Bush's War For Reelection: Iraq, the White House, and the People (Hardcover)

The opening chapter documents the fact that the Bush administration was committed to a war on Iraq upon entering office. 9/11 was merely the pretext. They knew full well that they were manufacturing and twisting intel -- what nerve to deny it! (See the excellent story "The Lie Factory" on the Office of Special Plans in Mother Jones on the web.) Hundreds of U.S. troops have died for Bush's lies, Bush who used his family connections to avoid combat himself. A major contribution of the book is to document Bush being AWOL and the cover-up, including photocopies of many documents and a list of those that are missing. LTC Bill Burkett of the Texas Army National Guard is one who knows and has paid the price -- he has suffered death threats, shots fired into his house, and the denial of medical treatment that nearly killed him, all because he refused to join the coverup of Bush's AWOL episode in 1972-3. Another chapter covers the shameful outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame by the Bush administration. Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was exposed by right-wing journalist Bob Novak in retaliation for Wilson's exposing the lie that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger, the infamous "16 words" inserted into Bush's speech long after it was known to be unfounded.

One of the most shocking stories included here is the scandal of electronic voting. The use of electronic touch screen systems allows the manipulation of results -- this is documented by Moore, using the research of Bev Harris (see her book "Black Box Voting") among others. Diebold Election Systems, one of the leading manufacturers, is associated with the GOP -- CEO Wally O'Dell was a "Ranger" for Bush in 2000. Diebold is alleged to have stolen 16,022 votes from Gore in Volusia County, Florida in 2000 with vote tabulation equipment, and also to have stolen the election from Vietnam vet Senator Max Cleland of Georgia in 2002. It is explained how patches are used to fix malfunctioning machines, and that these patches can easily be used to insert codes that change the results. In the 2002 election in GA, which used Diebold machines, there was a 25-30% failure rate, which resulted in the application of patches to 1,387 terminals. This is not a science fiction dystopia, this is the GOP using computers to steal elections today in America.

Bush has manipulated the patriotic sentiments of the American people following 9/11, and is running as a "war president." But he launched an unnecessary war on Iraq, which had no connection to 9/11 and presented no imminent threat from nuclear weapons -- these facts were known all along, as those of us who opposed the war said so time and again as we tried to stop it. James Moore has done our nation a great service by exposing the high crimes of the current administration. It's time to put an end to the lies, to honor the brave men and women who have sacrificed for us, and bring about a regime change in November!

In 2000, outgoing President Clinton told George W. Bush that the terrorist threat from bin Laden was `the top priority', followed by Israel-Palestine, North Korea, India-Pakistan and Saddam Hussein. Bush replied, "I think you've got your priorities wrong. I'm putting Saddam at the top of the list." From the first, Bush targeted Iraq, which has oil, not Al Qa'ida, which doesn't.

So Bush had to lie that Iraq, not Al Qa'ida, was the main threat to the American people. Fortunately for him, the US state has decades of experience of deceiving people into aggressive wars. Moore examines several of these tested techniques.

For example, Bush alleged that Iraq had bought aluminum tubes to help develop nuclear weapons. Here's how it works. Ignore the facts - the experts at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory unanimously found that the tubes were not for nuclear weapons. Plant the story with a pliant journalist - in this case, Pulitzer Prize-winning Judith Miller of the New York Times. Order the intelligence and scientific communities not to dispute the administration's claims, implying that any dissent would be treated as treachery. Do a media blitz, and use the silence from the spooks and scientists as proof of the claims. Get an administration stooge - Colin Powell - to tell the lie to the UN. Get another stooge - Blair - to repeat the lie around the world.

Moore also shows how the US Army censored reports from Iraq - that's what `embedded journalism' means - so Judith Miller reported what the Army told her. She got most of her WMD stories from Ahmad Chalabi, who told the same tales to the Army and the White House, which then confirmed their truth to Miller.

Moore recounts how, eight days after Joseph Wilson wrote that the White House `twisted intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat', `senior administration officials' released his wife's identity as a CIA agent. Divulging such information is a criminal offence.

Using known forgeries is another technique. Although even Berlusconi's tabloid paper Panorama turned down an article based on forged documents alleging that Iraq bought uranium from Niger, Blair published the story as fact in his September 2002 dossier, and Bush used it in his State of the Union address.

Bush also has techniques for stealing elections: his new one, electronic touch screen voting, beats `hanging chads' and postal voting any day. Georgia was the first state to conduct an election using only electronic voting: as a result, the Republican candidate's votes rose by 16% in the four days after the last opinion poll, producing the first Republican governor of the state in 130 years. Nebraska's Republican Senator Chuck Hagel owns the firm that counted 85% of the votes in the state election that he won with 83% of the vote, the largest electoral victory in Nebraska's history. November's Presidential election is scheduled to be conducted electronically.