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
Forbidden images: the direct result of the lies leading to war Image cc
Interview with Vincent Bugliosi
Conducted by Michael Collins
August 3, 2008
Michael Collins (MC): 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 (VB): 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.'"
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