CHAPTER TWELVE: SO WHAT?

 

           

            One may comment that, since George W. Bush is no longer Governor of Texas, all of the above is simply irrelevant history. This is not the case.

            While Bush was Governor of Texas, Presiding Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Michael McCormick described the Texas Criminal Justice System as a “model for the nation.”[1] Now that Governor Bush is President Bush, Texas’ criminal justice system has in fact become a model for the nation, making the debate regarding Texas’ system all the more significant.

            Aggressive blindness. The Texafication of America’s justice system is being implemented by President Bush’s hand-chosen top law enforcement official, Attorney General John Ashcroft. Mr. Ashcroft is currently trying to “nationalize” the federal death penalty by expanding it into non-death penalty states, often seizing murder cases from state prosecutors who are unable or unwilling to pursue the death penalty, and transferring those murder cases to federal prosecutors with the expectation that they will pursue execution. He overturned a Justice Department provision which prohibited federal prosecutors from seeking the death penalty solely because a state lacked that punishment option.[2]

            As of September 2003, Mr. Ashcroft had sought the death penalty for 93 defendants, approximately half of all defendants eligible for death. In 37 of those cases he overruled local federal prosecutors who had chosen to pursue sentences of life in prison without possibility of parole. Seven of those cases took place in states that did not have the death penalty: Massachusetts, Vermont, Michigan, Iowa, and West Virginia.[3]

            Nor has Mr. Ashcroft made tremendous strides in freeing the federal death penalty of its allegedly racist overtones. When he assumed office, under pressure from human rights groups, Mr. Ashcroft initiated a study to determine if there was racial bias in the federal application of the death penalty. The situation seemed a little suspicious. Although 50% of America’s murders were committed by whites,[4] 80% of the cases selected for capital prosecution were minorities. And of those capital cases which actually resulted in a death sentence, 80% involved minority defendants and 20% involved white defendants.

            Not surprisingly, these statistics produced a bit of racial disparity on the federal government’s death row. Although America is 12% black and 12% Hispanic,[5] when Mr. Ashcroft assumed office, seventeen of the nineteen men awaiting federal execution were either black or Hispanic. This disparity was partly attributed to the more generous offering of plea bargains to whites: 48% of white death penalty defendants were offered plea bargains, as opposed to 28% of Hispanics and 25% of blacks.[6] Mr. Ashcroft referred to this imbalance as a “slight statistical disparity.”[7]

            An earlier Clinton Administration study of race and the federal death penalty had found glaring racial and geographic disparities in the application of capital punishment.[8] But what was Mr. Ashcroft’s conclusion, after having completed his own study? He found nothing wrong with the staggering statistical disparities: “There is no evidence of racial bias in the administration of the federal death penalty,” he testified before Congress. “Our analysis has confirmed that black and Hispanic defendants were less likely at each stage of the department’s review process to be subjected to the death penalty than white defendants.”[9] According to Mr. Ashcroft, it is not minorities who are treated unfairly in capital cases, but whites.

            Not only could Mr. Ashcroft not perceive any racism in the federal application of the death penalty, he actually might be making it worse. In ten out of twelve New York State murder cases, Mr. Ashcroft overruled prosecutors who sought sentences of life in prison without parole and compelled them to pursue the death penalty. All of those cases involved minority defendants.[10] An early study of Mr. Ashcroft’s tenure found the Justice Department three times more likely to seek death for black defendants accused of killing whites than for blacks alleged to have killed nonwhites.[11]

            Human rights groups, aghast that Mr. Ashcroft could not see any racism in the death penalty’s application, began asking for data to do their own, independent studies. Mr. Ashcroft responded with secrecy. Requests for information were simply refused on the basis of “confidentiality rules.”[12]

            Ballistic evidence works. Ballistic evidence doesn’t work. The fall of 2002 produced tribulation for citizens of the Washington, D.C. area. Snipers roamed about, randomly shooting unsuspecting victims from a distance. Police searched for the killers with little evidence to go on other than bullets recovered from the victims.

            A call arose from crime experts to generate a national database of ballistic fingerprints for all newly minted guns. The hope was that such a database would help law enforcement officials solve murder crimes through ballistic evidence in the same way that the fingerprint database assists in solving other crimes. Experts argued that, if the database had already been in place, then the snipers would have been caught that much more quickly.

