At this point, considerations for the campaigns I am working, or my own personal standing must be set aside. It is time for someone, someone with something to lose, come forward and state the obvious: we have, installed in our oval office, a man who is so unfit for the duties - by reason of a pathological dishonesty and complete disregard for the welfare of the citizens of this country - as to demand that we remove him, and his party, from power - and then use every law and organ of government to investigate the nakedly criminal underpinnings of that party. And exact precisely the punishments that they have so gleefully inflicted upon others.

There is no other alternative - any individual who can, backed by media and political system - state that Iraq is part of the war on Terror - is beyond hope. Any journalist, politician, general, writer, political operative or other so called public intellectual who can cling to such a statement is, equally, beneath contempt.

If I am fired from the campaign, so be it, if I am ostracized, so be it. No money or social position or talisman of status - of any kind - from such a society is worth my soul, and what scraps of honour any American maintains.

We must face the facts, the cold, hard facts. We illegally invaded another nation, engaging in war crimes to do so, in that we lied to the UN as to the causes for war. We did so without pressing necessity to invade - or to lie at all, since our target was an individual who could have been legally indicted for war crimes by merely stretching forth our hand. We invaded solely because of the electoral time table of George W Bush Jr, and for no other reason. This is worse that a crime, it is worse than a mistake, it is a blot against that most precious object of a free people - our willingness to comply with our own laws.

We did not invade because Saddam was a threat, but because he was not. We did not invade because we knew he had WMD, but because we knew he did not. The high officials of the State Department, the Defense Department and the National Security Council were perfectly aware of this, and their war plans reflect this knowledge, since we took scant precautions that any reasonable military would take against a foe with such capabilities in a fight for its own survival.

Our leaders, if we were a defeated nation, would be sent to the Hague or some other tribunal for War Crimes prosecution. That we will not do this insures that our enemies, fortified by the clear bankruptcy of our laws, and our clear willingness to flagrantly break them when it is to our own advantage, and the complete and utter lack of accountability for those that break them, and those who enable breaking them - will strike, with devastating force, at the centers of our commerce and population. The will, rightly, point to the devastation of Baghdad as their reason for attack.

The United States, in the wake of 30 years of devastating conflict, laid the foundation for international institutions that endured until this conflict took place. While imperfect, often abused, and frequently engaged in their own follies, there was a progressive adherence to the idea of international law, and global leadership. This has been broken. Merely removing Bush will not restore it, because legitimacy rests not on there not being a criminal in power, but it being impossible for a criminal to come to power.

Every organ of our society - journalistic, political, academic and social - has failed utterly to prevent a criminal enterprise from commandeering the powers of the Presidency, and the Congress. Every individual of any position or honour in our society must count themselves as guilty of this failure, for it would have been better to die exercising Jefferson's ultimate right, then to live under the shame of knowing that, even should they be removed, it will be merely a temporary respite from corruption, which will, in 2, 4 or 8 years time, seize power again, and again tear on a profligate attack of borrow and squander.

We went into Iraq, flush with greed for cheap oil and prosperity - which was predicted and promised. We went in flush with hopes of fat contracts for mercenaries and construction. We went in hoping to even decades old scores and extract debts contracted with a regime whose word is not worth the ink it signed contracts with. We accepted blood money, and hunted for blood money.

There are, at this moment, thousands of American young people dead or maimed from this war. There are dozens of journalists, politicians, businessmen, who have made fat profits from their death and dismemberment. Who racked statues on their shelves from the acclaim for acting as propagandists and dupes - simply because the public and elites wished to be duped. Almost all continue to be well paid, and in positions of authority and prestige. It is this, beyond all else, that indicates that America has become criminal to its very core. We do not indict those who have shoveled the flower of our youth into the furnace of Iraq - we do all but knight them.

Our only redemption would be to strike with the overwhelming force of law and social might to set these individuals to justice. But the political reality is that this will not happen, and cannot happen, and therefore shall not happen.

