The Downing Street Minutes Teach-In: Our Troops are Dying for Your Support : Houston Indymedia

The Downing Street Minutes and related documents (all available at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org ) provide new and compelling evidence that President Bush, by the summer of 2002:

1. secretly decided to go to war;
2. decided to deceive and mislead the Congress and the American people with false claims about both weapons of mass destruction and ties between Saddam Hussein and 9-11;
3. secretly diverted $700 million from the War in Afghanistan and started bombing Iraq to provoke a war;
4. agreed to go to the UN only to "legalize" an illegal invasion - and then walked out of the U.N. when inspections worked.

Items 2 and 3 are both impeachable offenses. The Bush Administration's conspiracy to deceive Congress culminated in a fraudulent letter to Congress on March 18, 2003, claiming continued U.N. inspections would endanger the national security of the United States.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/611

This fraud violated the federal anti-conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371, which makes it a felony "to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose..."; and The False Statements Accountability Act of 1996, 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which makes it a felony to issue knowingly and willfully false statements to the United States Congress.

President Bush did not declare war until March 2003. Congress did not authorize military action until October 11, 2002. But Bush began an air war six weeks before that authorization and increased "spikes of activity" five months before. This means that additional communications to Congress from the President, claiming that he had not yet begun the war, may be felonious, and that Bush violated the Constitutional requirement that Congress authorize any war.

These criminal actions constitute High Crimes under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution: "The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Join us 7-9:30 p.m. Saturday, July 23 at 5200 Fannin (1st Unitarian Universalist Church) for a film, talk and discussion on the Downing Street Minutes with former US diplomat, Ann Wright. Ms. Wright, who served as a diplomat for 15 years and was the Deputy Chief of Mission in Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia, resigned from the State Department on March 19, 2003 in protest of the US invasion of Iraq. She has masters and law degrees from the University of Arkansas and a masters degree in National Security Affairs from the US Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island. She has testified before Congress on the Minutes and she participated in the documentary film “Uncovered: The Truth About the Iraq War”. She writes on current US foreign policy and speaks to university classes and civic groups in the United States and internationally.

This event is sponsored by the Progressive Action Alliance, Code Pink and other organizations; it is coordinated, along with over 300 other events across the country, by the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition. For details about this Teach-In visit http://www.paa-tx.org; for more information about the Downing Street Minutes visit http://www.AfterDowningStreet.org.