Also according to the White House, George W. Bush said the following in his 2004 State of the Union address:
"Religious charities of every creed are doing some of the most vital work in our country -- mentoring children, feeding the hungry, taking the hand of the lonely. Yet government has often denied social service grants and contracts to these groups, just because they have a cross or a Star of David or a crescent on the wall. By executive order, I have opened billions of dollars in grant money to competition that includes faith-based charities. Tonight I ask you to codify this into law, so people of faith can know that the law will never discriminate against them again."

George W. Bush has asked Congress to make a law respecting an establishment of religion. Does anyone have a problem with this?

All Americans should support religious charities in the best way their conscience advises. But Bush's actions regarding religious charities are illegal. The government must now choose which religious charities to support and which not to, thus creating the very discrimination that Bush claims to oppose. The Founding Fathers forbid the government from interfering with religion for a very good reason: churches, and their charities, are strongest when serving communities in their own way, not as the President instructs them.

By that logic, how dare former Vice President Gore point out how badly Bush has bungled the war on terror? For that matter, how dared anyone run for president against Bush in 2004? (In fact, Senator Zell Miller told the Republican National Convention that "our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our Commander-in-Chief," implying that we should stop having Presidential elections.)

Playwright Aaron Sorkin wrote: "In this country, it is not only permissible to question our leaders, it's our responsibility."

When a war is going badly, it's our patriotic duty to point out what can be done better. This is necessary to save the lives of our troops, of civilians, and to preserve the security and prestige of our nation. We need freedom of speech - from Main Street to the White House - so people are free to tell the President when he's wrong. Constructive criticism helps us to learn from our mistakes.

But how does the present White House work? Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and journalist Ron Suskind wrote a book about O'Neill's experience working there called The Price of Loyalty. O'Neill learned that the Bush Administration defines loyalty as telling the President that he's always right.

Well, I have news for the Bush Administration. The President of the United States is not a king. He does not reign; he serves.

The United States is engaged in an endless war against all terrorism everywhere. Will it be unpatriotic to criticize the President indefinitely? If George W. Bush is above criticism, he is free to bomb anyone or invade any country he likes at any time. He can do this whether they pose a threat or not, and whether they have anything to do with terrorism or not. All he has to do is proclaim his actions part of the war on terror, regardless of what the facts may be.

(Ironically, then-Senator Daschle was criticized for questioning some of Bush's spending programs. He never went so far as to tell the full story: the war in Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism, and all Bush's justifications for the war were fabricated.)

This attitude is not limited to a handful of senators. In September 2007, General David Petraeus testified before the Senate that violence in Iraq had decreased. Not only was his count of civilian deaths below the Associated Press' count [source: The Washington Post], but 2007 later became the bloodiest year in Iraq since the American invasion. [Source: CNN.]

In response to Petraeus' misleading testimony, liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org took out an advertisement in the New York Times describing exactly what was wrong with his figures. (For instance, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed out, in Petraeus' report, in order to be considered "assassinated," a victim had to be shot in the back of the head, not in the front.)

In response to the advertisement, the Senate passed a resolution condemning MoveOn.org for "personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus."

What does this have to do with freedom of speech? Notably, the Senate did not condemn a 2002 commercial suggesting then-Senator Max Cleland -- a veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam -- sympathized with Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Nor did they condemn the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" for libeling Senator John Kerry in 2004. Unlike MoveOn.org's newspaper advertisement contrasting Petraeus' testimony with the facts, the attacks on Kerry were contradicted by official Navy records, and none of the veterans had actually witnessed the events which they disputed. [Source: FactCheck.org]

Denying the facts is a excellent strategy for losing wars.

What is George W. Bush's opinion on freedom of speech in America? According to the Washington Post, he had the following words to say about gwbush.com, a website lampooning him:

The Bush Administration hasn't been kind to freedom of the press in the United States, either. At the 2008 Republican National Convention, award-winning reporter Amy Goodman and two producers were arrested and manhandled while they were trying to cover anti-war protests. (Source: Democracy Now.

Who would not be intimidated upon learning they were the target of an FBI investigation? This has disturbing historical parallels, such as J. Edgar Hoover's harassment of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The United States is a nation of laws. The government needs a reason to suspect you of wrongdoing in order to launch an investigation. It's not enough for Attorney General Ashcroft -- or his successor, Attorney General Gonzales -- to disagree with your politics. Believing that George W. Bush is a human being -- one who makes mistakes, just like everyone else -- does not make you a criminal.

It seems to me that FBI time and money would be much better spent investigating actual terrorists. I can't figure out why Ashcroft and Gonzales think attacking the Bill of Rights is more important.

