Customer Reviews

George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying

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The staff of Representative Coyers have done a great job. They detail with 1395 footnotes most of the lies and deceptions used by the current administration on a select number of topics. The downing street memo, aluminum tubes, the niger yellow cake uranium hoax and retribution taken by the administration. This book will make you wonder why he has not been impeached already.

If you're only complaint about Conyers' book is that he has taken the text of House Resolution 635 down from his website, do a search on Library of Congress THOMAS for it - it's there. Geeezzzz... what a non-sequitur.

For those to argue that impeaching Pres. George W. Bush would take too long or would tie up Congress in endless investigation, look no further! The case and the supporting evidence has already been assembled by the minority staff of the House Judiciary Committee of the previous Congress. All that is needed is a little updating. U.S. citizens should read this book to become informed about its charges.

It should be noted that there is a revised publication entitled: The Constitution in Crisis: The High Crimes of the Bush Administration and a Blueprint for Impeachment by Representative John C. Conyers and Staff. This most recent publication does not include an introduction by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson - GWB vs. the U.S. Constitution. It does, however, contain a Forward by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman.

The material covered is similar in both publications with the exception of additions in The Constitution in Crisis of approximately 100 pages. The Chronology preceding chapter material pretty much spells out the focus of both books. The explanation implied for Congressional abstinence following the 9/11 attacks is based on the confusion apparently manufactured by the Bush administration to keep Congress off balance. And though it is generally acknowledged that the Bush administration used intimidation to get what it wanted with regard to Iraq, these publications do not, however, go into specific details.

Material relating to domestic spying and data mining, all come back to the installation of the Patriot Act. It is important to understand the sequence of events leading up to the acceptance of this document. The apparent fact that Congress signed onto this document with little understanding of its contents raises some rather serious questions. For instance, what obligation has a client who signs a contract but fails to read the fine print, only to discover later that the contract appears to say one thing but actually states another? What percent of Congress is made up of attorneys?

These publications reveal a number of attempts by Congress to obtain specific information from the Bush administration about 9/11, etc. only to be brushed aside. The fact that Congress was handicapped during President Bush's first term by a Republican majority does not answer the question why the Congressional Democratic majority of President Bush's second term did not assert itself. Here we discover an unexpected obstacle in the form of House Speaker Pelosi, who was called into the Bush chambers soon after the 2004 elections and became deadpanned afterwords.

The implications discussed of a national security breakdown also raises some serious questions. The U.S. Justice Dept. is supposed to be an independent body and not controlled by the White House. The Bush administration, however, has focused heavily on manipulating this department in addition to the FBI and the CIA. Understanding the motives of the Bush administration reveals the purpose of dismissing the various attorneys working for the U.S. Justice Dept. The Bush administration simply followed a policy of replacing individuals who refused to give them what they wanted.

The gradual deterioration of Congressional oversight is discussed from the perspective of deception. Congress can only make decisions based on information it receives about a specific issue, assuming that information is valid. Congress should not have to assume otherwise. Here, again, the Bush administration flagrantly violates the public trust by manipulating data given to Congress about Iraq and Afghanistan,
notwithstanding information relating to the events of 9/11 that remain suppressed and hidden away behind closed doors.

Readers who are sidelined by tabloid spin flashing Conspiracy Theory should take this opportunity to educate themselves based on Congressional review. It's one thing to name call activists; it's quite another to apply this same mindset to Congressional oversight.

In "George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution," Congressman John Conyers and his staff have compiled a damning indictment of this presidents many forays into illegal waters. It paints a picture of a Chief Executive's office absolutely obsessed with secrecy and personal aggrandizement--with little concern for the limits placed upon the office by statute, international law, treaty obligation, or even our own Constitution. It details the numerous lies and distortions Bush and his vice-president (among others) fed the Congress, the people of America and the world in order to win support for the ill-advised, ill-conceived, and illegal war in Iraq. It also discusses some not well known pre-war military strikes Bush authorized against Iraq before receiving authorized from Congress. But the book goes beyond Iraq to cover several other allegedly illegal actions by this administration, some of which have not been widely publicized.

The work is chock-full of detail and is amply footnoted. A few of the accusations of wrong-doing are not as convincingly documented as others, but there is enough evidence of "high crimes and misdemeanors" presented to make anyone concerned with the well-being of this country weep.

That said, the book is not without its flaws. The writing is clear, but hardly noteworthy. And there are some purported misdeeds of this presidency that are skirted (such as the secret prisons). The greatest drawback to this work, however, concerns the editing. It has every appearance of a collection of papers authored by several individuals which were swiftly cobbled together under time pressure. Thus, we often come across duplicated information--sometimes long quotes from a source--presented in different chapters with no reference to the previous entry. And the sequence of footnote numbers is out of step---first by one, then two, and eventually by three places. Still, these and other editing gaffs are tolerable when one considers the amount of information to be gleaned from this relatively slim volume. There are other works that cover these subjects with greater thoroughness and in a writing style more pleasing to the eye (such as Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas Ricks and Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, by Charley Savage) but if one wants a fairly detailed summary of the misconduct of this presidency over its first 5 years, this book would be a good place to start.

John Conyers wrote House Resolution 635 which called for investigations into impeachable offenses of the Bush administration. Then he wrote a document called the Constitution in Crisis which listed the impeachable offenses of the Bush admininstration, and this document was free on Conyers' website. Now Conyers has taken the free document off his website and published it here, but if you search his website for the word "impeachment" or "house resolution 635," it's nowhere to be found. He was standing on impeachment as a political ploy and as a way to sell books. What a pig!