            As Governor of Texas, George W. Bush had presided over 68 executions involving firearms, many of which included ballistic evidence. In several of those executions, ballistic evidence was central to the eventual conviction. David Stoker, Lesley Lee Gosch, and Odell Barnes were convicted and executed largely on the basis of ballistic analysis, with very little corroborating evidence. Throughout his tenure as Governor, and throughout the many executions based on ballistics, Gov. Bush never expressed any reservations about the reliability of weapons testing as evidence.

            But suddenly, as the snipers continued to assassinate residents of the D.C. area, the President developed doubts. Asked whether or not the FBI intended to establish a ballistics database, the White House replied in the negative, explaining that the President had concerns about the accuracy of such evidence. No such database was ever established.[13]

            Why the President’s change of heart? No one is sure, but it may have had to do with the large contributions made to Gov. Bush’s presidential campaign by the NRA which opposes a nationwide ballistics database. President Bush and the NRA were so close that NRA First Vice President Kayne Robinson boasted that if Gov. Bush won the 2000 election, “We’ll have a President . . . where we work out of their office.”[14] Candidate Bush denied these ties.

            How to lose friends and execute people. America’s current global isolation was presaged by George W. Bush’s handling of the death penalty as Governor of Texas. Although most American governors make it through their tenures without alienating their states from the world community, Gov. Bush proved the exception to the rule.

            Several foreign nationals were executed under Gov. Bush, including two Mexicans and one Canadian. These cases revealed Gov. Bush’s disdain of foreign relations and contempt for international law.

            The Governor first managed to anger his neighbor to the south, Mexico, through the execution of Irineo Tristan Montoya. Mr. Montoya had indeed confessed to being an accessory to murder after a lengthy interrogation without the presence of an attorney. Strangely, the eighteen-year-old’s four-page confession was written in English, a language which he could not speak, understand, read, or write. Nevertheless, this confession was the prosecution’s most important evidence at trial.

            Mr. Montoya received the same dismal quality of legal representation most poor capital defendants receive in Texas. He could have received better representation if the Mexican consulate had been informed of his arrest, as Texas was obligated by law to do under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which America signed in 1969. That Convention states, “If he so requests, the competent authorities of the receiving State shall . . . inform the consular post of the sending State if . . . a national of that State is arrested or committed to prison . . . The said authorities shall inform the person concerned without delay of his rights under this sub-paragraph.”[15] But Mr. Montoya was never informed of his rights under the Convention and the consulate was never informed of his arrest.

            The presiding judge assigned him a lawyer, and not surprisingly Mr. Montoya soon found himself on death row. Ironically, the actual murderer in the case received a prison sentence while Mr. Montoya, the accessory, received a death sentence.[16] A third man charged along with Mr. Montoya was acquitted in a separate trial, suggesting the possibility of Mr. Montoya’s own innocence.

            In October 1999, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that the executions of foreign nationals who were not informed of their consular rights as guaranteed by the Convention constituted an “arbitrary deprivation of life” which should be remedied under international law. The U.S. State Department agreed out of purely self-interested motives. It feared that if America ignored the treaty, then other nations would be free to treat Americans overseas likewise, denying them their consular rights. The State Department did not want to establish a double standard in which America did not inform foreign nationals of their consular rights, but foreign governments were expected to inform Americans of their consular rights. Amnesty International’s William F. Schulz put it more personally: “How would we feel if one of our own got arrested and interrogated in a language he could not speak, or signed a confession in a language she could not read?”[17]

            Due to these concerns, the State Department wrote a letter to Gov. Bush asking him to investigate the case of Mr. Montoya, to discover whether or not his rights under the Convention had been violated, and to ensure that he had received a fair trial.

            Gov. Bush’s reply was brazen, and reflected either absolute ignorance or absolute contempt for international law. His office stated that Texas had no responsibility to investigate Mr. Montoya’s situation because Texas itself was not a signatory of the Vienna Convention.[18] (One wonders if Texas still felt itself to be at war with Germany since it hadn’t signed the Treaty at Versailles.) Over the protests of the Mexican government and world community, Gov. Bush denied any reprieve, and Mr. Montoya was executed on June 18, 1997.

