Vincent Bugliosi on George W. Bush

The following excerpts are from an interview with Vincent Bugliosi by Patt Morrison and appeared in the Los Angeles Times on August 8, 2009

"The Betrayal of America," attacking the 5-4 Supreme Court decision in the disputed 2000 presidential election -- not at first blush a case for a criminal prosecutor. I'm not a political activist. But whenever something is so egregious, I jump in. Even many Republican scholars [said], "The court should be ashamed of itself; we've lost respect for the court." And I kept saying, "That's all? You lost respect?" These five [justices] are among the biggest criminals in American history. How dare these people have the audacity to do what they did? I think I made my case pretty well that these people deliberately tried to steal the election.

And now your latest book, "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder," published in May, makes a murder case against Bush for waging war unnecessarily and shows how he could be prosecuted for it.
Bush [told] unsuspecting Americans the exact opposite of what his own federal intelligence agencies told him. What could be more criminal than the Bush administration keeping the all-important conclusion from Congress and the American people, with the lives of millions in the balance?

Every day, I think of those people in their graves now -- no one is fighting for them. You can see that I'm upset. I don't like to see anyone get away with murder. O.J. Simpson got away with two, and I wrote the book "Outrage." If I can get that angry over one or two murders, you can imagine the way I feel about Bush.

Some people must have said, "Bugliosi's gone off the deep end on this one."
Jerry Brown called me: "I understand you have a book out about Bush, about impeachment," and I said, "No, Jerry, it's about murder."

My first challenge was to see if a president taking the nation to war on a lie fell within the conventional principles of criminal law, and I've come up with very solid evidence that it does. There are many sophisticated issues, but here's the main issue. I've established jurisdiction, federal and local. If a prosecutor could prove that Bush took this nation to war under false pretenses, then these killings of American soldiers in Iraq would become unlawful and therefore murder.

Bellicose Boy

First, we he have endured years of thankless military sacrifice in Iraq, a war justified by the George W. Bush administration with lies and deceit. Afghanistan, the initial poster child of the war on terror, was left to wither on the vine, and now the resurgent Taliban launch operations against various targets at will throughout the country.

Then Bush's friend and exemplar of the Administration's foreign policy success, Michel Shashkavilli, decides to go to war on Russia's border and is "shocked" by Russia's swift and crushing military response, and by the failure of the West to come to his aid (about as shocked as Claude Rains in the movie 'Casablanca' when he learns that gambling is going on at Rick's). Bush promptly sends the inept Condi Rice to the area so as to allow the peoples of that region the pleasure of ignoring her. And we follow that act of statesmanship with a treaty with Poland that allows the US to install missiles at Russia's border, further inflaming the attitude of the Russians and daring them to respond.

And in the Saturday morning paper in Los Angeles is an article stating that the US may have to take unilateral action against terrorists in Pakistan, since the new government there seems less responsive to our concerns.

Wait a minute. It is time for Bush to stop acting like the bellicose and petulant twelve-year-old boy that he is. For someone who so openly touts the moral high-ground he certainly has none. His administration has been one long slide downhill, his foreign policy marked by confrontation over statesmanship, decree over consensus, and the result is a growing disregard for the US around the world.

Has Bush accomplished anything? Yes. He abolished the inheritance tax and ushered in faith-based initiatives. Perhaps there is a future for a new inbred aristocracy in America, one modeled on the dark days of Europe, where the royal family was aided and abetted by the state-sponsored church.

It is time for George to take a respite from unilateral actions on the international scene, and to cease his war mongering activities around the globe. It is time for a new administration to take over the reins of foreign relations from this childish lame-duck, and see if they can salvage and rebuild the decimated image of the US around the world.

Osama Bin Laden's Driver

Osama Bin Laden's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, was recently found guilty of supporting terrorism by a military tribunal tasked with prosecuting the Guantanamo prisoners. After all these years, after the threat of terrorism in America and the assault on our personal liberties at home led by Bush and Cheney, we have marched the driver out to face Military Justice.

It has not gone unnoticed that Hitler's driver was not prosecuted at the Nuremberg Trials.

The fact that radical Islam preys on the poor and ignorant (Hamdan is a Yemeni with a fourth grade education) seems to require that he be held in super-secret double-dare detention along with the other "important" and "significant" prisoners in Guantanamo. You never know when he might require waterboarding.

Who else is kept under confinement there? The maid? The gardener? A Catholic?

The word 'justice' (and those responsible for dispensing it) does not seem to carry much honor or importance under the current administration, especially when you acknowledge the debacle at the Justice Department.

When I look at Hamdan, I wonder about what the penalty should be for, example, lying about Iraq trying to purchase "yellowcake" uranium, or having WMDs, or for outing the career intelligence agent Valerie Plame?

Bush and Cheney seem to have it backwards. The things that make America great are not small and petty, and the small and petty things that make them both what they are, well, those things are not great.

Alberto Gonzales - US Hall of Shame

Alberto Gonzales, what a legacy this unethical cretin left in his wake. George W. Bush touted his Latino roots and religious heritage when he nominated Alberto to be the Attorney General of the United States. But Alberto's oath of office meant nothing, he tried to dismantle the justice department and to create in its stead an uber-agency, built to serve the whims of the president, and to create a new litmus test for those who would be federal attorneys, one built upon espousing conservative, evangelical, and Republican values. Under Alberto, the Department of Justice no longer sought the best and the brightest from America's law schools. Over 150 alumni of Pat Robertson's Regent University School of Law became lawyers at the DOJ, including the inexperienced lackey (Monica Goodling) who became Alberto's top aide and played such a prominent role in the politically-motivated firings of the US Attorneys. She promptly took the 5th when called upon to testify.

What does justice mean in Texas? Not much, if people like Alberto served on its Supreme Court.

I consider Alberto a permanent member of the US Hall of Shame.