government for selfish political reasons.

More than 50 government agencies share billions of your tax dollars each year “fighting” a government-created crime. Of the millions of illegal drug users, the vast majority use marijuana. If marijuana were legal like alcohol, these government agencies would suddenly lose billions of dollars because millions of former “criminals” would suddenly be granted sovereignty over their own bodies. The vast army amassed to fight the drug war would need to be dissolved at great cost.

That’s why our government strongly opposes even honest debate about marijuana legalization because this massive money-making scam would soon end.

Ingesting nicotine, alcohol, fatty foods, or certain drugs may be unwise. But why is it a crime? If a drug user or a non-drug user harms another they should be treated equally. But the bogus “crime” of drug use doesn’t require harming anyone. Nor does it require a victim and a perpetrator. It only requires a government-invented, bogus criminal/victim, a drug user.

By using lies and deception our government convinces gullible Americans that simply putting something into your own body is a serious crime. But evidence clearly shows that nearly all the harm associated with drug use is caused by creating the bogus crime, not from the actual drug use. There are millions of drug users, but relatively few are harmed by their drug use. These few should be patients, not criminals.

But it’s not just the millions arrested for drug use who suffer from this gross injustice. We gullible Americans have allowed our government to invent a bogus crime that causes massive misery worldwide while costing the taxpayers billions.

Consider the following list of easily avoidable human tragedies that are the direct result of a government-invented, bogus crime: A tax-free, unregulated, multi-billion-dollar drug industry necessarily run by violent criminals; a giant law enforcement bureaucracy wasting billions in a futile attempt to curtail this drug industry, which, in fact, guarantees its extreme profitability; a deteriorating public education system robbed of billions to support this law enforcement bureaucracy; courts and prisons overflowing with non-violent “criminals” while murderers, rapists and real criminals go free; tens of thousands of children enduring the suffering and stigma of having one or both parents in jail for a bogus “crime”; the gradual erosion of our Constitution as more and more civil liberties are sacrificed to fight a crime “made in USA.”; rampant corruption of foreign governments (like Mexico and Columbia), so driven by US drug profits that life and human rights are secondary; thousands of adults and children infected and dying from HIV because distributing clean needles is a “crime”; violent street gangs with little incentive for education or legitimate jobs reaping huge drug profits made possible by a bogus crime; a growing death toll from police breaking down doors to catch people using substances less dangerous than tobacco, alcohol or fatty foods; a growing cynicism and disrespect for all laws and authority fueled by the knowledge our government can arbitrarily invent a bogus crime…

This sordid list goes on and on.

We’re appalled when Islamic regimes invent bogus crimes against reading certain books, or listening to certain music. Using certain drugs is our government’s version of the same thing. But the worldwide consequences of US drug prohibition are far more serious and severe. All of these “crimes” lack the moral basis of real crime. All are clear cases of a repressive government dictating the private personal behavior of its citizens.

If real crime is knowingly causing harm to others, then the real crime here is not drug use, but making drug use a “crime”. And the real criminals are not drug users, but ordinary people like us, who sit back and condone a ruthless scam that has been exported and exploited around the world leaving massive human suffering in its wake.

Carmen Yarrusso

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Tape: Top CIA official confesses order to forge Iraq-9/11 letter came on White House stationery

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

Raw Story | A forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new transcript of a conversation with the Central Intelligence Agency’s former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations Robert Richer.

The transcript was posted Friday by author Ron Suskind of an interview conducted in June. It comes on the heels of denials by both the White House and Richer of a claim Suskind made in his new book, The Way of The World. The book was leaked to Politico’s Mike Allen on Monday, and released Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the White House released a statement on Richer’s behalf. In it, Richer declared, “I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document … as outlined in Mr. Suskind’s book.”

The denial, however, directly contradicts Richer’s own remarks in the transcript.

“Now this is from the Vice President’s Office is how you remembered it–not from the president?” Suskind asked.

“No, no, no,” Richer replied, according to the transcript. “What I remember is George [Tenet] saying, ‘we got this from’–basically, from what George said was ‘downtown.’”

“Which is the White House?” Suskind asked.

“Yes,” Richer said. “But he did not–in my memory–never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now–he may have hinted–just by the way he said it, it would have–cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president.”

“But he didn’t say that specifically,” Richer added. “I would naturally–I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president.”

“But there wasn’t anything in the writing that you remember saying the vice president,” Suskind continued.

“Nope,” Richer said.

“It just had the White House stationery.”

“Exactly right.”

Later, Richer added, “You know, if you’ve ever seen the vice president’s stationery, it’s on the White House letterhead. It may have said OVP (Office of the Vice President). I don’t remember that, so I don’t want to mislead you.”