Antiwar protesters' freedom of assembly was also curtailed at the Republican National Convention.

Amendment II: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

According to Gun Owners of America, the so-called PATRIOT Act seriously challenges gun owners' Constitutional rights. Under the Act, any organization of gun owners could be deemed "terrorist."

In March 2005, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said "I've yet to hear a strong argument as to why the PATRIOT Act should not be reauthorized." (Source: Truth Out)

I was surprised to learn that the then-Attorney General of the United States never actually sat down and read the Constitution.

Amendment III: No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

According to the Marine Corps Times, this is exactly what is happening in Iraq.

We are supposedly in Iraq to establish a democracy. To requisition the homes of Iraqi civilians - to invade their privacy and throw them out on the street - indicates that we have no respect for the human rights and dignity of the people we're there to help.

Americans fought for these liberties 200 years ago, and we are now denying them to Iraqi civilians. Our refusal to uphold the principles we believe in and fight for undermines our efforts to encourage human rights and help build a democracy in that country. Because we did not respect our own laws, we became villains in the eyes of the Iraqi people - for they saw us as conquerors, not as liberators. We need the Iraqi people on our side; else the war is lost.

Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

But even the so-called PATRIOT Act's excesses (see below) aren't enough for the Bush Administration. In 2005, the New York Times reported [Source: The Nation] that, in 2002, President Bush issued a secret executive order authorizing the National Security Agency to wiretap Americans' telephones when they call abroad -- without seeking a search warrant.

Ironically, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act set up a special court to grant these kinds of search warrants. The court works quickly, in secret, and routinely grants search warrants retroactively. So why not go through normal channels?

The FISA court's only function is to issue search warrants enabling the government to spy on legitimate threats to national security. So why break the law? Who is Bush having the NSA spy on that he can't tell the court about?

For the President to listen in on the phone calls of anyone he doesn't like not only violates this Amendment, but is illegal under the aforementioned FISA act. That law was passed to prevent Presidential abuses of power -- like those that forced Nixon to resign in 1974.

When this news was reported, Bush said that the disclosure that he'd violated the Constitution and needlessly broken the law had damaged national security. [Source: the White House.]

The truth: what has really damaged our national security is having a President who thinks he's above the law and that the Constitution does not apply to him.

On August 6, 2007, Congress passed the so-called Protect America Act. This law essentially gutted the FISA act, giving the NSA authority to monitor any phone call or read any email. They can do this without a search warrant, and regardless of any connection to terrorists. According to MSNBC, although Bush claimed he was only monitoring international phone calls, he was monitoring domestic calls as well -- including those of journalists.

When Richard Nixon wiretapped Americans without search warrants in 1974, Congress did not pass a law legalizing his criminal behavior. Congress began impeachment proceedings. The current Congress must prosecute any illegal violations of the Constitution, not rubber-stamp them. The first step is to repeal the so-called Protect America Act and write a law that actually protects America.

That wasn't the whole story, though. According to USA Today, the NSA has spent our tax money compiling a massive database of every phone call made in this country. This is a further violation of the Constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. It's an invasion of your privacy for the President to be able to access your phone records at a glance. The Constitution requires that he get a search warrant first.

According to American Progress, the PATRIOT Act's champion, John Ashcroft, actually cut the FBI's counter-terrorism budget in the months before the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, and (according to Common Dreams) refused to restore it shortly afterwards. Instead, according to TruthOut.org, Ashcroft was busy at work writing legislation to restrict civil liberties long before the attacks. (A more accurate title for the " PATRIOT Act" would be the "Spying Without Cause Act.") According to Gun Owners of America, Ashcroft later admitted that the so-called PATRIOT Act couldn't have prevented the attacks anyway.

And according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the so-called PATRIOT Act was introduced a week after September 11th, in the middle of the night. Ashcroft asked Congress to pass his legislation unchanged, with no debate. According to Michael Moore, many Congressmen never got the chance to read it.

In his book Against All Enemies, counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke rightly wrote that the possibility that the FBI will ever need to search someone's library record is laughably minute. The so-called PATRIOT Act wisely required the CIA and FBI to share information regarding terrorism; however, Clarke also pointed out that, in the hands of John Ashcroft, the so-called PATRIOT Act persuaded many Americans that the government is untrustworthy - just when the government needed our trust to fight terrorists. And that trust was indeed betrayed: Bush crippled the war on terror by attacking Iraq.

Congress must immediately repeal the so-called PATRIOT Act and replace it with a law that protects us from terrorists -- not one that allows the government to spy on us.

