The last straw?

Just when you think you’ve heard the worst thing this administration can do, something comes out that makes you realize they’re not even close.

Journalist Ron Suskind has a new book coming out and in it he describes how the Bush White house ordered the CIA to forge a backdated, handwritten letter that would tie Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks.

According to Suskind, the letter was commissioned “from the highest reaches of the White House and occurred in the fall of 2003 when the White House ordered CIA Director George Tenet to forge a “fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001.” Writes Suskind; “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq.”

While this isn’t totally surprising, it should enrage you… for two reasons.

First, while many of us knew, or at the least now know, that Bush lied us into war, we now seem to have some kind of concrete and traceable proof that Bush knew before he invaded Iraq that there were no WMD’s… and yet he continued to lie to the American public and to Congress.

Second, after the fact it now looks as though Bush & Cheney ordered the CIA to forge a letter to justify the invasion; “The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq — thus showing, finally, that there was an operation link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, something the Vice President's office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade. […] A handwritten letter, with Habbush's name on it, would be fashioned by CIA and then hand-carried by a CIA agent to Baghdad for dissemination.”

CIA officers Rob Richer (former head of the CIA’s Near East Division) and John Maguire (who oversaw the Iraq Operations Group) are both on the record in Suskind’s book confirming the existence of this letter…
Suskind goes on to not only describe how this is an impeachable offense, but also delves into details about how and why it’s illegal for the President of the United States to use the CIA in this manner.

Yes, it’s also immoral, but if the last seven years have shown us anything, it’s that Bush has no moral code to guide him.

When you add this to the recent New York Daily News article about the Anthrax attacks that revealed the fact that “White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it [the anthrax attack] was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda” you start to clearly see that the lengths by which this administration would go to in order to get what they wanted.

It’s a given that the conservative Beltway intelligentsia won’t give Suskind’s revelations a second thought… (it’s not a blow job in the Oval Office mind you, so why should they?) but maybe, just maybe enough Democrats will see revelations like this and they’ll be convinced that the only way to prevent future crimes against the American people will be to impeach Bush…

Stay tuned, though I wouldn’t hold my breath.