Capital Times
A letter to the editor
July 5, 2005
Dear Editor: The Iraq War Resolution passed the House on Oct. 10, 2002, and the Senate the following day after repeated assurances, public and private, to Congress that war would be a "last resort" and that President Bush would follow the terms of the resolution, first seeking U.N. Security Council approval. Both were lies, according to the Downing Street minutes of three months before. It is a crime to defraud Congress.
The 23 "whereas" clauses that precede the resolution text mention, in order of frequency: weapons of mass destruction 10 times, the U.N. Security Council nine times, terrorists seven times, 9/11 four times, Persian Gulf three times, weapons inspectors once, al-Qaida once (saying they had a base in Iraq and failing to say it was in the Kurdish-controlled area), and regime change once (the real reason). So the justification was mainly about WMD and the U.N.
The resolution indicates that Congress supports a new Security Council resolution and enforcement of the existing resolutions.
The use of force section grants authorization to the president under only two circumstances: to defend against the Iraq threat, later proven nonexistent, and to implement U.N. resolutions if Iraq refuses to promptly comply.
Unfortunately for Bush, who was hoping for a pretext to invade, Iraq was doing everything to comply when the war started, hence it was an illegal war of aggression for the purpose of regime change, without U.N. approval or any reasons of self-defense.
Furthermore, when the president used force, the resolution required a presidential determination that two conditions were being met. One was that "peaceful means" would not either relieve the Iraq "threat" or would not enforce Security Council resolutions. WMDs were proved nonexistent by U.N. inspectors before the war and U.S. inspectors after the war, so neither of these requirements was met.
Second, the president must show that this action is "consistent with continuing to take necessary actions against international terrorists, their organizations and those nations, organizations and persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001." Since there is no connection between Iraq and 9/11, this presidential determination must also be fraudulent.
So the president's repeated assurances that he preferred a "peaceful resolution" of the crisis and considered war a "last resort" were frauds to get congressional support, and, in fact, this fraud worked on Sen. Herb Kohl, according to his reasons for his war vote. Further, the president violated the terms of the war resolution, fraudulently claiming that Iraq was a threat or was in violation of the U.N. resolution, and that the Iraq war was part of the war on the perpetrators of 9/11.
That makes for three counts of indictment for high crimes and misdemeanors.
Bob Reuschlein
Madison
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