Amendment V: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

And then there's the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Since the war in Afghanistan began, hundreds of "enemy combatants" - suspected members of Al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban - have been held there since 2001 without charge or trial.

According to the National Council of Churches, Human Rights Watch, and others, it is unconstitutional to hold suspects indefinitely. Whether the Bill of Rights applies to the "enemy combatants" or not, it certainly applies to us - their captors.

Although those prisoners are not American citizens, they are in the custody of the U.S. military, which is ethically and legally bound to follow American laws regarding suspects. The Bill of Rights does not say that only American citizens have the right to due process; it references "any person." It stands to reason that at least some of the prisoners must be guilty of terrorism - therefore, they must be charged, tried fairly, and convicted.

Padilla is an American citizen, and the Federal Government denied him due process. If the Government is allowed to hold suspects indefinitely without any proof that they have committed the crime of which they are accused, the Government loses its moral authority. We cannot prevent crime by becoming criminals ourselves; we cannot defend freedom by undermining it. But according to the Bush Administration, all that's required to arrest and imprison someone indefinitely is the President's whim.

In 2007, Padilla was finally put on trial, and was convicted of conspiracy on August 16. However, the jury was not informed that Padilla had been held in solitary confinement for over three years before he was even charged. According to the Christian Science Monitor,

"According to defense motions on file in the case, Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over. There was a toilet and sink. The steel bunk was missing its mattress. He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years. For significant periods of time [he] was denied any reading material... The mirror on the wall was confiscated. Meals were slid through a slot in the door. The light in his cell was always on."

The article goes on: "US prisoners of war confessed to nonexistent war crimes in the Korean War after similar treatment."

According to forensic psychologist Dr. Angela Hegarty, her interviews with Padilla indicated that he had been broken under torture and was not competent to stand trial.

If the government of the United States can do this to an American citizen arrested in downtown Chicago -- even a suspected member of al-Qaeda -- they can do it to anyone. Padilla may be guilty of conspiracy, but those who tortured him must be charged with violating his right to due process.

Amendment VII: In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

According to Common Dreams and Z Magazine, this means Halliburton cannot be held liable for war profiteering, overcharging the government, or serving spoiled food to our soldiers. It also means that if a company engages in false advertising, illegal pollution, human rights abuses, or causes an oil spill, they cannot be touched, so long as a teaspoon of Iraqi oil's involved.

Amendment VIII: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

If torture is not wrong, nothing is wrong. Torture is morally and ethically evil. The purpose of torture is to cause someone so much pain they'll confess to things they did not do in order to make the pain stop. Someone broken under torture will say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear. The only purpose of torture is to force people to lie; it cannot produce reliable intelligence.

If we don't uphold the Geneva Conventions and our own laws forbidding torture, how can we expect other nations to do so? This is crucial today, when our soldiers are fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - countries that have no legal tradition of banning torture. As the Miami Herald urged, we must never employ torture, because "It taints America's reputation as an exemplar of justice. Worse still, it tells other countries that U.S. captives are fair game for abuse and savagery."

Shortly after the beginning of war in Afghanistan, the Bush Administration decided to use the military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a prison for accused members of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban captured in Afghanistan. Guantanamo Bay was seen as an ideal place where these "enemy combatants" - Bush's term for detainees who are neither criminals nor prisoners of war - could be held indefinitely, with no human rights or judicial review.

This is the shame of America. The Wall Street Journal reported that George W. Bush and his administrators then made a deliberate attempt, using various legal opinions, to reinterpret America's clear anti-torture laws and make them more ambiguous. Other memos - the official legal opinion of the United States Government - were authored by John Yoo, then-Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. The legal definition of "torture" was "softened," to permit the "abuse" of prisoners who wouldn't talk. In a nutshell, an interrogator can beat, degrade, and humiliate a prisoner as much as he wants, but it isn't "torture" unless it can be proved that the interrogator is deliberately trying to kill his charge. Thus, what happened at Abu Ghraib wasn't really "torture," and was perfectly legal.

So, it's permissible to torture someone as long as you don't call it "torture"?

Yoo's memo read that, where national security is involved, the President is essentially an absolute monarch. No laws passed by Congress or treaties signed by the United States can restrict the President's ability to order torture. Yoo wrote that the President was completely within his rights to order that a prisoner's innocent child be mutilated in front of him in order to get said prisoner to talk. In regards to Guantanamo Bay, Yoo wrote, the President can legally order prisoners blinded or their skin burned off with acid. (Source: afterdowningstreet.org)

According to ABC News, Bush's "top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding."

