BuzzFlash Reviews

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Yes, a former federal prosecutor who writes for TomDispatch.com, drafts the indictment and presents the case against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell to a grand jury.

An incisive thinker and persuasive litigator, de la Vega leaves no doubt that the leaders of the Bush Administration are guilty as charged.

The presentation before the grand jury that de la Vega presents may be hypothetical, but the crimes are not.

Grisham and Turow write gripping legal fiction. Elizabeth de la Vega had a bigger challenge. She had to make a diabolical betrayal into a good read -- and she did.

As de la Vega notes in her afterword: "Their crime was -- and continues to be -- far worse than the Enron Fraud. We must not shrug our shoulders and walk away."

From Publishers Weekly:

By revisiting public statements, official documents and journalistic reports from the months leading up to the Iraq invasion, de la Vega builds a legal case that President Bush and top members of his administration engaged in a conspiracy to "deceive the American public and Congress into supporting the war." Drawing on her experience as a federal prosecutor, as well as the work of scholars and legal experts, she brings a well-honed legal perspective to the issue.

She presents her argument in transcript form as a hypothetical weeklong presentation to a grand jury, including extensive testimony from three fictional investigative agents. Despite her somewhat specialized approach, the author clearly defines the legal terms and issues and avoids jargon. If anything, the book feels casual and straightforward to a fault.... whenever she focuses on the issues at hand—most compellingly in her final analysis of the administration's spurious claims about Iraq's nuclear weapons program—de la Vega makes a persuasive case.

Elizabeth de la Vega, a former federal prosecutor, was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Minneapolis as well as a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Branch Chief in San Jose, California. Since her retirement in 2004, she has been a regular contributor to Tomdispatch. Her articles have also appeared in the Nation, the LA Times, Salon and Mother Jones. She is not in the Witness Protection Program.

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