AfterDowningStreet.org

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By Larry C. Johnson
Had dinner last night with an old CIA buddy who has just returned from Iraq with some discouraging news. Although our troops and intelligence operatives are killing scores of insurgents (my friend estimated the kill rate at 160 enemy per each friendly) the insurgents keep coming. As Sy Hersh predicted in last month's New Yorker, the military commanders decided to shift from ground confrontations to high altitude airstrikes. According to press reports on Wednesday, for example, the United States carried out 53 strikes inside Iraq. One of these, the mistaken bombing of a civilian home north of Baghdad, was condemend by Iraqi officials.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 6 (AScribe Newswire) -- According to the most recent Gallup poll on Iraq, more women than men believe the U.S. should bring the troops home from Iraq within one year. Sixty-two percent of all women polled said the U.S. troops should be brought home from Iraq before December 2006, compared to 53 percent of men: a significant nine-point difference. The poll was conducted by Gallup from December 16-18, 2005; the gender breakdown was made public today by CODEPINK, a national women's peace group.

Support Needed
Tuesday, January 10
8:30 a.m. Press Conference
9:30 a.m. Court Hearing
100 Centre Street, Part B
On October 17, 2005 18 grandmothers that were a part of a coalition of groups calling themselves Granny Peace Brigade were arrested and jailed for attempting to enlist in the army at the Times Square Military Recruiting Center. These grandmothers were willing to participate in civil disobedience to make a a strong statement about the lack of truth that is used to pressure young people to enlist. Their message was "End the war in Iraq and bring the troops home immediately."

Submitted by John Bruhns
John Bruhns:

Published on Friday, January 6, 2006 by the Evening Echo / Ireland
Anti-war activists are to picket the offices of the Irish Aviation Authority in Dublin today over the ongoing refuelling of US warplanes at Shannon Airport.

Code Pink's indictment campaign
Criminal Prosecution of an Incumbent President

By Larry C. Johnson, NoQuarter.typepad.com
Having watched former Deputy CIA Director John Mclaughlin spend the day trying to back and fill for President Bush's decision to circumvent the FISA Court procedure (which occurred during Mclaughlin's tenure), we begin to understand why the CIA declined so badly under his watch. Mclaughlin argues, as always, in a calm, polite voice--the quintessential bureaucrat--that the threat is new and terrorists move too quick. Now, either he's lying, which I don't think, or he spent too much time cloistered at the Headquarters in McLean and is sadly misinformed. The so-called "new practice," where terrorists call on one phone, dump it, pick up a new phone, dump it, and so on, was pioneered by the Colombian drug cartels, among others, more than ten years ago. DEA, while facing some challenges, has actually become quite adept at chasing these guys while working within the constraints of FISA. Surely Mclaughlin is not asking us to believe that the intelligence community is too stupid to learn lessons from DEA?

www.DemocracyNow.org
We speak with Congressman John Conyers (D - MI) introduced measures to censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney for misleading lawmakers on the decision to go to war in Iraq. Conyers is also seeking the creation of a select committee to investigate the Administration's possible crimes and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment.

Hear 8 Speakers on Holding Bush and Blair to Account, with John Rees video

David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet, and John Rees, Stop the War Coalition. photos © 2005 Charles Jenks

By Associated Press
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., called Tuesday for Congress to censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney, saying they misled lawmakers on the decision to go to war in Iraq.

Also see Chris Bowers' excellent blog on this at MyDD.
And this terrific analysis from Media Matters.

Our good friend Michael Jay sent us this audio recording and transcript of Bush saying, last year, that wiretaps require a court order and that nothing has changed, "because we value the
constitution."

In a brief judgment today, Madam Justice Deborah Satanove of the Supreme Court of British Columbia rejected an appeal by the Canadian-based Lawyers Against the War (LAW) against the staying of torture charges laid against President George W. Bush last year. The judgment, which came after three weeks of deliberation but was less than five pages in length, declared the appeal "an abuse of process". Relying on a contested nine-word passage in the transcript of the secret hearing held last year, Judge Satanove declared that the real intentions of LAW were "to use the criminal procedure as a forum to express political views". According to the court, the passage could be read as a disavowal by LAW of any intention to seek the issuance of a summons or warrant against the US President. The judge ignored all the other arguments on both sides of the case.

Censure and Impeachment
By David Swanson, censurebush.org
Censure is not the enemy of impeachment, any more than impeaching Bush prevents impeaching Cheney. We have a tendency to jump five steps ahead of ourselves in order to find imaginary problems.

"A record 55% say the war in Iraq is entirely separate from the war on terrorism that began with the Sept. 11 attacks, the first time a majority has held that opinion."
http://www.usatoday.com/new

CensureBush.org Campaign Launched in Response to New House Legislation
Ask your Congress Member to support these efforts!
The AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, an alliance of over 100 grassroots organizations, has launched a new campaign called CensureBush.org in order to support new legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers that would censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and create a select committee to investigate the Administration's possible crimes and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment.

Raising the Issue of Impeachment
By John Nichols, The Nation
As President Bush and his aides scramble to explain new revelations regarding Bush's authorization of spying on the international telephone calls and emails of Americans, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has begun a process that could lead to the censure, and perhaps the impeachment, of the president and vice president.

There is a prima facie case that these actions by the President, Vice-President
and other members of the Bush Administration violated a number of federal laws,
including (1) Committing a Fraud against the United States; (2) Making False

The following are links to the Investigative Status Report of the House Judiciay Committee Democratic Staff
The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War (This Report is 273 pages.)