"I'm aware our national security team met on this issue," Bush said in April, 2008. "And I approved." The team that approved torture included Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell and George Tenet.

Eight months later, Cheney told ABC News that "we don't do torture. We never have." However, later in the interview, he confirmed that he "supported" the "appropriate" use of the "waterboarding" tactic -- also known as "drowning torture." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow pointed out that, under U.S. law, waterboarding IS torture, and is considered a war crime.

After World War II, the United States prosecuted these forms of torture as crimes against humanity, and those who ordered torture were rightly tried as war criminals. Japanese leaders were executed for ordering waterboarding.

Congress impeached President Clinton for lying under oath. What did he lie about? The definition of "sex." If that constituted perjury, doesn't disputing how much abuse constitutes "torture" indicate a far more heinous crime? The torture memos, by themselves, constitute grounds for impeachment.

In this essay, I've only touched on the Bush Administration's assault on human dignity. According to the Justice Robert Jackson Conference on War Criminals, the torture that the Bush Administration ordered or approved included savage beatings, electric shocks, and locking prisoners in coffins. At least one prisoner froze to death after he was thrown naked into a freezing cell.

In addition, using the process of "rendition," over a hundred people were kidnapped by the CIA and flown to other countries to be tortured by local authorities.

Although it's illegal to torture someone whether the prisoner is guilty or innocent -- it is illegal to commit a crime whether or not the victims are themselves criminals -- up to half of those tortured with the Bush Administration's approval may have been innocent.

Amnesty International reported the demeaning and abusive treatment of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Only a handful of the 520 prisoners there have been charged with a crime, and no interrogation to date has resulted in useful intelligence.

Although the Supreme Court has ruled that the Guantanamo detainees could challenge their imprisonment in US courts, the Bush Administration has been unwilling to enforce this decision, and no case has yet made it to court. What's more: according to the BBC, their lawyers have had a host of problems accessing their clients' medical records, or even interviewing them without interrogators present.

The bottom line: the U.S. Government has yet to prove that any of the detainees held there are actually terrorists.

Then the officer in charge of the Guantanamo Bay prison - General Geoffrey Miller - was sent to oversee the prisons in Iraq. The result?

The Nation magazine describes the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, most of whom were arrested by mistake.

How could Iraqi prisoners have been tortured by Americans? Because Bush has done everything in his power to tie the conquest of Iraq together with al-Qaeda, the war on terror, and September 11th, even though no connection ever existed.

For instance, in May 2003, after taking control of Iraq, Bush claimed "We've removed an ally of Al-Qaeda." The truth: Saddam Hussein's regime and Al-Qaeda were enemies.

Also according to the White House, In February 2004, Bush told the Republican Governors: "We confronted the dangers of state-sponsored terror, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction... [Saddam Hussein] cultivated ties to terrorists. He built weapons of mass destruction. He hid those weapons... We're aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq, defeating them there so we do not have to face them in our own country."

This was a month after the top US weapons inspector, David Kay, told the Senate that the Bush Administration had been "all wrong" about Saddam's supposedly huge and lethal stockpile of WMD.

Common Dreams cataloged a number of other Bush Administration lies connecting Iraq to Al-Qaeda. This rhetoric led to hundreds of innocent Iraqi civilians being treated as proven terrorists... and tortured as if they were somehow responsible for the atrocities of September 11th.

It doesn't end there. Bush subsequently promoted the authors of the torture memos. Jay S. Bybee is now a judge on the Ninth Circuit, and Alberto Gonzales became the Attorney General of the United States. Bush, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Bybee and Gonzales had no business making American anti-torture laws ambiguous, and then pretending to be shocked and appalled when seeing the pictures from Abu Ghraib.

The Bush Administration's torture policy did not end at Abu Ghraib. A Washington Post editorial asked hard questions. In November 2005, CIA Director Porter Goss echoed the other members of the Bush Administration and firmly denied that the U.S. government tortures people. Instead, what they do is this:

"The first three techniques... involve shaking or striking detainees in an effort to cause pain and fear. The fourth consists of forcing a prisoner to stand, handcuffed and with shackled feet, for up to 40 hours. Then comes the "cold cell": Detainees are held naked in a cell cooled to 50 degrees, and periodically doused with cold water. Last is "waterboarding"... The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him... a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

"Are these techniques "not torture," as Mr. Goss claims? In fact, several of them have been practiced by repressive regimes around the world, and they once were routinely condemned by the State Department in its annual human rights reports. By insisting that they are not torture, Mr. Goss sets a new standard -- both for the treatment of detainees by other governments and for the handling of captive Americans. If an American pilot is captured in the Middle East, then beaten, held naked in a cold cell and subjected to simulated drowning, will Mr. Goss say that he has not been tortured?"

