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Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook - CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.

The site is a sister to Atlantic Free Press.

The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.

Bush Evidenced: The Year of Living Illegally

Written by David Swanson
Monday, 31 December 2007
2007: The Year in Evidence by David Swanson The past year has seen the public exposure of enough evidence of old, ongoing, and new crimes, abuses of power, and impeachable offenses by George Bush and Dick Cheney that in any remotely representative democracy, these two thugs would be out of office and behind bars. The chief reason this does not shock us is that the same could be said, and was said, of each of the previous six years. It's been quite a millennium so far for Washington, D.C. Some of us began this year expecting something different. We had worked to elect Democratic majorities in Congress so that we might move in the direction of impeachment. If we didn't get to impeachment right away, we thought, at least real investigations with the power of subpoena would push a reluctant Congress in the right direction. With House committees having come within a vote of starting investigations, with the Democrats having shut down the Senate to try to force an investigation, with Chairman-to-be John Conyers having published a book on Bush and Cheney's crimes and held unofficial hearings in the basement, we had reason to be hopeful. We are, alas, forced to place our hopes in 2008. Some of the 2007 evidence below was exposed by Congress, but most of it was unearthed by book authors, bloggers, independent reporters, federal prosecutors, and the corporate media. With the Democratic majorities came a complete ban on congressional investigations of war lies (not to mention an end to serious efforts to end the occupation of Iraq). Other investigations proceeded cautiously and at a glacial pace - and with no ultimate objective, Speaker Nancy Pelosi having declared impeachment "off the table." It took over 4 months for the opposition party to issue its first subpoena. In June there was a minor burst of subpoenas. But it was quickly established that Bush, Cheney, Condi, and their underlings, would never comply with subpoenas, and that Bush would even (feloniously) order former staffers not to comply. The Democrats let it go at that and largely stopped trying to compel incriminating testimony. That the House Judiciary Committee had, a single generation back, passed an article of impeachment against a president for refusing a subpoena was buried in our national amnesia. In 2007 we saw the departure of Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Doug Feith, and other Bush cronies, but without public accountability or criminal punishment, and without accountability for their bosses. Having unilaterally disarmed by stripping impeachment from the Constitution, the Democrats in 2007 could only play at oversight on television, which left them subject to the owners of the television networks. This was a replay of the Democrats' restraint in the rigged Iran-Contra hearings. The goal of that unconstitutional restraint had been electoral victories, but the result had been losses and the creation of the Bush dynasty. The result in 2007 was a lot of smoke, but no fire. In fact, the new Congress passed new legislation further stripping us of our Constitutional rights, and every now and then let slip a hint at the depth of bipartisan complicity. The year began with Senator Dick Durbin explaining that he had known before the Iraq invasion that the White House was lying to the public, but that he had not dared to say so for fear of disclosing classified information. The year closed with the revelation that Nancy Pelosi was one of a group of leading Congress Members informed of U.S. torture policies five years ago. She, too, dared not say anything, and still has said nothing. Maybe 2008 will be the year in which she finds her voice. As you read through the following evidence, please bear in mind a couple of key points. 1. We didn't need any of it, or any of the previous year's evidence. We've had enough solid evidence for a 5-minute slam-dunk (thank you, George) impeachment for years now. Here are the highlights: http://afterdowningstreet.org/keydocuments 2. While none of this is about sex, and all good impeachments simply must be about sex, we have learned in recent years of CIA prostitute parties and Halliburton gang rapes. And if that's not enough to convince you that something is rotten in the state of the Homeland, we learned in 2007 that (quick, cover your children's eyes) . . . "Bush Promised to Kiss Blair's Ass." http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24493 SECRECY AND COVERUPS Here is a collection of the outstanding subpoenas yet to be obeyed: http://democrats.com/subpoenas Here are a few choice related headlines with links to the articles you'll want to savor as you look back across the past year of not having a clue what your government was up to: A National Archives official reveals what the veep wanted to keep classified--and how he tried to challenge the rules http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29579 Cheney Won't Even Say Who Works in His Office http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/17866 Bush Won't Say Where His Prisons Are http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/21434 Vice President Exempts His Office from the Requirements for Protecting Classified Information http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23834 Bush Claims Oversight Exemption Too http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23932 Bush Orders Miers Not to Testify http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24568 Justice Dept. to White House officials: Ignore Congress http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24585 Whistle-blowers Face Punishment in Iraq; Contractors Say U.S. Military Jailed, Tortured Them for Reporting Fraud http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/26094 SIGNING STATEMENTS AND ASSERTIONS OF DICTATORIAL POWER 2007 was the year of the unitary executive, as Congress and the courts largely stepped out of the picture. And the unitary executive had a lot of executivizing to do: New Report Shows Bush's Presidential Signing Statements Have Been Used to Nullify Laws http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23764 New Index of Presidential Signing