[Howlin]

What on EARTH is John Dean's book about?

[dogbyte12]

John Dean's book is called "Worse than Watergate", in which he claims that the "false WMD excuse" to invade Iraq, was a high crime and misdemeanor worse than the crimes of Watergate.

Dean's book is not going to have legs though. Clarke is the one who can potentially do damage.

[maica]

 March 24, 2004 
       

With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

John Dean Talks of Impeaching Bush

John Dean, whose testimony helped lead to Richard Nixon's resignation in the face of impeachment, is suggesting that President Bush should be impeached if it can be proven that he misled the nation about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Dean's last foray into the public eye was to say he would reveal the identity of Woodward and Bernstein's alleged Watergate source, a promise he failed to honor in his book "Unmasking Deep Throat."

Blithely skimming by the fact that the search for arms in a nation the size of California has barely scratched the surface, and that large amounts of gear and pharmaceuticals meant to protect Saddam Hussein's soldiers from the effects of their use of biological or chemical weapons, Dean concentrates on the failure to uncover large numbers of easily hidden WMDs as suggesting that the president has deliberately misled the nation.

In a lengthy article in FindLaw.com, Dean says: "To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be 'a high crime' under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony 'to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.'"

Among those he cites as authorities for his views are such viciously anti-Bush columnists as the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, now shown to have distorted a quote from the president drastically altering the meaning of his statement, and the vitriolic Bush-hating Paul Krugman, whose anti-Bush ravings suggest he's in the grips of a manic obsession.

Wrote Dean: "In an apparent attempt to bolster the President's credibility, and his own, Secretary Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense Department investigation into what went wrong with the pre-war intelligence. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort about on par with O. J.'s looking for his wife's killer."

Dean quotes Krugman as asserting that it is "'long past time for this administration to be held accountable ... The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat,' Krugman argued. 'If that claim was fraudulent,' he continued, 'the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history - worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra.'"




"Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate," Dean wrote.

John Dean helped bring down one president. It looks as if he wants to relive his moment of Watergate notoriety by joining the sleazy legion of Bush haters to drive another chief executive out of office for the crime of ridding the world of a genocidal dictator whose existence threatened the peace and stability of the