In October 2005 -- possibly in response to abominations like the above -- Congress overwhelmingly passed the McCain Amendment. This law established humane interrogation methods for prisoners.

But this didn't stop George W. Bush. In March 2006, according to the Washington Post, the Bush Administration has challenged this law in court -- all the while declaring "we do not torture."

Bush also issued an executive order on July 7, 2007 reaffirming his decision that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to anyone he kidnaps.

There is a right way to combat terrorism, and a wrong way. Violating our own Constitution is the wrong way. Our anti-torture laws exist to protect Americans. Disobeying them endangers our soldiers and dishonors our nation.

Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Therefore, the government does not have the right to second-guess our private medical decisions, or those of our families.

However, in March 2005, the tragic case of Terri Schiavo made national headlines. In 1990, Ms. Schiavo suffered heart failure which left her incurably brain damaged and unable to live without life support. This led to a court battle between her husband and her parents. At contention was whether she would wish her body to be kept "alive" in this fashion with no higher brain functions.

After a twelve-year battle, Florida state courts agreed that she would not. But this wasn't the end of the story. President Bush flew back to Washington to sign emergency legislation empowering Federal courts to hear the case all over again. (A pity he didn't have the same feeling of urgency when he was given a memo on August 6, 2001, that read "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.")

This Amendment also guarantees the sovereignty and independence of Florida's state courts. Bush clearly violated this sovereignty, and Congress rubber-stamped this violation.

Bush justified this by saying, "It should be our goal as a nation to build a culture of life, where all Americans are valued, welcomed, and protected." [Source: the White House.] This was ironic, considering as governor of Texas, Bush presided over more executions (152) than any other governor in American history.

Does anyone truly wish the Federal government to intervene when your family must make medical decisions on your behalf?

Therefore, the people, through their local and state governments, have the power to define and regulate marriage.

However, according to the White House, George W. Bush has called for a constitutional amendment to legally define "marriage" throughout the United States as a union between a man and a woman. This violates both the letter and spirit of this Amendment.

In a speech, Senator Feinstein cited America's longstanding legal precedent that the states, not the Federal government, have jurisdiction over marriage.

Ironically, according to the White House, Bush once claimed that other Presidential candidates "will increase the power of politicians and bureaucrats over your income, over your retirement, over your health care, and over your life." Yet he now wishes to change the Constitution to empower the Federal government to dictate whom you can marry.

Given how closely Bush believes in following the letter and spirit of the Constitution, should he be trusted to modify it?

Also: Amendment XIV, Section 4. "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

According to the White House, Bush has said: "There is no 'trust fund,' just IOUs that I saw firsthand, that future generations will pay -- will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs." He went on to say: "It's time to strengthen and modernize Social Security for future generations with growing assets that you can control, that you call your own -- assets that the government cannot take away."

The President of the United States questioned whether our government will honor its Social Security debts to our citizens. The Constitution forbids him to do this. He then suggested that the government has the power to deny payment of its obligations - which it does not.

In what way is this rhetoric in keeping with Bush's oath to uphold the Constitution?

Article I, Section 8. "The Congress shall have Power To... declare War... and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water."

In October 2002, Congress did indeed authorize George W. Bush to use force to disarm Saddam Hussein. However, this authorization was based on several premises:

The so-called Downing Street Memo reported what the head of British Intelligence told the Prime Minister on July 23, 2002. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

(This confirmed what Middle East experts had been saying for two years: Al-Qaeda's goal was to overthrow Saddam and replace him with a Taliban-style government of fanatical Islamic puritans. To effect this, they sold weapons to Kurdish rebels. Although Osama Bin Laden may have tried at one point to make common cause with Saddam, the Iraqi tyrant didn't trust him. The dictator was a mass murderer devoid of conscience, but he wasn't suicidal enough to arm his enemies. See Richard A. Clarke's Against All Enemies, Michael Scheuer's Imperial Hubris, and John W. Dean's Worse than Watergate.)

Since then, circumstances demonstrated that force was indeed unnecessary. The United States conquered the country, and discovered that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. The Duelfer Report concluded that, not only did Saddam Hussein have no WMD, he had no capacity to make them.

The anti-war protesters were proven right.

So why was Bush so dead-set on invading Iraq?

George W. Bush - who once owned an oil company - would have us believe that he invaded Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from giving weapons of mass destruction he didn't have to terrorists who wanted to kill him, and that the fact that Iraq is the world's second largest oil producer had nothing to do with it.

