Categorical Aperitif

It's going to be a very busy week; Random Flickr Blogging later, if at all. It looks like this week's must-read is going to be Elizabeth de la Vega over at the invaluable TomDispatch. A former federal prosecutor (who's written some great essays for TomDispatch since her retirement), de la Vega has a new book which imagines indicting Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Condi, and Colin Powell for fraud and conspiracy:

If the indictment and grand jury are hypothetical, the evidence is not. I've prepared for this case, just as I would have done for any other case in my years as a prosecutor, by reviewing all of the available relevant information. In this case, such information consists of witness accounts, the defendants' speeches, public remarks, White House press briefings, interviews, congressional testimony, official documents, all public intelligence reports, and various summaries of intelligence, such as in the reports of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the 9/11 Commission. I've discarded any evidence, however compelling, that is uncorroborated.

Then, using a sophisticated system of documents piled on every surface in my dining room, I've organized and analyzed the reliable information chronologically, by topic, and by defendant. I've compared what the President and his advisers have said publicly to what they knew and said behind the scenes. Finally, I've presented the case through testimony that will, I hope, make sense and keep everybody awake.

After analyzing this evidence in light of the applicable law, I've determined that we already have more than enough information to allow a reasonable person to conclude that the President conducted a wide-ranging effort to deceive the American people and Congress into supporting a war against Iraq. In other words, in legal terms, there is probable cause to believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell violated Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, which prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States. Probable cause is the standard of proof required for a grand jury to return an indictment. Consequently, we have more than sufficient evidence to warrant indictment of the President and his advisers.

That's from de la Vega's introduction; TomDispatch will be posting her indictment on Wednesday and her first day of imagined grand jury testimony on Thursday. Read and savor—'cause it's probably as close to justice as these people are ever going to get, at least in this life.