FOCUS: William Rivers Pitt | Nail It to the White House Door

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FOCUS: William Rivers Pitt | Nail It to the White House Door

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 11:26:21 -0700

 

 

 

 

FOCUS: William Rivers Pitt | Nail It to the White House Door

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061505X.shtml

 

Nail It to the White House Door

By William Rivers Pitt

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

Wednesday 15 June 2005

 

Almost five hundred years ago, Martin Luther nailed his

Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church, initiating a

sequence of events which forever altered the geometry of global

religion, politics and power. Luther's Theses began with the words,

" Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the

following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg. "

 

Another document is going to be nailed to another door on

Thursday, June 16th. This door opens not to a church, but to the White

House. This document is freighted with hard truths, stern demands and

nearly a million names. This document, once nailed up, likewise

carries with it all the possibilities of change.

 

Very slowly, and after an embarrassing gap of silence from the

news media, the American people have come to hear about the Downing

Street Minutes. This document, once confidential but leaked by a

British version of Deep Throat, describes in plain language the manner

in which the Bush and Blair administrations planned to manipulate

their way into an invasion of Iraq. The Minutes describe how

intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of invasion,

and that a pretense for war had to be manufactured in order to paint a

veneer of legitimacy over what everyone involved knew was a patently

illegal military action.

 

Subsequent secret documents have followed the release of the

Downing Street Minutes, further exposing the lies, distortions and

moral convolutions put forth by the offices of Bush and Blair in their

rush to war. According to these documents, which have been verified as

genuine by the British government, the decision to invade Iraq was

made as early as April 2002, months before anyone in America or

Britain became aware that such an act was even being considered.

 

This April 2002 decision was made between Bush and Blair at a

summit in Crawford, Texas. The fact that the decision to invade had

been made so early shatters all the mealy-mouthed protestations of

Bush and his people, who spent those months before the attack

preaching peace and international cooperation while sharpening their

knives behind closed doors.

 

One document, a briefing paper partnered with the Downing Street

Minutes, states bluntly that British officials knew an invasion would

be illegal, but had no choice but to figure out a way to frame it as

legal, because Bush was going into Iraq no matter what and would use

British bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia to do so. This would make

Britain complicit in the invasion even if they decided not to send

troops, and so it was " necessary to create the conditions " which would

make it legal.

 

How does one go about creating the conditions for legality? By

framing facts and intelligence around the policy, of course. The word

" Lie " does not appear in any of the released documents, but the need

to lie, the decision to lie, in order to justify war permeates every word.

 

This document also exposes the Bush administration's rhetorical

nonsense about " supporting the troops " by describing how their war

plans did anything but. In a section of this briefing paper titled

" Benefits/Risks, " the authors wrote, " Even with a legal base and a

viable military plan, we would still need to ensure that the benefits

of action outweigh the risks. A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead

to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise. As already made

clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. "

 

Virtually silent. 1,706 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq

thanks to the virtual silence of the Bush administration, for a total

of 1,891 " Coalition " soldiers dead. Multiply that number by at least

ten to count the wounded and maimed. Twenty-five American soldiers

have been killed in the last week alone. Tens of thousands of Iraqi

civilians have been killed and wounded, and the car bombs continue to

explode on a daily basis.

 

The decision to make war at all costs, the decision to lie about

the reasons for going to war, the massive trans-Atlantic effort to

make an illegal act appear legal, and the astounding fact that more

effort went into manufacturing a political pretext for invasion than

went into planning for the invasion and aftermath, all of this led us

into the horror-show that is this occupation.

 

The American military has all but conceded the fact that this war

is lost. " I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is

to concede that this insurgency is not going to be settled, the

terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled,

through military options or military operations, " Brig. Gen. Donald

Alston, chief American military spokesman in Iraq, said last week.

" It's going to be settled in the political process. " There are no more

viable military options. The war is lost. It is going to be settled in

the political process.

 

So be it.

 

On Thursday, June 16th, Rep. John Conyers will hold a hearing to

investigate and expose the facts revealed by the release of the

Downing Street Minutes and the other documents. A variety of witnesses

will be called to describe the contents of these documents, and to

describe what has been done to Iraq, and to us all, by this

administration. Lurking in the corners of the hearing will be a phrase

- " High Crime " - that aptly describes what has taken place.

 

The Conyers hearing will be held on Thursday at 2:30pm EST in room

HC-9 in the Capitol Building in Washington DC. This is a small room,

so any overflow of public viewers will be directed to the Wasserman

Room in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

 

At 5:00pm EST, a rally will take place in Lafayette Park, at the

gates of the White House. Rep. Conyers will speak, along with

Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son Casey in

Iraq in May 2003, as Bush was unfurling his " Mission Accomplished "

banner. The hearing and rally have been organized by the After Downing

Street coalition, a collection of more than 120 organizations and news

outlets that came together for the purpose of nailing the facts of the

Downing Street Minutes to the White House door.

 

That, just before the opening of the rally on Thursday, is exactly

what will happen. Several weeks ago, Rep. Conyers published a letter

demanding answers from the Bush administration regarding the Minutes.

That letter has been signed by more than one hundred Congresspeople,

and by nearly a million American citizens. Rep. Conyers will

personally deliver this letter and all those signatures to the White

House on Thursday.

 

Jawaharlal Nehru, who with Mahatma Gandhi successfully freed India

from British colonial rule, once said, " A moment comes, which comes

but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when

an age ends, and when the sound of a nation, long suppressed, finds

utterance. "

 

Thursday, June 16th, may see such a moment come to pass. It has

been a long time coming, and so much remains to be done if the

terrible damage of these last years is to be repaired. But a moment is

before us. Let us see where this moment takes us.

 

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally

bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't

Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

 

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