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Originally Posted by herasday
You take the position that the decisions were blunders. If you listen to the interview, Bugliosi strongly takes the position that they were not blunders, that they were intentional and knowing...as in knowing that there were no womd and no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein, and that Bush had that information in front of him, but squelched it on purpose.
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He may strongly take that position, but he will have little way to back it, because it is not true. All of the evidence that was accumulated about WMDs in Iraq and the threats from Iraq CAME FROM THE CIA, whose evidence was given to the administration, and then over to the president. The information was "very accurate" and widely accepted by everyone, as presented by the CIA. If the CIA is wrong, whose fault is that? The adminstation gets its information directly from the CIA, so it must rely upon that information as correct. There was a lot of evidence of mobile biological weapons facilites, etc...that turned out to be part of a large conspiracy, maybe even on the part of Saddam himself. (google:
Curveball). There was other evidence as well, as with the weapons inspectors being kicked out and restricted.
Iraq was not a random spur of the moment thing. The 2nd Gulf war has been building up since the first. The WMD thing began with the Clinton administration and the 1994 (or 92', i cant remember) bombing of Iraq and other incursions/inspections. Saddam repeatedly leaked or built evidence to conclude that he
did have WMDs, to gain an edge over his neighbors, but he didnt think it would spark a war. Not to mention Saddam was a tyrant and a murderer, and ruined most of his people and decimated all party opposition...too bad that isnt good enough to rally people to oust a dictator from power.
THose things all added up to the culmination of the Iraq war, and it was widely supported by politicians of both sides--and not just because of WMDs as everyone says. Congress knew the background of Iraq and what was going on there. Not to mention all of the other nations "fooled" by Bush, I would assume he had something to do with spinning the evidence to them too right? Everyone thought he had WMDs, its a common misconception to think that there wasnt evidence to support it. WHy the hell would Bush make a statement like that KNOWING it was not true? HES NOT STUPID. He wouldnt "lie" knowing he would have to make embarrasing and career ruining speeches later that would decimate his legitamacy if he "knew" there werent WMDs. My god, the ignorance of the world today.
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In NY State (and I am sure in other states there are similar statutes) there is what is called "depraved indifference murder". This is a the same level as an Intentional Murder, but requires no "intent to kill" anyone specifically. It has the same penalties as intentional murder...a sentence of 25 years to life.
The definition of this crime in NY State is as follows:
"A person is guilty of depraved indifference murder in the second degree when, under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life, he recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby causes the death of another person, Penal Law Section 125.25[2]."
Acting "recklessly" is further defined in Penal Law Section 15.05[3]:
"A person acts recklessly with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that such result will occur or that such circumstance exist. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in a situation."
If there is solid evidence (as Bugliosi asserts) that there was firm intelligence information that no womd and no imminent threat to the U.S. from Saddam Hussein, or Iraq in general, and it was known but covered up intentionally, as Bugliosi claims, or if there is evidence that there were plans for faking and baiting Iraq into a first attack because there wasn't any "clear and present danger" upon which to base attack and war....I'd say the conduct would fall within the conduct described in that statute.
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If there was any grand evidence, it would have been front-page of every liberal paper in America.
And this whole "depraved indifference murder" has no correlation to international politics and international law.
Lets look at it though.
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recklessly engages in conduct which results in the death of [others]"---
What was reckless about the war? The evidence was built up right there. America has recently been under attack by terrorists, and known terrorists operated from within Iraq (contrary to popular beleif, yes they did)
An ideal war has no casualities, but in every war there is loss of life. Whenever any conflict occurs, whether for just or unjust reasons, there will be loss of life. Along these lines, it could be considered "reckless" for any war in all history to be declared, and those who do could be tried for "murder"--justly or not. You cant apply this transitive property of "murder" to decisions made in this position. If you want to blame someone for murder blame the terrorists who arm their wives and strap bombs to their children and tell them to go and die for allah.
"...consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that such result will occur or that such circumstance exist. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in a situation."
Which is very important to note, because the same evidence given to Bush was given to congress, who with a majority, approved the war. As I said before, the evidence was there, the threat was there.
There will not be any prosecution.