            Not content to alienate Mexico, Gov. Bush succeeded in alienating Canada as well. Stanley Faulder was a Canadian citizen who murdered Texan Inez Phillips, a wealthy oil baronness, in a botched 1997 robbery. He awaited execution on Texas’ death row for fifteen years before Texas informed Canada of his arrest. Canadian authorities then wrote to Gov. Bush asking for clemency in the case of Mr. Faulder, on several grounds.

            First of all, his trial had been a bit of a fiasco. His first conviction was thrown out when his confession was found to be coerced. At his second trial the son of the murder victim hired private prosecutors to pursue the case. They offered Mr. Faulder’s accomplice immunity and $15,000 if she would testify against him, which she did. Mr. Faulder was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to die.[19]

            Mr. Faulder’s sentencing hearing was even more of a fiasco. Three psychiatrists – Drs. Grigson, Griffith, and Hunter, none of whom had interviewed Mr. Faulder – all testified that even in custody Mr. Faulder would present a grave danger to society. Mr. Faulder’s attorneys called no witnesses and failed to present mitigating evidence of any kind.

            On appeal, a different image of Mr. Faulder was presented. Friends and family testified to his gentle nature. Attorneys presented police and prison records showing that Mr. Faulder had displayed no violent tendencies before or after the murder. Defense psychologists testified that his crime was a terrible aberration in his personality. Speaking to investigators, death row inmates testified to his peaceful, helpful demeanor in prison. In the years he had spent on death row, Mr. Faulder was not involved in any violence.[20]

            Canadian officials began to examine the case and were appalled. Canadian investigators confirmed that the original confession had been coerced, that an impoverished defendant had been convicted by prosecutors hired by a wealthy survivor, that Mr. Faulder’s conviction had been obtained largely on the basis of purchased testimony, and that his character had been slandered by three psychiatrists who never even interviewed the defendant, but were nevertheless allowed by the judge to testify.

            Thousands pleaded for mercy for Mr. Faulder, and multiple governments filed protests that his Vienna Convention rights, like those of Mr. Montoya, had been violated. The U.S. State Department and Canada both asked that his case be investigated in order to ensure that he had received a fair trial and had been accorded all his rights under international law.[21] No one suggested that he be freed – his guilt was not in question. They only asked that he be considered for clemency – perhaps a commutation to life – based on trial irregularities as well as his good behavior and apparent rehabilitation.

            Gov. Bush saw no need for clemency or an investigation into Mr. Faulder’s rights under the Vienna Convention. He denied any reprieve, and Mr. Faulder was executed on June 17, 1999.

            Consequences? Perhaps Gov. Bush never expected there to be consequences for his actions in Texas. And perhaps he never expected there to be consequences for withdrawing from or severely weakening the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming, Biological Weapons Convention, International Criminal Court, Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the United Nations Accord on the Proliferation of Small Arms, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

            But the Bush Administration’s unilateralism and aggressive use of the death penalty have generated a host of offended allies. Mexican President Vicente Fox canceled a two-day trip to Washington over the federal execution of Mexican citizen Javier Suarez Medina, who was denied his consular rights under the Vienna Convention. He also complained that of the 55 native Mexicans on death row in America, almost none had received their consular rights. Germany was incensed over the execution of two German citizens in 1999, neither of whom had been granted their consular rights.

            Such violations compromise America’s stature in the world, especially in the area of human rights. Death penalty opponents overseas point out that 90% of all executions worldwide are carried out by China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United States.[22] Such questionable bedfellows complicate the bargaining position of professional American diplomats, some of whom report that they are simply unable to discuss the human rights abuses of other nations because our own allies are complaining about human rights abuses occurring within America’s own death penalty system. “I can’t tell you the number of times we had meetings with another government over serious human rights issues – and all we heard about was the death penalty,” said Harold Koh, former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights. He continued, “A painstakingly constructed system of international law enforcement is being disrupted” by allies’ revulsion at the death penalty. And as for major human rights abusers like China, “We’re just handing these thugs ammunition.”[23]

            American ambassadors also warned about the tension between executing people and successfully relating to our allies. Nine veterans of the American Foreign Service filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court regarding North Carolina’s intended execution of a mentally retarded man. The former diplomats argued that executing those with mental retardation “will strain diplomatic relations with close American allies, provide diplomatic ammunition to countries with demonstrably worse human rights records, increase U.S. diplomatic isolation, and impair other United States foreign policy interests.”[24]

            Nevertheless, Mr. Ashcroft has plowed ahead with his own desire to dramatically increase the number of federal executions. All of this came to a head on September 11, 2001 when American was struck by terrorist attacks on its own soil. Suddenly, America needed the world community for its safety and security. But yet again the death penalty became a divisive issue.

