A factual telling of George W. Bush's underhanded dealings that strategically maneuvered our country to war has been released by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Ron Suskind. Watergate doesn't have anything on this unleashing of the truth.
(SALEM, Ore.) - The fall of George W. Bush. It has been called for and attempts have been launched, but taking a blow at this administration is like playing the video game Galaxian for the first time; you may knock out a few enemy ships, but they are going to send you down in flames before the games really gets going.
Today the rules have changed. Or should I say, the rules are back.
An explosive new book charges that President Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to to manufacture a false pretense for the Iraq war in the form of a backdated, handwritten document linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
This is but one of the multitude of worst-case scenario situations aptly described in this newly released book.
In The Way of the World, Ron Suskind delivers a succinct and stunning blow to the reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; indicting the President for having forced the issue when he knew it was a lie.
According to most accounts, this presidential "mistruth" has cost the world over a million lives, including several thousand of our own United States' citizens.
This book explains with substantiated, credible detail how America lost its way and looks at the nation's struggle, day by day, to reclaim the moral authority upon which its survival depends. This goes way beyond simple ethics.
From the White House to Downing Street, from the fault–line countries of South Asia to the sands of Guantánamo, Suskind offers an astonishing story that connects world leaders to the forces waging today's shadow wars and to the next generation of global citizens.
Tracking down truth and hope within the Beltway and far beyond it, Suskind delivers historic disclosures with this emotionally stirring and strikingly original portrait of the post-9/11 world.
Truth, justice, and accountability become more than mere words in this story. Suskind shows where the most neglected dangers lie in the story of "The Armageddon Test" — a desperate gamble to send undercover teams into the world's nuclear black market to frustrate the efforts of terrorists trying to procure weapons–grade uranium.
In the end, he finally reveals for the first time the explosive falsehood underlying the Iraq War and the entire Bush presidency.
According to Rob Richer, the CIA’s Near East division head, “Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq from the very first days he was in office. Nothing was going to stop that.” Suskind quoted Richer in The Way of the World.
On page 371, Suskind describes the White House’s concoction of a forged letter purportedly from the hand of Habbush to Saddam Hussein to justify the United States’ decision to go to war:
“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq — thus showing, finally, that there was an operation link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, something the Vice President's office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade.”
He continues, “A handwritten letter, with Habbush's name on it, would be fashioned by CIA and then hand-carried by a CIA agent to Baghdad for dissemination.”
This may not shock some people, but it will dismay more.
TIME reported that in March of 2002, John McCain and two other Senators were at the White House with Condoleezza Rice when Bush unexpectedly stuck his head in the door and asked, "Are you all talking about Iraq?" And then he waved his hand dismissively and said, "F___ Saddam, we're taking him out." Then he left the room. The bully on the block attitude was clear even then, but he continued to win support.
In early 2003, when war was still uncertain, I looked at my co-workers and asked if they believed we had good reason to invade Iraq. No one agreed that removing Saddam was important enough to wage a war, but most were behind the president. Americans need to not be taken for a ride when they put their faith in their Commander in Chief.
TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira on Tuesday asked why Suskind’s sources are finally speaking out now, more than five years after the war began?
He answered, “Well, you know, a lot of them have been walking around with this lump in their chest for a couple of years — five years now. And because they’re essentially free — they’re not the original source — they said, ‘Look, why hide now? Let’s trust the truth.’ ”
This book brings the last five years into focus. The things that we thought could be true, that we hoped were not, are for the most part, true. People in power do succumb to personal wants, needs, and ambitions. It is our responsiblity as citizens to keep each other in check. It seems in this White House, that would be like asking the fox to guard the hen house.
While the public and political realms struggle, The Way of the World simultaneously follows an ensemble of characters in America and abroad who are turning fear and frustration into a desperate—and often daring—brand of human salvation. They include a striving, twenty-four-year-old Pakistani émigré, a fearless UN refugee commissioner, an Afghan boy, a Holocaust survivor's son, and Benazir Bhutto, who discovers, days before her death, how she's been abandoned by the United States at her moment of greatest need.
Who is Ron Suskind?
A graduate of the University of Virginia, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Mr. Suskind has appeared on various television news programs as a correspondent or essayist and is a distinguished visiting scholar at Dartmouth College.
From 1993 to 2000, Mr. Suskind was the senior national affairs writer for the Wall Street Journal. He was a contributor to "Profiles in Courage for Our Times," (Hyperion, 2002), along with other prize-winning authors. He currently writes for various national magazines, including the New York Times Magazine and Esquire Magazine. Two articles that appeared in Esquire in 2002 delved into the workings of the Bush White House.
His 2004 book, "The Price of Loyalty, George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill," is a sweeping tour of the inner working of the Bush Presidency, among the most secretive administrations in modern times.
In 2006, Mr. Suskind published "The One Percent Doctrine," a revealing journey deep inside America's battles with violent, unrelenting terrorists -- a game of kill-or-be-killed, from the Oval Office to the streets of Karachi.
Mr. Suskind is also the author of "A Hope in the Unseen, An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League," (Doubleday/Broadway, 1998), which was launched by a series in the Wall Street Journal that won him the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, has been a favorite on U.S. campuses and in book clubs.
If the allegations in The Way of the World are true, and by all accounts they appear to be, then the Bush administration's behavior is no less than psychological warfare, used against fellow Americans. Our public was coerced into supporting a war, and a president, without merit. Is simply impeaching a president who has committed these errors against our people punishment enough? How Nancy Pelosi and other "powers-that-be" react to these revelations will be historical.
For anyone hoping to exercise truly informed consent and begin the process of restoring the values and hope—along with the moral clarity and earned optimism—at the heart of the American tradition, The Way of the World is a must-read.
It's the patriotic thing to do.
BIGGER THAN WATERGATE: Presidential Lies RevealedSalem-News.com