Article I, Section 9. "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

Bush's abuse of the law did not stop with Jose Padilla. In September 2006, Congress passed (and Bush signed) the Military Commissions Act.

Bush has repeatedly claimed that he has the authority to arrest anyone anywhere on the globe and imprison them indefinitely, without any proof of wrongdoing. According to Bush, this authority extends to American citizens within the United States. (As we have seen, the Constitution clearly does not give him this authority.) By passing the Military Commissions Act, Congress rubber-stamped these abuses of power. According to the new law, the President may indeed arrest and imprison anyone indefinitely, in violation of this clause of the Constitution. Bush can then set up a military tribunal to "try" them, using coerced "confessions" and hearsay that would be considered inadmissible in any other court. Prisoners thus "convicted" can then be executed.

Bush does not have the authority to suspend the Sixth Amendment, and Congress does not have the authority to suspend the Constitution. As Senator Russ Feingold wrote, "We would not stand for another country to try our citizens under those rules, and we should not stand for our own government to do so, either." Feingold goes on to point out that the Military Commissions Act "...grants a blank check to the executive branch to decide entirely on its own who can be tried by military commission."

The FBI counter-terrorism department's record of spying on peaceful anti-war protests should remind us of one fundamental American value: no single person should have the sole authority to decide who is a terrorist and who isn't. Not even the President.

If the FBI counter-terrorism department can't figure out the difference between the terrorists who murdered 3,000 innocent people on September 11th, 2001, and ordinary Americans who think going to war in Iraq was a mistake, Bush certainly should not have the authority to declare anyone to be an "unlawful enemy combatant" without proof.

Congress must immediately repeal the Military Commissions Act. We need laws to defend the nation from terrorists -- not laws that empower the President to lock up anybody he doesn't like.

Article I, Section 9. "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law..."

According to Bob Woodward's interview on CBS News, in August 2002, George W. Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld illegally diverted $700 million from money Congress approved to defend the United States from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in order to attack Iraq. That was two months before Congress approved the use of force against Iraq.

Article II, Section 2. "The President... shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur..."

Furthermore: Article VI, Clause 2: "...all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land."

On December 14, 2001, George W. Bush announced that the United States would no longer honor the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Treaty with Russia, a cornerstone of nuclear arms control.

According to Waging Peace, several members of the House of Representatives filed suit, asserting that as the Senate had approved the treaty, George W. Bush did not have the authority to terminate it without Senate approval.

As Bush did not legally terminate the treaty, it is still in effect. The deployment of any military hardware that would violate this treaty is against the law.

In addition: President Arthur signed the Geneva Conventions in 1882, and the treaty was ratified by the Senate. It is therefore illegal for the President to unilaterally decide that the Conventions do not apply to prisoners (as he did in his executive order) without approval from Congress.

Article II, Section 2: The President "...shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States..."

According to the National Organization for Women, the White House refused to make all of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' legal writings available to the Senate, thus making it impossible for the Senate to carry out its legal obligation to "advise and consent."

There is no way the Senate can make informed decisions without access to all relevant information. Instead, George W. Bush and his administration wanted - and received - a rubber stamp and a blank check.

The stonewalling from the White House was un-American and unconstitutional. As John F. Kennedy wrote, "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

Article II, Section 3: The President "...shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed..."

According to Findlaw, columnist Robert Novak revealed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent in 2003. (Wilson had been working with a CIA front company looking for WMD in Iran.) Novak's source, "senior Administration officials," violated Federal laws by compromising Plame's cover.

Why would anyone in the Bush Administration want to prevent a CIA agent from working undercover during the war on terror?

Plame's husband is former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. In 2002, the CIA asked Wilson to visit Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium there. Wilson made the trip, found out that no such event had taken place, and returned home with that information. (Wilson, a Republican, had been Ambassador to Iraq during the presidency of George Bush, senior.)

Much to his surprise, in his State of the Union address on 1/28/2003, George W. Bush said "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld would make similar claims.

The problem was, the CIA had twice warned the White House that the Iraq-Niger connection was based on a proven forgery. Despite this, George W. Bush continued to believe this disproven information, and included it in one of his most important speeches calling for war! That July, Ambassador Wilson published his findings.

Novak's column appeared about a week later. Novak's "senior Administration officials" leaked Plame's name as an undercover CIA agent to ruin her career, thus punishing her husband for embarrassing the Bush Administration.

According to The Nation, those officials included Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, I. Lewis Libby, and longtime Bush strategist Karl Rove. Libby was later convicted of perjury and obstructing justice. However, Bush commuted Libby's sentence so he would not have to serve jail time.