            The problems spilled over into the war on terrorism. European Union countries have signed an agreement that they will not hand over suspects to countries which might try to execute them. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration, including Mr. Ashcroft, was not particularly willing to promise our allies that terror suspects would receive a maximum penalty of life in prison without possibility of parole. The consequences were predictable: Spain refused to turn over eight suspected al Qaeda members because the U.S. refused to provide an assurance that they would not be executed. Germany resisted providing information on 9-11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui since such assistance might result in his execution. French authorities protested the U.S. decision to seek death in the Moussaoui case. Ministers in Britain’s government suggested that they might not turn over Osama bin Laden if they captured him.[25]

            Why? Given the harm that the death penalty does to the reputations of both Texas and the United States in the world arena, why does President Bush pursue it so aggressively? In his mind, what good does it do?

            The only explicit reason President Bush has given, over the years, to justify his attachment to the death penalty is that of deterrence. He believes that the threat of execution prevents potential murderers from committing their crimes. In one of the 2000 Presidential debates, Gov. Bush stated, “No [death penalty] case is an easy case. I also keep in mind the victims, and the reason I support the death penalty is because it saves lives. That’s why I support it, and the people of my state support it too.”[26]

            Unfortunately, the facts don’t support his argument. According to the FBI’s Preliminary Uniform Crime Report for 2002, the murder rate in the South for that year increased by 2.1% while the murder rate in the Northeast decreased by almost 5%, even though the South accounts for 82% of all executions since 1976 and the Northeast accounts for less than 1%. The South, which continues to have the highest rate of capital punishment in the nation, also continues to have the highest homicide rate in the nation.[27]

            Moreover, states which have abolished the death penalty tend to have lower homicide rates than those which retain the death penalty, even when abolitionist and retentionist states are geographic neighbors. Non-death penalty Iowa has a lower homicide rate than death penalty Missouri, non-death penalty Wisconsin has a lower homicide rate than death penalty Illinois (prior to Illinois’ moratorium), and non-death penalty West Virginia has a lower homicide rate than death penalty Virginia. Over the past 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48% to 100% higher than in states without the death penalty. In 1999, the number of murders in death penalty states was 5.5 per 100,000 residents, while in non-death penalty states it was 3.6 per 100,000 residents.[28]

            These national trends are corroborated by international trends. America’s homicide rate with the death penalty is more than three times that of the European Union, which has abolished the death penalty. Canada’s homicide rate dropped significantly after it abolished the death penalty, and is currently one-third the American rate.[29]

            Even the nation’s police chiefs don’t see the death penalty as a deterrent to crime. In a 1995 Hart Research Associates poll, 67% of all police chiefs said the death penalty simply doesn’t deter violent crime since murderers kill either out of passion or in the confidence that they will never be caught. Among deterrents to violent crime the death penalty was ranked last, after reducing drug abuse, improving the economy, simplifying court procedures, lengthening prison sentences, hiring more police officers, and getting guns off the streets.

            As far as officer safety is concerned, FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics from 1989 to 1998 suggest that death penalty states are much more lethal for police officers than non-death penalty states. The top three most dangerous states for law enforcement officials are California (which has the largest number of condemned inmates on death row), Florida (the third leading execution state in the country), and George W. Bush’s very own Texas (the leading execution state in the country).[30]

            Why in the world would the threat of execution increase a state’s homicide rate? Research suggests that the death penalty, as a collective act of killing, brutalizes society. Experts claim that state-sponsored execution creates an atmosphere in which violence, having been legitimated by the state, comes to be seen as a legitimate problem-solving tool by the population. In other words, when the state feels justified in killing, then its citizens feel justified in killing.

            A number of studies have supported this hypothesis. One study found an increase in Oklahoma homicides when executions were resumed after a 25 year moratorium. A California study, covering the years 1952-1991, found that the homicide rate increased at an average rate of 10% per year in those years when there was an execution (1952-1967), but at an average rate of 4.8 % per year in those years when there were no executions (1968-1991). A New York State study which covered the years 1907 to 1963 found a consistent increase in the homicide rate in the months following an execution.[31]

            So research suggests that the death penalty does not decrease the homicide rate, and may actually increase it. But Governor and President George W. Bush has never been one to be confused by the facts, whether they regard national elections, global warming, forest preservation, air pollution, financial policy, tax policy, weapons of mass destruction, nation building or, for that matter, the death penalty. He has an ideology which is zealously protected from reality, at great cost to the state he led and the nation he leads.

