New movie to seek prosecution of George W. Bush

The author of a book calling for the prosecution of former President George W. Bush for murder has produced a documentary based on the book that will debut in February 2010.

The documentary draws on interviews with Vincent Bugliosi, whose best-selling The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder has sparked controversy and renewed discussion of recourse from Bush's critics.

The film's producers posted a nine-minute clip on YouTube late last week.

Bugliosi is a career prosecutor turned author, known for his prosecution of the Manson murders. The trailer highlights his success at trial, having secured numerous murder convictions.

"I would not be doing what I'm doing unless I'm very confident that under the law he's guilty of murder and should be prosecuted," Bugliosi says in the documentary trailer. "Unless this nation is about to be attacked, you don't go to war without telling the people whose sons and daughters are going to die in a foreign land why you're doing to do it."

His voice raised, Bugliosi shouts, "The American government believed that the guy responsible for 3,000 murders is at Tora Bora. Do you know how many soldiers George Bush sent them?

"Not one," he continues. "How do you justify not sending one single soldier after the person responsible for 3,000 murders. Not one soldier, but send 150,000 against someone who was as involved in 9/11 as you and I."

Strangely enough, the trailer includes praise from Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard University law professor who's previously said torture could be justified.

"There's no prosecutor I would want to have if I were innocent more than Vince, and there's no prosecutor I would fear more if I were guilty," Dershowitz says. "He will get at the truth."

Bugliosi has drawn praise for his objective and aggressive style.

"Before I read this book, I believed that prosecuting and convicting a U.S. President, regardless of the extent or heinousness of his crimes, would do more harm to the United States than good," penned one Amazon reviewer. "Now that I have read the book, my thinking has changed. Here we have a man who is personally responsible for putting tens of thousands of innocent people into harm's way for no other reason than his own, personal desire to wage war -- laughing and talking about how much fun he is having while all this is going on."

But even some Bugliosi fans were unimpressed by his latest work.

"I was thoroughly disappointed," one Amazon reviewer wrote. " I was expecting a professional document (although I knew it wouldn't be impartial; how could it be?), but it was anything but. Bugliosi resorts to name calling not only Bush and his aides, but his readers as well. How can he expect anyone to take him seriously when he calls the rest of us stupid?... A huge part of the book seemed to be an inflation of his own ego."