Zeese in Salon -- Bush is not above the law

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D

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 15:16:24 -0700 (PDT)

Zeese in Salon -- Bush is not above the law

 

 

 

When our President goes into war knowing fully well that the

justifications for war are based on lies? He (and, I believe, his

entire administration) need to be put on trial.

 

And let us not forget for a single moment that on top of nearly 1900

coalition soldiers dead there are additionally thousands of troops

who've been poisoned by radioactive DU ~ as well as hundreds of

thousands of innocent citizens affected (as DU poison lingers with a

half-life of 4.5 Billion years)!

 

Regardless of our political party, all Americans of conscience must

demand that our legislators push for impeachment for this utter

malevolence.

 

Zeese, below, is right on point: Bush is certainly *not* above the

law. And, I might add, if we let them get away with this, who's to

say there won't be as many more future wars as he (and Congress) can

get away with?

 

We have got to put an end to this madness - NOW.

 

 

 

Kevin Zeese > wrote:

 

 

Salon.com

 

http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/06/15/case_for_bush_impeachment/index.html

Bush is not above the law

Scholars missed the point of the essay I wrote with Ralph Nader

about the case for impeachment.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By Kevin Zeese

 

printe-mail

 

June 15, 2005 | The fundamental question is whether Congress and

the American people were misled into an unnecessary, illegal war that

has turned into a quagmire. Are the indications of false statements

and misrepresentations sufficient to justify a pursuit of the truth?

 

The evidence includes a series of exaggerated and false claims by

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and officials in their

administration over many months as the drumbeat for war grew louder.

Statements were made in contradiction to the evidence included in

intelligence documents from a wide range of U.S. and international

agencies. As weapons inspectors were unable to find weapons of mass

destruction, President Bush's rhetoric increased to the point of

warning of a potential mushroom cloud over the United States generated

by a nuclear attack by Saddam Hussein.

 

 

And, most recently, explaining these inaccurate statements, is the

Downing Street memo, which summarizes a meeting at which the head of

British intelligence reported that the Bush government was " fixing the

intelligence " to support its plan to invade and occupy Iraq. On June

13, Raw Story printed five additional leaked British memos showing

that the commitment to go to war occurred well before the issue was

brought to the attention of Congress. If true, this changes the

consistently inaccurate statements into intentionally false statements.

 

 

Unfortunately, there is no court of law in which to pursue these

claims. No one has standing to sue the president for false statements

leading to war. This can only be pursued by Congress in an impeachment

inquiry. Should the president be held accountable for his actions? Is

the president above the law or subject to the law? A " Resolution of

Inquiry " is the first step to determining whether the president and

vice president have committed " high crimes and misdemeanors. " If they

have, impeachment is surely appropriate.

 

A secondary question is the likelihood of success. All of the law

professors Salon asked about impeachment opposed it because Congress

is controlled by Republicans and therefore it is not possible.

However, if you were a Southern sheriff in 1932 and you knew that

members of the local Ku Klux Klan had lynched an African-American, but

also knew that the all-white jury of their peers was not likely to

convict, would you prosecute the case? Shouldn't the opposition party

be raising the issue of impeachment because of false statements that

led to an unnecessary war -- no matter how it turns out -- to ensure

that the truth is uncovered?

 

Of course, it is difficult to predict the likelihood of success

before the evidence is even gathered. Gathering the evidence is what

the impeachment inquiry is for. But already we can see some breaks in

support for the president from members of his own party. Most notably,

Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C. -- infamous for changing the name of the

congressional cafeteria's French fries to " freedom fries " in protest

of France's position on the war -- now recognizes he was misled into

supporting the Iraq war and wants U.S. troops to be brought home.

 

What will happen if more evidence comes out? If members of the

intelligence community, current and former, are subpoenaed to testify

under oath and they testify about how intelligence was manipulated,

will there be more defections from the president's base of support?

 

And, facing reelection next year and with their popularity already

at a very low 33 percent, will members of the House risk their

political careers to cover up for a lame-duck president who lied to

get the United States into war and whose popularity is also dropping

in the polls?

 

One of Salon's commentators, Cass Sunstein of the University of

Chicago, took a particularly bizarre position. He opined that we

should expect dishonesty from our president -- so what's the problem?

Said Cass, " In any four-year period, the nation's leader is highly

likely to deceive the public on a serious matter at least once --

sometimes inadvertently, sometimes for legitimate reasons, sometimes

for illegitimate ones. Of course presidents should not exaggerate

evidence, and it's perfectly proper to ask whether Bush got us into

war under false pretenses. But there isn't anything close to a

sufficient basis for impeachment. "

 

For shame. Let us hope we have not gotten so cynical about the

honesty of the president of the United States that we would allow him

to lie to send American troops to their death! Surely this type of

dishonesty is, as Mark Tushnet of Georgetown University Law Center

noted in his Salon commentary, " exactly what the impeachment provision

is all about. " He went on to properly describe impeachment as a

" mechanism for removing from office a person who had demonstrated the

kind of political irresponsibility that seriously threatened the

nation's political institutions. "

 

Other Salon commentators say impeachment is inappropriate because

the president was reelected to a second term. Yet, in 2004 Sen. John

Kerry also supported the war and said he would have supported invading

Iraq even without evidence of WMD. So there was really no debate on

this topic. And if reelection cleanses the record of a president, then

Richard Nixon should not have been threatened with impeachment. The

Watergate break-in was reported in the Washington Post during the 1972

campaign. The public knew about it and Nixon won in a landslide

victory. Should that have ended the investigation of Watergate? Of

course not.

 

It is time once again for Congress to take up its constitutional

responsibility as a coequal branch of government and provide a check

and balance on a president who seems to have broken the law by

manipulating intelligence and sending the nation to war.