Did George W. Bush personally authorize this? Possibly not, but it happened on his watch. He did not ensure that his staff faithfully executed the law.

Bush's then-Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, later revealed that Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby, and Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, had instructed him to assure the press that Rove and Libby had nothing to do with revealing Plame's undercover status. McClellan did so, only later learning that his superiors had used him to cover their own involvement.

(Poet Calvin Trillin offered an enlightening insight into Bush's priorities when he wrote: "No other administration had ever considered the identity of the lobbyists who had helped devise its energy policy a more important national secret than the identity of an undercover American intelligence agent.")

This isn't the only instance of Bush deciding that laws he didn't like didn't apply to him. According to the Los Angeles Times, as soon as he came to office, Bush ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to stop enforcing the law. If a plant is illegally polluting the air or the water, the EPA is no longer allowed to take legal action against it. Polluters, rejoice - you can now dump poison into our air and water, and the U.S. government has no intention of stopping you.

A study by the Boston Globe indicated that these violations are indicative of Bush's entire governing philosophy: that the President alone, not the Supreme Court, has the power to decide what is and is not Constitutional, and the President alone, not Congress, gets to decide what laws apply to him and which he can ignore. Breaking the law is standard Bush Administration policy, and Bush is a criminal of unprecedented proportions. According to the Boston Globe's article: "Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, whistle-blower protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research."

The article goes on to say: "... Bush is according himself the ultimate interpretation of the Constitution. And he is quietly exercising that authority to a degree that is unprecedented in US history." Bush has done this by issuing "signing statements" when approving a law Congress has passed; these statements have spelled out which provisions Bush will enforce and which he will ignore. How many times has Bush done this? Over 1200 - more than all previous presidents combined.

As I cited above, Bush has also refused to enforce the FISA act, the War Crimes Act, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the Geneva Conventions. The most glaring example: when Congress overwhelmingly passed the McCain Amendment, Bush signed the law - but wrote in his signing statement that he simply would not enforce it.

This is not the way our democracy works. The American Bar Association has concluded that the President is legally required to veto bills he disagrees with. Bush is not a king; he does not have the authority to sign a bill into law, and then break that law whenever he sees fit.

President Bush swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. The Constitution, in turn, demands that the president uphold all of our nation's laws, even the ones he doesn't like. Every time Bush refuses to see "that the Laws be faithfully executed," he is not only breaking those laws, but violating the Constitution.

Article II, Section 3. "The President... shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union..."

Attorney Frank Mandanici argues that Bush's lie about African Uranium (see above) in and of itself constitutes an impeachable offense. He made that claim during the State of the Union address -- and lying to Congress is a felony.

Article II, Section 4. "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

This is the clause that empowers the House of Representatives to impeach the President and other officials. The Senate then tries him, and if a two-thirds majority votes to do so, removes him from office. So what constitutes treason?

Article III, Section 3. "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."

According to The Nation, in mid-2001, the Bush Administration gave $43 million to the Taliban in money to fight the opium trade. According to Bob Woodward's book Bush at War, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are virtually the same organization; and according to the Information Please Almanac, Al-Qaeda was a known enemy of the United States, having attacked us in New York, Africa and Yemen. Does this constitute "giving... aid and comfort" to America's enemies?

Bush At War is based upon interviews with the President, the Cabinet, and other Bush Administration officials at the highest level. They certainly knew at the time that the Taliban was a close ally of anti-American terrorists.

According to Time Magazine, "the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies released its annual survey that found... that far from dealing a blow to al-Qaeda and making the U.S. and its allies safer, the Iraq invasion has in fact substantially strengthened bin Laden's network and increased the danger of attacks in the West." Why is this? Because the (principally Muslim) people of the Middle East realized what many Americans did not: that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were enemies, and that Bush was vastly exaggerating Saddam's military potential. Bush has made the terror threat much, much worse.

(This was confirmed by Mother Jones Magazine's study of February 2007. The analysis concluded that, since March 2003, terrorism worldwide has increased by 700% -- and the war in Iraq is directly responsible.) According to Iraq Body Count, about 80,000 Iraqi (principally Muslim) civilians have died since the American invasion, not to mention the torture at Abu Ghraib prison. The Lancet's Report suggests the total is as 100,000. The Center for a Just Foreign Policy believes the total is over a million.

George W. Bush has denied that the war on terror is a war against Islam; but to many Muslims, Bush has no credibility. To many outside the United States, the conquest of oil-rich Iraq - an enemy of Al-Qaeda that posed no threat to the U.S. - has strengthened Al-Qaeda's propaganda claiming that America is a greedy, hypocritical empire that hates Islam.

