by Daniel Farnkoff

Created on: July 26, 2008   Last Updated: August 01, 2008

In his recent book, "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder", Vincent Bugliosi tries to set the table for any honest and courageous state or federal prosecutor to pursue criminal charges against Bush on behalf of the young men and women who were asked to lay down their lives in Iraq for no legitimate purpose. Bugliosi insists that, whether impeachment succeeds or fails, justice demands that a full criminal prosecution be undertaken on behalf of the thousands of men and women who have died as a result of Bush's criminally duplicitous words and actions.

In a crucial first section, Bugliosi points to legal precedents and concepts showing that Bush can indeed be tried for first degree murder, not merely negligence or manslaughter. He engaged in activities and issued directives that he knew would lead to the wrongful deaths of others- the idea that he could have intended anything other than the deadly results is shown to be untenable. Whether the soldiers' (and civilians') deaths were the explicit object, the "end goal", of the enterprise is irrelevant- like a bank robber who kills four people in the course of a robbery, the fact that murder was not his primary goal does not immunize the robber from prosecution for murder. Indeed, the lack of explicit hatred for any of the victims almost makes the crimes more loathsome. Instead of hatred, there is only complete and total indifference.

One disappointing thing about Bugliosi's book is that he does not attempt to identify the actual motives behind Bush and Cheney's obsessive push to invade Iraq. Bugliosi does not speculate much as to what Bush and Cheney actually hoped to gain from deceiving the public, Congress, and members of their own administration into believing Saddam was an "imminent threat to the United States", and eventually procuring a somewhat qualified authorization from Congress to launch a preemptive war.

This has always been a baffling question for me as well- although there are a number of extant theories about Bush and Cheney's true motivations. Was the Iraq War a huge, deadly political sideshow meant to distract Americans from the failure to capture Osama Bin Laden? Was it part of a plan to steal oil from Iraq to enhance the profits of oil companies and keep those companies profitable for years to come- a drastic measure intended to stave off the talk of reductions or even renunciation of fossil fuels that might have represented an unprecedented threat to behemoths like Exxon-Mobil? Was the

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