            This characteristic of President Bush is not without consequence. Consider, for example, the case of Iraq as compared with the case of the death penalty. Multiple similarities emerge, such that the President’s behavior with regard to the Iraq crisis could have been predicted by his behavior with regard to the death penalty in Texas.

            The David Wayne Spence memo and the intelligence on Iraq. A case in point is Gov. Bush’s handling of the execution of David Wayne Spence. By the time Mr. Spence’s execution date rolled around, significant evidence of his innocence had accumulated and had been reported in numerous Texas newspapers. Following protocol, Gov. Bush’s staff quickly prepared a report detailing the case so that the Governor could decide whether to execute or ask for a reprieve and send the case back to the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

            But the hastily prepared memo given to the Governor by his staff dismissed all evidence of innocence, included several factual errors, and concluded with certainty that Mr. Spence was guilty of the crime when in fact he was, in all likelihood, innocent. Further, there was no chance that Gov. Bush might catch any of the errors himself since (by his own admission) he doesn’t read newspapers but instead relies exclusively on staffers for his information. The staffers then create a world of absolute certainty, freeing the Governor (and President) from the ambiguities and complexities of this-worldly existence.

            Now, compare Gov. Bush’s handling of the David Wayne Spence execution with President Bush’s handling of the intelligence on Iraq. There was, in fact, a large discrepancy between the number of weapons which Saddam claimed to have had and the number of weapons verified to have been destroyed. Two equally plausible theories accounted for the discrepancy. One theory claimed that Hussein had kept some weapons of mass destruction hidden from weapons inspectors, and therefore continued to pose a menace to the world. Another possible explanation was that Hussein had inflated his initial declaration of weapons in order to intimidate his neighbors and the United Nations and discourage any invasion. In this scenario, all of Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed by seven years of weapons inspections and the discrepancy was just a deceit, no more consequential than the paper it was recorded on.

            It was difficult to determine which scenario was correct. Over the five years that the weapons inspectors had been kicked out of Iraq very little direct intelligence had been gathered by American agencies.[32] What the administration had was old intelligence acquired prior to 1998, along with the rumors and hearsay offered up by the anti-Hussein exiles of the Iraqi National Congress.

            It was the administration’s responsibility to take all this intelligence, rumor, and hearsay and organize it into an understanding of Iraq’s weapons programs. In the case of David Wayne Spence, Gov. Bush’s staffers generated certainty from ambiguity and guilt from probable innocence. So the correlative question arises: in the case of Iraq’s weapons programs, did President Bush’s staffers generate certainty from ambiguity, leading the nation to war on false pretenses?

            Evidence suggests that the Bush administration did just that. Intelligence analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency, speaking on condition of anonymity, have claimed that the administration demanded that intelligence conform to policy, rather than vice versa, from the get-go. One analyst, describing DIA meetings during the run-up to the war, stated, “In the most recent meeting, we also were told that, as much as possible we should avoid ‘caveating’ our intelligence assessments . . . Forget nuance, forget fine distinctions; they only confuse these guys. If that isn’t a downright scary dumbing down of our intelligence product, I don’t know what is.”[33]

            Such “dumbing down” produced not only bad intelligence, but bad interpretation of intelligence as well. For instance, the administration wanted to fight a conventional war in which American technological superiority would play a defining role. But the CIA and DIA insisted that American forces would in all likelihood encounter urban guerilla resistance. Unfortunately, these warning rarely reached the higher echelons, since disturbing analyses tended to be removed as the papers worked their way upward through various staffers.[34]

            Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is considered by many to be the main architect of the invasion of Iraq. Prior to the invasion, he testified before Congress that “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.” But as of this writing the U.S. has already approved $166 billion dollars for the reconstruction of Iraq, and that’s only for the first two years. American military officials are predicting a stay of at least six years. (Former White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey predicted that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion, but he was asked to resign. Mr. Wolfowitz is still on the job.)[35]