Suskind says decision to post transcript unusual

Suskind posted the transcript at his blog, saying, “This posting is contrary to my practice across 25 years as a journalist. But the issues, in this matter, are simply too important to stand as discredited in any way.” It was first picked up by ThinkProgress and Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein.

Suskind’s new book asserts that senior Bush officials ordered the CIA to forge a document “proving” that Saddam Hussein had been trying to manufacture nuclear weapons and was collaborating with al Qaeda. The alleged result was a faked memorandum from then chief of Saddam’s intelligence service Tahir Jalil Habbush dated July 1, 2001, and written to Hussein.

The bogus memo claimed that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had received training in Baghdad but also discussed the arrival of a “shipment” from Niger, which the Administration claimed had supplied Iraq with yellowcake uranium — based on yet another forged document whose source remains uncertain.

The memo subsequently was treated as fact by the British Sunday Telegraph, and cited by William Safire in his New York Times column, providing fodder for Bush’s efforts to take the US to war.

The Sunday Telegraph cited the main source for its story on Iraq’s 9/11 involvement as Ayad Allawi, a former Baathist who rebelled against Saddam and was appointed a government position after the US occupation.

Nothing in the story explains how an Iraqi politician was privy to the fake memo, but the New York Times column alluded to Allawi and described him as “an Iraqi leader long considered reliable by intelligence agencies.”

“To characterize it right,” Richer also declares in the transcript, “I would say, right: it came to us, George had a raised eyebrow, and basically we passed it on–it was to–and passed this on into the organization. You know, it was: ‘Okay, we gotta do this, but make it go away.’ To be honest with you, I don’t want to make it sound–I for sure don’t want to portray this as George jumping: ‘Okay, this has gotta happen.’ As I remember it–and, again, it’s still vague, so I’ll be very straight with you on this–is it wasn’t that important. It was: ‘This is unbelievable. This is just like all the other garbage we get about . . . I mean Mohammad Atta and links to al Qaeda. ‘Rob,’ you know, ‘do something with this.’ I think it was more like that than: ‘Get this done.’”

Magazine asserts Feith created bogus document

Today, The American Conservative also published a report saying that the forgery was actually produced by then-Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans, citing an unnamed intelligence source. The source reportedly added that Suskind’s overall claim “is correct.”

“My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment,” the magazine wrote. “Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. … It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the [Central Intelligence] Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.”

More of Suskind’s transcripts are available here

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State and Local Prosecutors Can Take Down Bush

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

By David Swanson | Former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s new book “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder” is not just a particularly good addition to the ten-foot high stack of rants against Bush’s crimes and abuses of power. It’s also an argument that state and local prosecutors have the necessary jurisdiction to try Bush for murder and for conspiracy to commit murder, at least once he’s out of office.

This is not a scheme based on some harebrained theory that Bush faked the suicide of a former staffer. In fact, this scheme is based on nothing more than universally accepted facts. Bush chose to send US troops into Iraq. He did not do so in self-defense or as a last resort or under an international mandate, but rather went out of his way to concoct false motives for war and to rush its launching. By sending troops into war, Bush was knowingly and needlessly but certainly condemning some of them to death. The Iraqis who killed those soldiers in predictable and legally justifiable defense of their country fall into the legal category of “third-party innocent agent.” This does not mean they are innocent, but rather that their actions do nothing to lessen the guilt of George W. Bush as murderer of those soldiers. Bugliosi calls this the “vicarious liability rule of conspiracy.” Bugliosi explains:

“In other words, if Bush personally killed an American soldier, he would be guilty of murder. Under the law, he cannot immunize himself from his criminal responsibility by causing a third party to do the killing. He’s still responsible. George Bush cannot sit safely in his Oval Office in Washington, D.C., while young American soldiers fighting his war are being blown to pieces by roadside bombs in Iraq, and wash his hands of all culpability. It’s not quite that easy. He could only do this if he did not take this nation into war under false pretenses. If he did, which the evidence overwhelmingly shows, he is criminally responsible for the thousands of American deaths in Iraq.” In addition, Bugliosi argues, Bush could be found guilty of murder under the rule of “aiding and abetting,” because he instigated the killing of American soldiers by ordering the invasion of Iraq.

Did Bush have “malice aforethought”? Yes, according to Bugliosi. We convict people of murder for driving 100 mph through a school zone and hitting a child, or for blowing up a building while unaware that someone is inside. These are cases where the murderer does not know he is committing murder but where he is reckless enough to take an unreasonable risk of doing so. In Bush’s case, he absolutely knew that invading Iraq would involve US casualties, and yet he ordered the invasion, thereby acting with the intent that American soldiers be killed. Bugliosi strengthens this argument by pointing out that we often convict people of murder for accidental killings that occur in the act of committing other felonies:

“A robber, for instance, was convicted of first degree murder under the felony-murder rule where, as he was leaving the store in which he had robbed the owner, he told the owner not to say a word or he’d be harmed, and fired into the ceiling to scare the owner. The shot, after two or three ricochets, pierced the head of the owner, killing him. In fact, the felony-murder rule applies even where the defendant is not the killer! There have been cases where the proprietor of the store fired at a robber, missed him and hit and killed a customer. And the robber was convicted of first degree murder of the customer.”