Statements http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/26476 Cheney Exempts His Office from Requirement to Protect Classified Information http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23834 Cheney Destroys Visitor Logs http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23085 A New Dick Cheney-Alberto Gonzales Mystery http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23979 Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22710 Bush Uses Signing Statement to Announce Refusal to Obey New Military Appropriations Law http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29071 TURNING GOVERNMENT AGENCIES INTO REPUBLICAN PARTY MACHINE This was the big new story of 2007, and Congress does get some credit for stirring the dirt on this one. It turns out that most of the executive branch of the government now works for the Republican party. U.S. attorneys who had failed to grasp that fact were fired. Emails that exposed it were destroyed. State governors who got in the way became political prisoners. And an intellectually challenged Attorney General who could take orders but not remember what he'd had for breakfast was scared out of town after committing perjury on television. His bosses laughed and replaced him with a clone. Congress complied. Not that Congress wasn't very, very concerned. In fact, Rep. Henry Waxman alone destroyed a forest writing letters to the White House and publishing reports like this one: http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20070618105243.pdf By the end of 2007 I saw an editorial cartoon in the paper with holiday lights on the White House spelling out: "No Comment: Ongoing Investigation." A man in the cartoon commented: "They just leave them up all year now." These were some of the choice headlines from 2007 on the your-tax-dollars-pay-for-the-Republican-Party theme: Administration Withheld Emails About Rove http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22360 GSA Chief Is Accused of Playing Politics http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/20480 DOJ Made Immigration Judgeships Political http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22965 New Justice Department documents show White House involvement in Attorneys firings http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23628 Legal Memo Confirms White House Led Effort To Target And Remove U.S. Attorneys http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24124 Politicization of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24781 Conyers' Staff Documents More Crimes and Abuses, But He Still Won't Impeach http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25054 Emails Detail RNC Voter Suppression in Five States http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25135 Commerce, Treasury Funds Helped Boost GOP Campaigns http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25929 State Department Agents Say Jobs Were Threatened http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27292 The United States Attorneys Scandal Comes to Mississippi http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27631 Daughter of jailed governor sees White House hand in her father's fall http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/28972 Bush Tries to Seize Control of Military Lawyers http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29429 (Here's Why) Meet Tom Fiscus http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29041 White House Illegally Deleted Over TEN MILLION Emails http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29258 ELECTION FRAUD Of course, the point is to continue stealing elections. But some of the past crimes of that nature continued to bubble up unnoticed in 2007: Former DoJ Attorneys Accuse Bush Admin of Restricting African American Vote http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/21712 Ohio Secretary of State confirms 2004 election could have been stolen http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29380 NH Phone jamming scheme http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/20/rnc-phone-jamming-doj/ SPYING What would a 21st century year be without further shredding of the Fourth Amendment? Bush opened it with a bang by seizing a power Hitler too had seized early on: the power to open your mail. http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/16946 It was all downhill without resistance from there. NY Times: "Dick Cheney sent Mr. Gonzales and another official to Mr. Ashcroft’s hospital room to get him to approve the wiretapping." http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25214 Unimpeachably Impeachable http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24216 Cheney Urged Illegal Wiretaps http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23408 Ashcroft's ex-no. 2 says Gonzales, Cheney tried to take advantage of sick Attorney General. http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22509 Two FBI Whistleblowers Confirm Illegal Wiretapping of Government Officials and Misuse of FISA http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/19269 Bush Decides to Continue FISA Violations After All http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22086 Bush Dodges Comey’s Accusations That He Personally Arranged Ashcroft Hospital Visit http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22623 FBI Finds It Frequently Overstepped in Collecting Data http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23655 New NSA Whistleblower Speaks http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24183 IRS tracked taxpayers’ political affiliation http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24415 Cheney On Whether He Ordered Hospital Visit To Ashcroft: I Have ‘No Recollection’ http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25295 Bush "Authorized" Illegal Spying Programs http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25344 Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27060 White House Spy Docs Show Surveillance Was Illegal, Senator Feingold Charges http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27848 GLOBAL WARMING Now, admittedly there's no clause in the Constitution banning the warming of the planet, but 2007 was chock full of headlines like this one, that weren't really news, but were louder than they'd been before: Over 4.5 Billion people could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012 http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/17148 