            The Pentagon also underestimated the length of time U.S. forces would occupy Iraq. Prior to the invasion, sources in the Bush administration told Newsweek that they were expecting a postwar occupation of 30 to 90 days. Other senior administration officials, including Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith, asserted that six months (at the longest) was more realistic. Mr. Wolfowitz insisted that occupying Iraq would be similar to occupying France after World War II.[36]

            Multiple mistakes or misrepresentations regarding Iraq occurred in the 2003 State of the Union address. In that speech, President Bush himself claimed that “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”[37] But three months before the State of the Union address CIA Director George Tenet had intervened with the White House to remove from a Presidential speech in Cincinnati any reference to Iraq’s alleged attempt to acquire uranium, since the CIA found the allegation unreliable and already suspected the documents to be forgeries. The White House complied, but then inserted the claim into the State of the Union address later.[38]

            In the same State of the Union address, President Bush said, “Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent.”[39] Perhaps, at one point, Hussein did have such materials. But in June of 2003 the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency admitted that the DIA had no hard evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons as of the fall of 2002, prior to the State of the Union address.[40]

            The President also asserted a link between Saddam Hussein, terrorists, and Al Qaida: “Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida.”[41] Truth be known, there was one member of Al Qaida known to be in Baghdad: Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi, who went there to have a leg amputated after being injured in Afghanistan. Besides his presence in Baghdad for medical purposes, U.S. intelligence was unable to establish any strategic link between him and the Hussein regime, or between al Qaida and the Hussein regime. With regard to the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, intelligence officials (speaking on condition of anonymity) discounted any link between the Hussein regime and that Al Qaida-related organization, pointing out that Ansar al-Islam was based in the Kurdish-controlled territories in Iraq, far beyond Hussein’s control.[42]

            In fact, “statements by people now in custody” clearly denied any link between Hussein and Al Qaida. Two of the highest-ranking leaders of Al Qaida captured by the United States were Abu Zubaydah, a planner and recruiter, and Khalid Shekh Mohammed, Qaeda chief of operations. Each told the C.I.A. in separate interrogations that the terrorist organization did not work with the Hussein regime since the Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden did not want to be indebted to Saddam Hussein, a secularist.[43]

            Moreover, to suggest that Hussein was involved with Al Qaida was to imply that Hussein was involved with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America. But the President himself later denied that Hussein was involved with those attacks, saying, “No, we’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th.”[44]

            In the State of the Union address the President also asserted, “Our intelligence sources tell us that [Saddam Hussein] has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.” Actually, by the time of the speech, government centrifuge experts at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory had unanimously declared the aluminum tubes unsuitable for nuclear weapons production. Houston G. Wood III, the founder of Oak Ridge’s centrifuge physics department, said, “It would have been extremely difficult to make these tubes into centrifuges. It stretches the imagination to come up with a way. I do not know any real centrifuge experts who feel differently.”[45]

            There were other claims regarding biological weapons and “munitions capable of delivering chemical agents.” But since the invasion of Iraq, with 1,200 agents searching for weapons of mass destruction throughout the country, the CIA has not been able to find any. David Kay, the director of the search, is now ready to think the unthinkable: that Hussein was merely bluffing, pretending to have terrible weapons that he didn’t, in an attempt to deter his neighbors and the United States from attacking him.[46]                    

            On the eve of the war, what was President George W. Bush’s assessment of Iraq and its possession of weapons of mass destruction? Characteristically, he spoke with absolute certainty: “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”[47] Yet despite the President’s certainty, despite 1,200 agents searching for over half a year, despite massive financial rewards to any Iraqi who will help American agents find weapons of mass destruction, none have been found. And by now we have to admit that, in all likelihood, none will be.

            Now recall George W. Bush’s certainty, when questioned, that he had never executed an innocent person as Governor of Texas .[48] Is it possible that, just as he misconstrued the facts with regard to the invasion of Iraq, he also misconstrued the facts with regard to the guilt or innocence of several condemned inmates in Texas? Is it possible that, just as President Bush’s staffers told him what he wanted to hear regarding Iraq and got it all wrong, so Governor Bush’s staffers told him what he wanted to hear regarding Texas executions and got it all wrong? Is it possible that America’s sitting President signed the execution order of an innocent human being?

            It is an interesting question to ask. And for George W. Bush, a disturbing one to answer.