Bugliosi missed an opportunity here to further strengthen his case by noting that in the act of ordering the invasion of Iraq, Bush was committing a number of felonies. When Bush submitted his March 18, 2003, letter and report to the United States Congress providing reasons for attacking Iraq, he violated the federal anti-conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. - 371, which makes it a felony “to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose…”; and The False Statements Accountability Act of 1996, 18 U.S.C. - 1001, which makes it a felony to issue knowingly and willfully false statements to the United States Congress. Bush also committed a felony by misappropriating funds to secretly begin the invasion prior to this date.

Bugliosi notes that there is no statute of limitations for murder. Bush could be prosecuted by any future federal prosecutor who had the nerve to do so and could do so while keeping his or her job. But Bugliosi writes that a state attorney general or any district attorney in any city or county could bring a murder charge against Bush for any soldiers from that state or county who lost their lives in Iraq. And not just Bush, but Cheney, Rice, et alia. Bugliosi provides some truly talented proposals for questioning Bush in court and adds:

“I would be more than happy, if requested, to consult with any prosecutor who decides to prosecute Bush in preparation of additional cross-examination questions for him to face on the witness stand. I believe the cross-examination would be such that they’d have to carry the arrogant son of privilege off the stand on a stretcher.”

I know the same offer to assist stands from former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega, author of “United States versus George W. Bush et al.”

Bugliosi argues that such trials could only take place once Bush is out of office, but is uncharacteristically weak in his explanation of why. Bugliosi thinks it was a mistake to allow the Paula Jones case to take time away from Clinton’s duties as president, but he clearly does not believe taking time away from Bush’s duties as president could possibly harm anyone or anything. And Bugliosi cites no decisive constitutional or legal basis for preventing a prosecution from beginning while Bush is still president.

The question, in any case, is where we can find (or elect) one or two or a dozen prosecutors willing to stand up to the biggest murderer of our age. We need a project to identify the most likely combinations of prosecutors and gold star families, and work together with those families to urge prosecution. We are working on this at http://convictbushcheney.org

Why do I call Bush the biggest murderer of our age for a mere 4,000 murders, not counting his neglect prior to Katrina and 9-11, his exacerbation of global warming, his opposition to workplace safety standards or medical research, etc.? I have in mind, of course, the over 1 million Iraqis who have died as a result of his invasion of Iraq. Bugliosi does not see any legal case to try Bush for the murders of Iraqis, but he also openly admits that he cares more about the deaths of Americans. In addition to that disgusting confession, Bugliosi repeatedly cites the figure 100,000 as the number of Iraqi deaths, but never indicates where he came up with that number or how he ignores the fact that every serious study has placed the count above a million. Bugliosi also repeatedly claims that Bush won the 2004 election, and expresses his belief that congress members who voted to invade Iraq actually believed the White House lies about weapons. Bugliosi’s is not a perfect book, but it is a brilliant one, and is as good a one as any to offer to anyone not yet devoted to putting Bush and Cheney behind bars.

Bugliosi concludes his book with an excellent analysis of what happened on 9-11 and how the media and the public have responded. His account of how often Bush was warned prior to 9-11 and how little (nothing) he did in response is very well done, but includes at least one glaring error (at least glaring to those of us privileged to get our own briefings on these things from Ray McGovern). George Tenet did indeed, as Bugliosi recounts, tell the 9-11 Commission on April 14, 2004, that he did not speak with Bush for the whole month of August, 2001. But a CIA spokesperson called reporters that same evening to claim that Tenet had “misspoken” and that Tenet had briefed Bush on August 17th and 31st. In his book, At the Center of the Storm, (2007) Tenet refers to the August 17th meeting as a follow-up to the August 6th memo on Bin Laden. A White House press release suggests that Tenet was also in Crawford a week later, on August 24th. President Bush, addressing a group of visitors to Crawford on August 25, told them: “George Tenet and I, yesterday, we piled in the new nominees for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Vice Chairman and their wives and went right up the canyon.”

Bugliosi notes in his book that more evidence will continue to pile up. His claim, like so many others’, is only that the evidence he has compiled is more than sufficient to put Bush away for life. On that point, if you read this book, I think you’ll agree there can be no doubt whatsoever.

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