Day: May 29, 2005

Dems Demand Bush-Cheney ’04 Return Tainted ‘Coingate’ Money

Jon Ponder

The Democratic National Committee has demanded that President Bush’s re-election campaign return over $100,000 that Bush-Cheney ’04 may have received in money stolen in the GOP “Coingate” scandal, reports the Toledo Blade.

Coin dealer Tom Noe, a Republican fat cat and donor, apparently talked GOP state officials into investing public money in rare coins, and now $10 million to $12 million from that $50 million fund is missing.

After the money went missing, Noe made donations to GOP elected officials in Ohio, including Gov. Bob Taft. It appears Noe made a donation to Bush-Cheney ’04, as well:

The U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI are investigating whether Mr. Noe violated campaign-finance laws. That probe has focused on an October, 2003, fund-raiser in Columbus that generated $1.4 million for the Bush campaign.

The Bush-Cheney campaign lists Mr. Noe as a “pioneer” for raising from $100,000 to $250,000 for the President’s re-election campaign.

Bush stole the election in 2000. Now it appears he won Ohio in 2004 with stolen money.

(Thanks to Friend of PR Kim for the update!)

Leaked UK Report Supplies More Proof That Bush, Blair Lied in Run-up to War

Jon Ponder

DailyKos has a diary entry from Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) who says a report leaked to the London Times provides proof positive that the Bush and Blair administrations were on the course to war in Iraq long before they started “marketing” the overthrow of Saddam Hussein to their hapless citizens in September 2002.

The [Royal Airforce Force] and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.

The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make “regime change” in Iraq legal.

Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, told the meeting that “the US had already begun ‘spikes of activity’ to put pressure on the regime”.

The new information, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did.

Rep. Conyers has written a letter to President Bush demanding an explanation for the inconsistencies between his Administration’s statements both before and after the fall of Saddam and the emerging record of the facts.

The conservatives who control our Congress are far too corrupt to investigate the Bush Administration, especially if there is a better than even chance the Bushites did something that might lead to impeachment, which this matter certainly could. Don’t roll your eyes. As I’ve noted before, Andrew Johnson was impeached for firing a cabinet member and Bill Clinton was impeached over sex lie told under oath. The lies told by Bush and company have led to the deaths of tens of thousands.

Even if the chance are slim that a serious investigation will take place, you can take action. It only takes a minute to sign the letter.