Global Research, December 29, 2009In an interview this month in The Washington Post, the former UN chief nuclear weapons inspector and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (2005), Mohamed ElBaradei, was asked why the United States got it so wrong on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. ElBaradei responded that he has discovered that the United States decision to go to war was based on regime change and not based on whether Iraq had WMDs. He asked: “How do you justify that almost a million innocent civilians have died as the price of getting rid of a dictator? Who is accountable for this at the end of the day, after it was found that there were no weapons of mass destruction?”
Perhaps a grand jury will answer his question on accountability. Pending in Washington at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia is a report and request to the grand jury that it conduct an investigation of the Bush Administration’s false and fraudulent statements that Iraq had sought uranium for a nuclear weapon. (See and click on attachment # 1 at the end of this article.) In that report I contend that said statements violated the criminal statutes 18 U.S.C. § 1001 and 18 U.S.C. § 371 that prohibit making false and fraudulent statements to Congress and conspiring to obstruct the functions of Congress. My sending such a communication to the grand jury is not illegal. The statute that makes it a crime to attempt to influence a grand jury by writing or communicating to a grand juror, 18 U.S.C. § 1504, states: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the communication of a request to appear before the grand jury.” As explained later, the law clearly allows a grand jury to conduct its own independent investigations without the consent or participation of the Justice Department.
But my request for a grand jury investigation only comes after the Justice Department has refused to investigate the matter. In March I submitted a 155-page report to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to appoint an outside Special Counsel to investigate the false and fraudulent statements that President Bush and members of his Administration made that Iraq had sought uranium for a nuclear weapon. (See and click on attachment # 2 at the end of this article.) In that report, which was based on an analysis of the public record and the law, I contended that said statements violated the above criminal statutes 18 U.S.C. § 1001 and 18 U.S.C. § 371 that prohibit making false and fraudulent statements to Congress and conspiring to obstruct the functions of Congress. The Bush Administration’s statements that Iraq had sought uranium for a nuclear weapon were the most alarming statements that the Administration made to support its claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and therefore a preemptive war against Iraq was necessary. READ MORE ...
