108 of 127 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Meticulous, brilliant, devastating indictment long overdue, June 1, 2008
What else would one expect from this brilliant lawyer? He is not afraid to address the issues that everyone else turns away from in a state of denial. His treatment of the deception the Bush administration used to promote the Iraq war for political purposes is the detailed account that Frank Rich's THE GREATEST STORY EVER SOLD did not quite make. Why? Because he starts with the premise that the Bush administration really can be shown to be criminally negligent at best. And while I loved Rich's book, Bugliosi's is such a knock-out punch that it's truly hard to read it as "over-the-top" even if you start reading it and expect to feel that way.
The author's folksy and informal style is a little surprising until you realize, as I did early on, that he is presenting the case as an advocate would in court. So it's not dry exposition, but passion that is driving the argument.
Remarkably, we live in a country where even people in the know should know better and don't. How many people today recall that it was the U.S. who kicked out the UN inspectors who were begging for more time to assure that there were no dangerous WMD in Iraq?
Bugliosi shows convincingly that Bush and his people had a perverse agenda of wanting a war, something that no other President had ever wanted. He paints a picture of Bush that makes Michael Moore's film look like hagiography. His research and command of the facts are exemplary, as one might expect from a star prosecutor and his appeal to common sense is such that one wonders why no one has made these obvious points before. (Actually, some of us have here and there, such as former Senator George McGovern, who declared that you would have to be crazy--or think Saddam Hussein was crazy--to believe that Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S. in 2003.)
This war never made any sense. Bugliosi is not afraid to charge Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld with murder and helpfully explains how that is consistent with criminal law theory. He puts it together the way no one has before.
He also makes the case that Bush-Cheney have been negligent in the so-called "war on terror". As in the case of the UN inspectors issue (why, if the UN inspectors were in Iraq and reporting progress, did we need to invade?) most Americans probably do not recall that Bush and Cheney originally opposed the 9-11 Commission and were uncooperative with it.
This should have been a HUGE issue in the 2004 campaign.
I strongly suspect that some of these so-called "reviewers" have not read the book. If only John Kerry or John Edwards had taken on the Bush-Cheney regime this way in 2004!
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232 of 279 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A refreshingly objective, logical, non-partisan (if unsettling) response to a heinous crime, June 5, 2008
I highly recommend Vincent Bugliosi's new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (Vanguard Press, 2008). Bugliosi is a highly admired prosecutor. He prosecuted the Manson family trials. He has never lost a murder conviction. He usually votes Democratic, though he supported McCain in 2000. He now offers an objective, factual, spin-free treatise on one of the greatest crimes in American history.
The reason that Bush, Rumsfield, Cheney and Rice went to war with Iraq is because George W. Bush simply wanted to go to war with Iraq. Just as Hitler was planning to go to war with Poland and France long before he became Chancellor of Germany, Bush was planning to go to war with Iraq long before he became President. Even though there was no connection between Iraq and the events of 9/11, that tragic event gave him the opportunity to sell his war dreams. Going to war had absolutely nothing to do with national security or any kind of imminent threat to the United States. It had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda. In fact, the security of the United States has been considerably reduced as a result of Bush's adventure in Iraq. Therefore, the reason that the sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, siblings, best friends of thousands of Americans (and tens of thousands Iraqis) have had their intestines blown out of their bodies to be commingled with the pulverized brain tissue of the soldier sitting next to them in their unprotected, armor-free humvee is NOT because they bravely gave their lives for our country. It's because Bush lied to the country (and to the World), hid the truth and fabricated facts in order to satisfy his lust to go to war -- and have "fun" being a war-time President (at a cost that is now running over $1 Trillion in direct and indirect costs -- at time when Social Security is going bankrupt, health care coverage is not available for over 50,000,000 Americans, the economy is going south and the richest Americans are enjoying tax breaks).
Now, this is old news. You'd have to be either a fool, an ignoramus, in a coma or be a Fox News Channel viewer to be unaware of this. The facts are well documented and irrefutable. Just as volumes have been written about other recent criminal regimes (i.e., Pinochet, Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin -- even Sadaam Hussein who, while not a threat to America was a bloody despot), there is no dearth of published information about the crimes of the Bush regime. Bugliosi's book differs in that he asks the question, "so what are we going to do about it?" He answers the question with a well thought out, logical, objective, non-partisan and legally sound solution: some time after Bush leaves office, prosecute him for murder in each of the 50 States.
On the face of it, this may sound like a preposterous proposal: prosecute a U.S. President for a capital crime (actually, over 4,000 counts of that crime)?!? But he makes a very strong and logical argument for why it should be done. He follows this up with a legally sound explanation about how it can be done.
In this election year, we can look forward to a lot of partisan books and articles from both political parties. Mr. Bugliosi offers us a refreshing (if unsettling) break from partisanship and spin with his objective, factual and well documented arguments. He even anticipates many rebuttal arguments to his thesis and responds to them. The book is neither pro-right nor pro-left. It is pro-American. Not Republicans vs. Democrats but, rather, The United States of America vs. George Bush.
Before I read this book, I believed that prosecuting and convicting a U.S. President, regardless of the extent or heinousness of his crimes, would do more harm to the United States than good. Now that I have read the book, my thinking has changed. Here we have a man who is personally responsible for putting tens of thousands of innocent people into harm's way for no other reason than his own, personal desire to wage war -- laughing and talking about how much fun he is having while all this is going on. A man, who while Governor of Texas, would publicly make fun of condemned convicts when they asked for mercy or for a stay of execution. The Governor of a state that executes more prisoners than any other state. As much as I personally oppose capital punishment, I have to admit that it would be ironic and just to see this particular criminal strapped to a gurney, himself, awaiting the needle. (At least it would be a swift, probably relatively painless, death. Not the kind of death that our nation's sons and daughters experienced as their armor-free bodies were ripped to shreds and whatever could be recovered of their remains categorized at the mortuary as "unviewable.")
I strongly encourage all patriotic Americans to read this book -- then lend it to your friends.
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