It's that sort of thing that makes these headlines fit into the crime section: Cheney Bypassed Environmentally ‘Clueless’ Bush To Craft Administration’s Climate Change Agenda http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/23/cheney-climate-clueless/ Scientists 'pressured on climate findings' http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/17993 Ex-Bush Official: I Fixed The (Climate) Facts Around The Policy http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/20207 The Secret Campaign of President Bush's Administration to Deny Global Warming http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23938 Not an environment scare story http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/28262 CALIFORNIA ENERGY CRISIS: NEW EVIDENCE Here's an oldie but goodie that came back for a cameo: Cheney Suppressed Evidence in California Energy Crisis http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24875 ONGOING INTENTIONAL DESTRUCTION OF NEW ORLEANS 2007 closed out with the use of tazers and brutal crowd repression in New Orleans as people protested the ongoing intentional destruction of good housing. There was also this: Two Years After Katrina, Billions in Relief Funds Are Missing http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/26123 LYING TO CONGRESS AND PUBLIC IN STATE OF THE UNION - AN ANNUAL RITUAL Bush began 2007 with a claim in a State of the Union Address that he had thwarted a number of terrorist plots. They all turned out to be fictional: http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/17806 When no corporate media other than Keith Olbermann called Bush on his lies, he must have felt empowered to tell more: Transcripts show evidence against Muslim charity fabricated http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/18982 Bush-Cheney Blocked and Falsified Reports on Health and Medicine http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24538 Your Tax Dollars Are Used to Tell You Lies http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25828 Bush Used Bogus Terror Threat To Scare Votes For FISA Bill http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27129 Oh, and you know that one about "America does not torture"? It looks like Bush watched the missing torture tapes before saying that: http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29596 Oh, and you know that one about "America does not torture"? It looks like Bush watched the missing torture tapes before saying that: http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29596 And this one just won't go away: France (and CIA) knew in 2001 al-Qaida had a plot http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/21327 THREATENING A WAR OF AGGRESSION IN IRAN This violation of the U.N. Charter and U.S. Constitution has been well documented by Congressman Dennis Kucinich: http://kucinich.house.gov/SpotlightIssues/documents.htm We also learned in 2007 that Bush and Cheney were doing more in Iran than threatening it: "Explosive" new Hersh scoop: Bush funneling money to Al Qaeda-related groups [VIDEO] http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/18963 Report: U.S. Sponsoring Kurdish Guerilla Attacks Inside Iran http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/20561 IRAN LIES And we heard lots of lies about Iranian roadside bombs in Iraq or Iranian activities in Iraq or Iranian nuclear weapons. As each lie failed to stick, it was forgotten and replaced with a new one. But who will hold our so-called elected leaders accountable for the ones we were smart enough not to believe? More Cheney War Lies Exposed - And This Time Pre-War http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23528 Cheney Tried to Stifle Dissent in Iran NIE http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/28544 IRAQ LIES: NEW EVIDENCE This is such fertile ground that although no more evidence is needed, it just keeps piling up. In fact, some of the old evidence is being buried In 2007 the White House deleted from its website the old claims by Cheney that Iraqis would welcome an occupation "as liberators" and so forth. http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/18991 But deleting old Cheney lies only goes so far, when he keeps repeating them. In 2007, Cheney was still claiming that Iraq was to blame for 9-11. http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/19629 The closest Congress came to touching the topic was a brief Senate committee hearing on a report on the Pentagon written by... the Pentagon. Even that report was fairly damning: http://dodig.mil/IGInformation/archives/Unclass%20%20Executive%20Summary.pdf It dealt with the Feith Based Intelligence work of Doug Feith: http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/18368 Pentagon Report Corroborates the Downing Street Memo, Intelligence and Facts Fixed Around the Policy! http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/20958 Also in 2007, all pretense was abandoned that the invasion of Iraq was not driven by oil, as the Bush Administration and Congress pressured the puppet Iraqi government to pass a new law turning over much of the oil to foreign corporations: http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22838 Here's the text of the law: http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/19017 And, of course, the original lies continued to be documented: Two Explosive Books Tell the Inside Story of the Forged Iraq-Niger Docs That Helped Build the Case for War http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/21092 Tenet's Book of Lies Leads to New Revelations http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22110 Senior CIA Analyst Believed Iraq Had No WMD http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22977 Two former CIA officers say the president squelched top-secret intelligence, and a briefing by George Tenet, months before invading Iraq. http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/26521 Bush-Aznar Smoking Gun http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27199 Faulty Intel Source "Curve Ball" Revealed http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/28355 U.S. Plan Envisioned Nuking Iran, Syria, Libya http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/28438 PLAME With the I Lewis Scooter Libby trial finally held in 2007, there was good growth in the Plame industry. Perhaps the biggest news came late in the year when former White House Press Secretary Scotty McClellan implicated Bush and Cheney