Ron Suskind’s New Book Could Provide Smoking Gun on Bush and Iraq

Based upon this report in The Politico, Ron Suskind’s new book, The Way of the World, should revive suspicions that George Bush lied the country into a war, and perhaps even make people wonder why Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table. If the accusations can be proved, this would be as nearly as damaging a smoking gun as the tapes were to Richard Nixon. The Politico reports:

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

Besides discussing this in more detail, the article shows how Suskind provides additional information on the Bush administration. This came as no surprise:

John Maguire, one of two men who oversaw the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group, was frustrated by what Suskind describes as the “tendency of the White House to ignore advice it didn’t want to hear – advice that contradicted its willed certainty, political judgments, or rigid message strategies.”

And Suskind writes that the administration “did not want to hear the word insurgency.”

After 9/11 I got the impression that George Bush was hiding out in panic for the first couple of days. Suskind has a similar impression:

Suskind is acidly derisive of Bush, saying that he initially lost his “nerve” on 9/11, regaining it when he grabbed the Ground Zero bullhorn.

Beyond the allegations that the Bush administration lied the country into war, this section might reveal the most about their mind set:

Suskind contends Cheney established “deniability” for Bush as part of the vice president’s “complex strategies, developed over decades, for how to protect a president.”

“After the searing experience of being in the Nixon White House, Cheney developed a view that the failure of Watergate was not the break-in, or even the cover-up, but the way the president had, in essence, been over-briefed. There were certain things a president shouldn’t know – things that could be illegal, disruptive to key foreign relationships, or humiliating to the executive.

“They key was a signaling system, where the president made his wishes broadly known to a sufficiently powerful deputy who could take it from there. If an investigation ensued, or a foreign leader cried foul, the president could shrug. This was never something he’d authorized. The whole point of Cheney’s model is to make a president less accountable for his action. Cheney’s view is that accountability – a bedrock feature of representative democracy – is not, in every case, a virtue.”

Dick Cheney’s goal was not to prevent abuses of power such as those which occurred during Watergate, but to figure out how to get away with abusing power. The failure to prosecute Richard Nixon after he left office due to his pardon from Gerald Ford helped allow subsequent presidents such as Bush to feel they could repeat such misconduct. The failure to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for their actions will in turn increase the risk that this will be repeated in the future.

Update: The Annonymous Liberal also ties this into the controversial uranium from Niger which Bush hyped. Ron Suskind has a post at Huffington Post where he writes:

In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD — as Habbush had foretold — the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a “small team from the al Qaeda organization.”

The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists with Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting CIA from conduction disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil.

4 Comments

  1. 1
    J. G. Uthe says:

    When I was a little girl, treason was punishable by firing squad!
    The very least that should happen to all those involved with/in Bush/Cheney’s lies and misdeeds is at least 25 years in prison!
    Bush/Cheney(the Invisible VP) have broken laws, lied to US citizens and the world; Rewarded companies that have cheated taxpayers (and even THOUGH everyone is aware who they are and what they did, NO ONE MAKES THEM PAY OR PUNISHES THEM).  Including government employees who have used government credit cards for millions of dollars—WITHOUT being sent to jail or made to re-pay the illegally used funds.
    Bush’s admin. has made toilet paper out of the Constitution, yet he continues to strut around and grin that stupid grin as though he was really something special!
    I call him the Dunce of D.C. and everyone in the world knows he is a moron.  Europe and the rest of the world think that US citizens are also stupid for letting him get away with stealing not one (1), but two (2) elections and then treat the US as though he was King Bush instead of just a paid employee of the US Citizens!
    And, impossible to believe, he STILL has supporters!  I call them Ostriches because they either have their heads buried in the sand or completely immersed in Bush’s behind!

  2. 2
    Andrew Wang says:

    Bush is the worst president in American history. Bush facilitated the 9/11 attacks. Subsequently, Bush lied to Congress and the American people relative to the reasons for invading Iraq. Bush purposefully misled Congress and the American people. Then, Bush murdered more than 4,000 United States service members. And Bush wounded more than 30,000 United States service members. In torturing prisoners of war, Bush patently violated the Geneva Convention. Bush unlawfully wiretapped United States citizens. In using “signing statements” to challenge hundreds of laws passed by Congress, Bush violated the Constitution. Bush has ignored global warming. Bush is guilty of criminal negligence relative to the response to Hurricane Katrina. Bush disobeys our democratic values and Constitution. Bush is a disgrace to the United States.
     
    Furthermore, Ron Suskind has revealed that Bush directed the forgery of a letter connecting Iraq to the 9/11 attacks. Bush is beyond help.
     
    Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
    B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
    Messiah College, Grantham, PA

  3. 3
    Kevin says:

    I see this is a censored forum, lol.

    Why am i not surprised ?

  4. 4
    Ron Chusid says:

    Not censored, but moderated. Your comment was deleted because it was irrational, was irrelevant to the point under discussion, and contained several insults as opposed to meaningful comment.

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