Because of this, should we decide, out of temporary lack of fortitude, not to act - we must therefore resign ourselves to a generation of warfare, as those who sit now under the boot of our military, filled with jealous rage and the kind of monomaniacal devotion to death that only a people who have nothing to lose and every thing to gain can have - plot and then eventually execute acts of atomic terrorism against our cities. It seems, obviously, that this is the only lesson that will be sufficient. Our response will, of course, be to strike back with overwhelming force, with such dire consequences as atomic warfare brings.

Those are our only two choices: either we must uphold the laws that we are selves have written, and exact the maximum punishments on those who have so nakedly broken them - or we must expect that others will write their own laws, judge us by them, and execute under them.

There are now two rogue states with declared atomic capabilities, a third is close, and more over the technology is in a form where it can be proliferated, and combined with the ocean of available fissile material. There is no halting the technology, and therefore there is only living with it. Every day that we feast our attention on the naked lies flowing from the executive on this subject, is another day that our real enemies grow stronger.

Armed societies - as Tokagowa Japan was - developed elaborate codes of behavior and become intensely well mannered. So too, do national systems, where every state has the power to inflict overwhelming damage on the others. This state of international relations is soon to be upon us. Even a tiny defeat has changed drastically the rhetoric of Washington DC - from imposing a new order in the middle east - to a UN plan and an exit as soon as is possible. But it will not placate those who will decide that the problem of Western occupation can be solved by the correct application of atomic explosions.

The American public must face this reality, and it must face that the cost of this reality is that it must punish its own criminals, not to the satisfaction of Rupert Murdoch or Grover Norquist, but to the satisfaction of those that they have injured.

Again, should these words mark me for a firestorm of criticism from the den of traitors who support this illegal regime, so be it. Should this be a black mark which prevents my further employment, so be it. Most likely they will be ignored, but used as a black mark against me quietly. Be that as it may. There is nothing that will change my mind on this course, nor sway me from it.

There are those running for office now who hope, by exposing piecemeal the crimes of the present executive and his cohorts, to build public support for what must be done, but they are vastly in the minority - the majority of those running are perfectly happy to leave free of any let or hindrance those who engaged in a criminal conspiracy to drag this nation to war, and consorted with felons and agents of our national enemies - such as Iran - to do so. If there is a Death Penalty on the books, as much as I abhor the Death Penalty - they must pay it, or else the law will read "harsh to the small, soft for the great". That is Bush's own maxim - as he tonight said that he would permit the entire blame for Abu Ghraib to fall on a few low ranking servicemen and women, while the officers that ordered and planned the torture and war crimes there will be let off without penalty.

I will name one who should face the same penalty we exact on murderers and terrorists explicitly: Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz specifically for hiring a known agent of a state inimical to the United States, for sensitive tasks, thus exposing our soldiers, civilians and allies to hazards which were entirely avoidable. By backing that individual for positions of trust and profit.

Our war in Iraq is not legal, and never has been. If there is an illegal act, there is a crime. Where there is a crime, there is a criminal. Where there is a criminal, obviously seen and clearly understood, there must be justice.

For their to be justice, there must be a full exposure of the truth, in every memo and detail. There is no excuse of "national security", simply because such secrecy has, beyond a reasonable doubt, compromised our security beyond measure. The folly of secret alliances brought Europe to cataclysm in 1914, and the folly of secret government has brought America to the brink of cataclysm today. The careerist protectionism, which allows us to have halting and half truth, as the two sides struggle for advantage - must come to an end. The people must know what their government did, when and why it did it, and must have full access to every step along the path to this moment. Only in this way will the hard core apologists realize what crimes that they, personally, have promoted and protected.

We must have a full accounting, not merely of those who have been in government, but those who have shilled for this extravaganza of carnage, and those who have profited by the trillion from the tax breaks which have flowed like water through the Potomac.

We must have, at long last, real freedom, and real truth.

Or we will, ourselves, have committed a crime.

And "Where there is crime, there is no justice."