Bush's insistence on attacking nations that might pose a threat someday instead of terrorists that do pose a threat today is being continued with Iran. The invasion of Iraq removed Saddam Hussein -- the archenemy of Iran -- and changed Iraq from a dictatorship into an anarchy. This has increased the regional influence of Iran, a nation controlled by Shiite fanatics -- a nation much more populous and powerful than Iraq. Far from encouraging Iran to reform, the invasion of Iraq has strengthened that government, one that has been an enemy of America since Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979.

According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, in order to counter the Iranian influence he helped create, Bush has been funneling money to Sunni radical groups that oppose Iran. (Some of this money comes from the $9 billion that vanished without a trace when the United States was administering Iraq.) These radical groups also support al-Qaeda.

Does this constitute "giving... aid and comfort" to America's enemies?

Do George W. Bush's actions constitute treason? The fraudulent reasons for war in Iraq, coupled with the incompetence of the occupation, have certainly "given aid" to America's enemy, the al-Qaeda terrorist organization who murdered 3,000 innocent civilians on September 11th. Over 4,000 of our soldiers have died fighting the wrong war. (The current total is at Iraq Coalition Casualties.)

Did Bush intend to commit treason by helping al-Qaeda? Probably not, but that's what his reckless and incompetent attack on Iraq achieved.

Upon taking office, George W. Bush swore an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Not only has Bush scorned this duty, he is not above the law, and must be held accountable for his actions. The House must impeach him, and the Senate must remove him from office.

According to the Declaration of Independence, "all men ... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Human rights don't come from the government, or even from the Constitution. They come from God, and George W. Bush does not have the authority to set them aside.

Bush left office on January 20, 2009. Two months later, the Obama Administration released secret legal opinions written by Bush Administration lawyers in October, 2001. According to these memos, Bush claimed his "war on terror" gave him unlimited power to fight a war against all terrorism, everywhere, forever. Therefore, Bush claimed the authority to suspend the Fourth Amendment whenever he saw fit. As far as search warrants were concerned, the memos read, due process no longer existed.

Outrageously, the memos also claimed that freedom of speech no longer applied regarding Bush's "war on terror," and could be suspended if anyone challenged his policies. Freedom of the press no longer existed for any journalists who reported something Bush did not want the public to know.

A later memo (dating from 2002) claimed that Bush could arrest and imprison anyone indefinitely, without charge, including American citizens inside the United States. According to Consortium News, this was the "legal" foundation for arresting Jose Padilla in Chicago and holding him without charges for five years.

Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman's book Cheating Justice provides far more detail about the specific laws broken by Bush and his senior staff during their time in office. Holtzman proves that they knew they were breaking laws at the time, and details the efforts they made to cover this up.

Bush's crimes did not stop with torture. In his book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, retired prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi presents the overwhelming evidence that Bush, Cheney, and Rice knew perfectly well that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when they claimed it did, and thus deliberately and knowingly took the nation to war under false pretenses. This led to the deaths of nearly 5,000 American soldiers.

Before the invasion, the overwhelming consensus of all sixteen US intelligence agencies was that Iraq posed no threat, and they sent Bush numerous reports to that effect. Some critics have suggested that Bush and company were deluded into believing their own propaganda, but this could not be the case. For instance:

• In October 2002, then-CIA director George Tenet briefed Bush that Iraq was not a threat. Bush gave a speech later that day claiming that Iraq was a threat.
• The classified National Intelligence Estimate also indicated that Iraq was not a threat. In his book, Bugliosi details the differences between the document the Bush Administration received and the one they showed Congress. Bush and company rewrote the report to indicate Iraq was a threat when the original document concluded it was not.
• In January 2003, Bush confessed in a private meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the rigorous UN weapons inspections would probably find no WMD in Iraq. Since he had already decided to go to war and wanted to claim self-defense, he suggested painting an American airplane in UN colors and tricking Saddam into firing first.
• Also that month, Bush told Congress that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The "proof" of this was an obvious forgery. Not only had the CIA already debunked the claim and told Bush twice not to include it in any speeches, the CIA had already informed British Intelligence that the claim was bogus.
• Most of Bush's propaganda was based on the rantings of an Iraqi expatriate codenamed "Curveball." Curveball had originated the claim that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons laboratories on trains. As Curveball lives in Germany, he had been interviewed extensively by German Intelligence. Not only did the Germans warn the Bush Administration that Curveball was a delusional alcoholic, he hadn't even been in Iraq at the times he claimed he'd seen the mobile labs.