Table of Contents
ALSO BY VINCENT BUGLIOSI
Reclaiming History:
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
Helter Skelter (with Curt Gentry)
And the Sea Will Tell (with Bruce Henderson)
Till Death Us Do Part (with Ken Hurwitz)
The Phoenix Solution:
Getting Serious about Winning Americas Drug War
Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O. J. Simpson Got Away with Murder
No Island of Sanity: Paula Jones v. Bill Clinton:
The Supreme Court on Trial
The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court
Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President
(with forewords by Molly Ivins and Gerry Spence)
To the thousands upon thousands
of men, women, and children
who have lost their precious lives
in the senseless Iraq war
and to all the loved ones they left behind
whose suffering will never end,
with the hope that this book will
help bring those responsible
to justice.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
What is recommended in this book is, as the title says, the prosecution of the president of the United States for murder. Although America is supposedly a free country, with freedom of speech and expression being our most cherished constitutional right, a considerable number of establishment people in this countryincluding many of the biggest and most powerful publishing houses in Americamade it clear that even though they completely agreed with what I was saying in the book and recognized its potential in the marketplace, the book was something they did not want to have their name connected with. (Two law professors, liberal at that, were afraid to even look at the book.) In other words, the publishers fears trumped money. Having cold feet, their essential position was that the book, as one publisher put it, was too hot to handle. I understand their position, and I dont criticize them for it. But that doesnt mean Im impressed with them, either.
Why all the fear? Its because of what this nation has become in the last twenty years, particularly the last eight. A nation whose virulent and dangerous right wingthe most unpatriotic of all Americans, and about whom Barry Goldwater said late in his life, Dont associate my name with anything you do; youve done more damage to the Republican party than the Democrats havehas transformed us into a country where many everyday Americans, for the first time ever, do not feel 100 percent comfortable and safe. And most humans yield to fear, even curry favor with those who cause it. When you have a very decent and honorable man like Mario Cuomo being sufficiently intimidated to say, I respect Rush Limbaugh, an uncommonly loathsome individual (if I may be so presumptuous, Mario Cuomo does not respect Rush Limbaugh. How would that even be possible?), that one example among countless others reflects the shadow of fear, no matter how small, that has now descended on a once great nation.
Out of this miasma of fear emerged a man, Roger Cooper, the publisher of this book, who loved America enough and had enough courage to step up to the plate and say, in effect, No matter what, if America is ever to become the nation it once was, this story has to be told.
I am deeply appreciative of Cooper, a legendary figure in the book publishing world, for being the American patriot that he is and for giving my book his 100 percent support. He always provided me with whatever I needed to help make it the book I believe it is. It has been a distinct pleasure to work, for the first time in my long writing career, with him and his astute, number one publishing manager, Georgina Levitt, whose delightful British accent could charm a bird out of a tree. The two of them are professionals of the very first order, and I feel fortunate to have found a new literary home with them.
I also want to thank my superlative editor, Betsy Reed, not only for the great job of editing she did on my manuscript, but for the very judicious suggestions she made to change the tone of my writing in several places. Betsys work ethic, coupled with her being highly intelligent and a trained observer of the American political scene, made her an ideal editor for this book.
And, of course, there is my virtual secretary, Rosemary Newton, who for years has been the person I rely on the most in the writing of my books. Always competent and extraordinarily reliable, she not only has to type hundreds of thousands of words from my less than perfect penmanship, but since I dont have a computer, in the last few years she has saved me many hours in front of the microfilm machine at the library (where I still do much of my research) by finding things for me on the Internet. I dont know what Id do without Rosemary.
And finally, but certainly not least, I want to thank my wonderful wife of fifty-one years, Gail, who has always brought sunlight to my darkest hours, for the tremendous support and encouragement (and for sacrifices too numerous to mention) she gave me in the writing of this book. Among so many other things, we had been planning a short vacation when I finally, after twenty years, completed my magnum opus, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, in early 2007. But because of the constraints of time and our belief in the importance of this new book, I didnt take one day off from my seven-day-a-week schedule before starting this book. Only my lifetime partner, who has endured so much because of my hectic life throughout the years, would accept something like this. Whatever I have accomplished in life, I owe much of it to her.
Vincent Bugliosi
March 2008
U.S. deaths in Iraq from all corners of the nation
In four years, more than 3,200 U.S. military personnel have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
SOURCES: AP research; Department of Defense
The preferable venue for the prosecution of George W. Bush for murder and conspiracy to commit murder would be in the nations capital, with the prosecutor being the Attorney General of the United States acting through his Department of Justice. This book, however, establishes jurisdiction for any state attorney general (or any district attorney in any county of a state) to bring murder and conspiracy charges against Bush for any soldiers from that state or county who lost their lives fighting Bushs war, which as you can see applies to every state in this nation. Since the date of this map, March 15, 2007, hundreds of other United States soldiers have died in the war.
The first casualty when war comes is the truth.
Senator Hiram Johnson (1917)
PART ONE
OPENING UP ONES EYES
Introduction
THE BOOK YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ deals with what I believe to be the most serious crime ever committed in American historythe president of this nation, George W. Bush, knowingly and deliberately taking this country to war in Iraq under false pretenses, a war that condemned over 100,000 human beings, including 4,000 young American soldiers, to horrible, violent deaths. That, of course, is the most serious consequence of Bushs monumentally criminal behavior. But lets not forget that, additionally, thousands upon thousands of people have suffered injuries that have disabled them for life; hundreds of thousands of humans have sustained psychic damage from the war, and literally hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people will involuntarily re-create in their minds eye, over and over again, what happened to their loved ones. Assuming Bushs guilt for the sake of argument at this point, if what he did is not the greatest crime ever committed by any public official or private citizen in this nations history, then I ask you, what is?
