Review - "The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder" by Vincent Bugliosi

By Tom Watt
Interested by the premise of the book "The Prosecution of George Bush for Murder" given the prolific nature of the author (Bugliosi being the prosecutor of Charles Manson), I decided to read and review it. The book is broken down into two main sections, the first being the rational for why we should prosecute Bush, and the second being the logistics and legal framework of an actual prosecution of Bush. While the book essentially lays out the rational that Bush should be held accountable for his actions, and that it is legally feasible for him to be prosecuted by any district attorney in any county where a soldier has been killed while serving in the Iraq War, the book bases itself on the conviction that Bush knowingly misled the American people and Congress into a war.

The author spends the first hundred pages of the book, with what amounts to little more than personal attacks upon the Bush Administration and desperate emotional pleas such as, "can you imagine if it was your son who was killed in Iraq and came home 'unviewable' in a box? Yes, your son Scott, or Paul, or Michael, or Ronnie, Todd, Peter, Marty Sean, or Bobby" (Bugliosi, 31). It is exceedingly ironic that an author who is writing a book for the express purpose of exposing what he believes to be a deception of the American people based on emotion and fear inspiring remarks about the possibility of an attack by Iraq on American soil, would use the same emotional/fear based remarks time and time again to try to sway people into thinking with their heart rather than their brain.

If we can for a moment pass over the first half of the book, and focus on the second half (the part that is actually interesting and novel) I found Bugliosi in his prime. In reading I focused much more on the case against Bush rather than the very detailed legal framework and basis for such a case. Bugliosi portrays a startling prosecution of George Bush, that I felt I needed to cross reference (given the at times less than objective nature of the author's writing). One of the most interesting points that Bugliosi makes in presenting evidence that George Bush purposely misled the nation into war, comes in his analysis of the previously top secret National Intelligence Community's report entitled "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction" (better known as the National Intelligence Estimate) and what has become know as the White Paper (the "abridged" version of this document which was released to Congress and the general public in the weeks preceding the decision to go to war). The author also spends a considerable amount of time comparing private statements of Bush to public statements to the American people in the build up of war, that draw into serious question, the validity of the administrations approach to the war in Iraq.

While George Bush will probably never end up in an American courtroom being prosecuted for murder, Vincent Bugliosi's book does do an exceptional job of building a case, based on original documents, for the conviction that the Bush Administration intentionally misled the American people into the war in Iraq.