High Crimes and Misdemeanors

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J

Sun, 19 Jun 2005 18:02:39 -0700

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

 

 

 

During Clinton's impeachment hearing, " they " claimed Clinton was

not above the law. Yet " they " allow GW Bush just the opposite.

 

Published on Saturday, June 18, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

by Ken Sanders

 

Under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, " The President, Vice

President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be

removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason,

Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. " Any reasonable

interpretation of the Constitution's impeachment clause, and the

historical application thereof, leads to the inescapable conclusion

that articles of impeachment should be brought against President Bush

for his commission of high crimes against the United States.

 

It is the consensus among legal and constitutional scholars that the

phrase " other high Crimes and Misdemeanors " refers to " political

crimes. " While not necessarily indictable crimes, " political crimes "

are great offenses against the federal government. They are abuses of

power or the kinds of misconduct which can only be committed by a

public official by virtue of the unique power and trust which he

holds. Thus, high crimes and misdemeanors refer to major offenses

against our very system of representative democracy. Likewise, high

crimes and misdemeanors can be serious abuses of the governmental

power with which the President has been trusted.

 

In the case of Iraq, it is becoming harder and harder to deny that

Bush engaged in official misconduct that caused serious and likely

irreparable injury to the United States.

 

Take, for instance, the increasingly notorious Downing Street Memo.

According to the Memo, nearly one year before the U.S.-led invasion of

Iraq to disarm Saddam of his mythical weapons of mass destruction, at

the White House " the intelligence and facts were being fixed around

the policy. "

 

Bush and his apologists dismiss the Memo as meaningless and accuse

those deluded enough to find meaning within it of rehashing old

arguments. However, aside from dismissing or simply ignoring the Memo,

the Bush administration has made no attempt at an innocent explanation

for the claim that it " fixed " the intelligence to fit its Iraq policy.

 

In fact, the Bush administration has never explicitly denied that the

intelligence on Iraq was " fixed. " The only senior government official

to make such an unequivocal denial is Tony Blair, the British Prime

Minister. However, while Blair did deny that the intelligence was

" fixed, " he did not endeavor to explain why such a claim made its way

into an official British government document.

 

An explanation for the Bush administration's reluctance to address the

Memo head-on and deny outright its claims of fixed intelligence can be

gleaned from circumstantial evidence. It is commonly (and mistakenly)

accepted that the false claims about Iraq's WMD were solely the result

of a massive intelligence failure. Indeed, two purportedly independent

commissions, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Commission on

Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S. regarding Iraq's WMD, both

determined that the White House and Pentagon were innocent victims of

bad intelligence.

 

Whether or not the findings of those commissions are accurate or

supportable is an argument for another time. What is telling about

both commissions, however, is what they specifically did not

investigate: whether the Bush administration manipulated or otherwise

misused the " bad " intelligence. In the case of the Commission on

Intelligence, a body created by the White House, it was not authorized

by the White House to investigate the use of the Iraq intelligence.

That issue was expressly out of bounds. In the case of the Senate

Intelligence Committee, its Republican members circled wagons and

insisted that any inquiry into the White House's use of the

intelligence be deferred for a later date. That deferral continues.

 

The White House clearly has something to hide.

 

Regardless of what Bush is scrupulously trying to conceal, during the

lead up to the invasion of Iraq, Bush openly lied about Iraq's nuclear

capabilities on no fewer than four separate occasions. Bush knowingly

and deliberately manipulated, inflated, and " fixed " the intelligence

he was given in order to inflame the nation's passions and

fraudulently bolster support for his war.

 

There is precedent for impeaching President Bush for the high crimes

and misdemeanors of involving the country in armed conflict through

fraudulent means. Take the case of William Blount, the first federal

impeachment in U.S. history. Blount, an original U.S. senator from

Tennessee, attempted to incite the Cherokee and the Creek to displace

the Spanish from what is now Florida and Louisiana. Blount intended to

then sell the land to the British. When the plot was exposed, the

House of Representatives leveled articles of impeachment against

Blount, asserting that Blount committed high crimes and misdemeanors

by undertaking a course of conduct that threatened American neutrality

and peace, and potentially violated international treaties.

 

Clearly, the acts of President Bush regarding Iraq are far more

egregious than those of Blount. Not only did Blount's scheme never

come to fruition, Blount's machinations did not result in the military

invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of U.S. treaty

obligations and international law.

 

Take also the case of President Richard Nixon. The articles of

impeachment brought against him in 1974 alleged serious abuses of

presidential powers. The articles alleged that Nixon used government

agencies, including the F.B.I., C.I.A., I.R.S., and the Office of the

President itself, to engage in a series of unlawful acts for political

gain. Thus, Nixon was accused of, among other things, abusing his

position as President in order to undermine the democratic process.

 

In the case of the Iraq war, Bush similarly abused his position as

President by lying to the public and to Congress, as well as the

United Nations, about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Bush " fixed "

and falsified intelligence in order to obtain the Congressional

authority he needed to invade Iraq, thereby undermining the democratic

process and injuring the constitutional system of government. Bush

engaged in these acts of wrongdoing to enhance his political influence

and to enrich corporate entities with which he and his cronies had

financial ties.

 

The impeachment of President Clinton, by contrast, did not involve an

abuse of presidential power. Rather, the impeachment of Clinton arose

from his extramarital affair and his subsequent perjury and

obstruction of justice in his grand jury and civil deposition

testimony. As acknowledged by the Senate in its decision to acquit

Clinton of both the articles of impeachment brought by the House of

Representatives, there was no evidence that Clinton's personal

misconduct constituted a misuse of presidential power or injured the

constitutional system of government. A national embarrassment to be

sure, but not an abuse of presidential power.

 

Whether or not one considers the Clinton impeachment a legitimate

constitutional exercise or a vindictive partisan sham, it serves as a

precedent for impeachment of the President. If lying in legal

proceedings regarding fellatio by a portly intern warranted articles

of impeachment, then repeatedly lying to the American public and

Congress, as well as fabricating intelligence -- acts of fraud which

have resulted in thousands of dead and wounded Americans, and tens of

billions of dollars in deficit spending -- ought to warrant the same.

 

Fortunately for Bush, both the House and Senate are controlled by his

Republican supporters and apologists, thereby guaranteeing that he

will never be held accountable under the Constitution for the

irreparable damage he has done to this country.

 

Talk about getting away with murder.

 

Ken Sanders (tkensand) is an attorney in Tucson, Arizona.

Additional samples of his writing can be found on the blog:

http://www.politicsofdissent.blogspot.com