http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/28856 But evidence in the trial had already done that as well: Cheney's Handwritten Notes Implicate Bush in Plame Affair http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/17987 FBI Agent Testifies Libby Learned About Plame from Cheney http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/18045 Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's comments to the press at the end of the trial suggested that he and they (the media) expected Congress to pursue the matter further. Congress never has. Late in the year, Fitzgerald again pointed his finger at Cheney: http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23081 Also coming out of the Libby trial came this insight, yet to be fully developed: Bush Admin Targeted Wilson's Wife Long Before Wilson's Article Appeared http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/18952 LIBBY COMMUTATION James Madison and George Mason wanted impeachment in the Constitution in case a president ever pardoned someone for a crime that he himself was associated with. They did get impeachment into the Constitution. Nancy Pelosi removed it in 2007. ONGOING AND WORSENING OCCUPATION OF IRAQ Lost in the surge hype and the media's endless demand that we cease caring about Iraq is the worsening crisis that was more heavily reported in early and mid 2007: ACLU Releases Files on Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/21207 More Iraqis Flee As Figure Tops Four Million: UNHCR http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/26221 Ignorance of Iraqi death toll no longer an option http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27066 Report says war on terror is fueling al Qaeda http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27539 2007 Oct 7 Towards Sustainable Security: Oxford Research Group International Security Report 2007 http://oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/books/ar07.php UN Report on Iraq Details an "Ever-Deepening" Crisis http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27657 Bush, Maliki Break Iraqi Law to Renew UN Mandate for Occupation http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29502 WAR CRIMES This is one of the harder topics for Americans to discuss by name, yet 2007 yielded a bumper crop of evidence of war crimes: ACLU Announces Publication of Administration of Torture, a Groundbreaking Account of Prisoner Abuse in U.S. Custody Abroad http://aclu.org/about/staff/administrationoftorture.html FBI Details Possible Detainee Abuse http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/16890 Cheney's Leading Role in Torture http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney Uninvestigated Crimes: CIA Torture Flights Out of North Carolina http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/17997 Abu Ghraib: "Man In the Hood" provides testimony at War Crimes Conference http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/18337 New Light Shed on CIA's "Black Site" Prisons http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/19084 Aspects of Padilla's Treatment Confirmed http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/19085 What happened to the Padilla interrogation videos? http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/19632 'We Were Torturing People For No Reason' -- A Soldier's Tale http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/20720 'Outsourced Guantanamo' - FBI & CIA Interrogating Detainees in Secret Ethiopian Jails, U.S. Citizen Among Those Held http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/20977 CIA Tortured Me in Iraq, Claims Freed Iranian Diplomat http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/20992 Photos of 'tortured' Iraqi's corpse released http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/21391 Former Guantanamo inmate describes interrogations http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23719 Rumsfeld, Perjury, and Shoving Things Up Rectums http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23721 Guantánamo Man’s Family Release ‘Torture’ Dossier http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25717 CIA detention program remains active: U.S. official http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27486 Torture Victim Tells His Story to Congress http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27876 Guantanamo Military Lawyer Breaks Ranks to Condemn "Unconscionable" Detention http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/28147 Dozens of 'Ghost Prisoners' Not Publicly Accounted For http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/28211 Torture Orders Came from Bush http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/28347 Flight Logs Reveal Secret Rendition http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/28955 Jordan's Spy Agency: Holding Cell for the CIA http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29065 Former chief prosecutor for the Office of Military Commissions resigned his post http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29300 Kiriakou: White House Approved Abuzabaydah's WaterBoarding http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29335 And then, of course, there are the missing torture tapes. If they were destroyed, please keep in mind the following points: 1. They are not needed to document the torture. The evidence is overwhelming. 2. The destruction of tapes is not the major crime here. 3. The major crime is the American people's failure to force our representatives in Congress to impeach these fascist bastards. Set as favorite Bookmark Email This Hits: 429 Facebook del.icio.us Digg Furl Yahoo! My Web StumbleUpon Google Bookmarks Technorati reddit We are sorry, for registered members only. Comments (1) Subscribe to this comment's feed Just Plain Ol Me written by Steve, January 01, 2008 Much appreciate the compilation. History will appreciate this type of work done by netters what with the dear president having locked up most all, er...all, of the documents to which the public deserves access. What a great president: elect me, but do not dare to expect to know what i did or do....what a great congress to allow it... thanks again for the article report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0 Write comment Name Website Title Comment smaller \| bigger Subscribe via email (Registered users only) I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

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