Richard Behan's Testimony for Washington State Gov't and Op's Committee

An Airtight Case for Impeachment
By Richard W. Behan

If the Washington State Legislature can initiate the impeachment of George Bush and Richard Cheney, it will earn a well deserved place of honor in the nation’s history. The men and women we have sent to Olympia will be instrumental in assuring the survival of the United States Constitution, which is in grave jeopardy today.

Strong words? Please continue.

The story to follow is a shocking one. It makes an airtight case for impeachment, but it is fully documented.

“The War on Terror” is a façade.

It was launched, we were told, to apprehend Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and to effect regime change in Iraq.

President Bush was handed opportunities to achieve each of these, quickly and without resorting to warfare, but he literally refused to do so.

Saddam Hussein offered in February of 2002, a month before his country was invaded, personally to leave Iraq for exile in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. His offer was kept secret—and rejected. Regime change was in fact a façade for a more ambitious objective. The Bush Administration was already and fully committed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Also kept secret was a standing offer from the Taliban to the Bush Administration to surrender Osama bin Laden—an offer made long before the Trade Towers fell and the Pentagon burned. Three times before 9/11 and twice afterward the Administration refused the surrender. Osama bin Laden’s capture was in fact a façade for a more ambitious objective. The Bush Administration was already and fully committed to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

The incursions into these countries were premeditated wars of unprovoked conquest and territorial occupation. They were undertaken to assure the geostrategic control of Middle Eastern oil and gas resources: long suspected, this is now beyond dispute.

If you scrutinize the cumulative body of information about these wars—scattered but robust—you uncover a story strikingly at odds with the Bush Administration’s narrative about a “War on Terror.” You discover the Administration, when it took office, brushed aside explicit warnings about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. You unearth the Bush Administration angrily negotiating pipeline rights-of-way with the Taliban through the summer of 2001, finally threatening them with “a carpet of bombs.” And then you learn President Bush notified Pakistan and India in late August—five weeks before 9/11—that he would attack Afghanistan “before the end of October.” And he did.

You find the commitment to invade Iraq was formalized at the first meeting of the National Security Council on January 30, 2001—seven months before 9/11. You read how the National Security Council was ordered to “meld” its work with that of Richard Cheney’s Energy Task Force, which in March of 2001 was studying maps of the Iraqi oil fields. (Copies of the maps can be downloaded from the website of Judicial Watch, a citizen’s group.) You come across a once-secret memorandum dated February 3, 2001, discussing the “capture of new and existing oil and gas fields” in Iraq. You discover the State Department designing, at least a year before the invasion, the privatization of Iraq’s nationalized oil industry. You are shown how the State Department’s plan was written into a draft “hydrocarbon law” for Iraq—by Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, with the invited participation of American and British oil companies. Then you watch President Bush on television in January of 2007 demanding enactment of the hydrocarbon law: he made it a mandatory “benchmark.”

George Bush and Richard Cheney, in defiance of honesty, decency, morals, and law, orchestrated and prosecute two wars of unprovoked conquest and territorial occupation, at appalling costs in blood and treasure. They disguise these actions with a façade called the “War on Terror.”

Only by holding these two men accountable for this can we tell the American people and the world at large that truth and justice still prevail in our country, and the U.S. Constitution remains the impregnable touchstone of our public life.

Passively waiting for their terms to expire is criminally negligent. They must be impeached, and there are bills before our Legislature today asking for the process to begin. SJM 8016, introduced by Senator Eric Oemig, and HJM 4027, introduced by Representative Maralyn Chase deserve the support of every patriotic Washingtonian. There is no more important issue before our Legislature today.

(Documentation for this essay can be found in two detailed articles on the Internet. See, “The Mega-Lie Called the ‘War on Terror’: a Masterpiece of Propaganda” at http://www.alternet.org/story/63632/ , and “Nancy Pelosi, You Must Impeach!” at http://www.counterpunch.org/behan01162008.html .)

Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island. He can be reached at rwbehan@rockisland.com .