impeach the bugger

[Guest guest]

The Breaking Strain

By William Rivers Pitt

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

Wednesday 21 December 2005

 

The framers of the Constitution devised an elaborate system of checks and

balances to ensure our liberty by making sure that no person, institution or

branch of government became so powerful that a tyranny could be established in

the United States of America. Impeachment is one of the checks the framers gave

the Congress to prevent the executive or judicial branches from becoming corrupt

or tyrannical.

 

- Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), Opening Statement, Impeachment of William

Jefferson Clinton, 10 December 1998

A long time ago - before the Iraq invasion, before the elections in '02 and

'04, before all the unprecedented governmental violations of trust we have

discovered and endured - I wrote something for a book.

 

" This is America, " I wrote. " At bottom, America is a dream, an idea. You can

take away all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies - you can

take all of that away, and the idea will still be there as pure and great as

anything conceived by the human mind. I do very much believe that the idea that

is America stands as the last, best hope for this world. When used properly, it

can work wonders. That idea, that dream, is in mortal peril. You can still have

all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies - you can have all

of that. But if you murder the idea that is America, you have murdered America

itself in a way that ten thousand 9/11s could never do. No terrorist can destroy

the ideals we hold dear. Only we can do that. "

 

The breaking strain has been reached, and those ideals we hold so dear are

indeed in mortal peril. The President of the United States of America has

declared himself fully and completely above the law. The Constitution does not

matter to him, nor do the Amendments. Laws passed to safeguard the American

people from intrusive governmental invasion have been cast aside and ignored,

simply because George W. Bush finds it meet to do so.

 

Intolerable. Impeachable.

 

As has been widely reported, Mr. Bush authorized the National Security

Agency to spy on American citizens. He activated this program in 2002, and has

since reauthorized the program thirty times. No one knows for sure exactly who

in this country has unwittingly endured investigation by the powerful and

secretive NSA. Cindy Sheehan? Patrick Fitzgerald? Joseph Wilson? Non-violent

protest organizations? You? Me? No one knows, but the unanswered questions shake

the existence of our democracy to its bones.

 

It is not enough that Mr. Bush blew through the Fourth Amendment, which

defends the citizenry from unreasonable searches and seizures. It isn't enough

that Mr. Bush blew through the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which

requires a warrant from a special FISA court be obtained before such

surveillance is undertaken. For the record, this special FISA court has granted

more than 19,000 such warrants, and has denied exactly four.

 

The worst part of this whole mess is the simple fact that Mr. Bush does not

see anything wrong in this. This administration has steadfastly adhered to the

idea that the Executive branch is supreme, beyond the bounds of the justice

system and further empowered because we are " at war. "

 

Of course, Mr. Bush was careful to speak otherwise. For example, during a

speech in Buffalo back in April of 2004, Bush said, " Now, by the way, any time

you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires - a

wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're

talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order

before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you

think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing

what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution. "

 

We're talking about getting a court order, he said. We value the

Constitution, he said.

 

Lies.

 

Mr. Bush, in fact, brought the editors of the New York Times into the Oval

Office to browbeat them into not running their story on these illegal NSA

activities. " Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important

story - which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year - because he

knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker, " wrote columnist Jonathan Alter

for Newsweek on Monday. " He insists he had 'legal authority derived from the

Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.' But the

Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post

9/11 congressional resolution authorizing 'all necessary force' in fighting

terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap

the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area

in the name of fighting terrorism. "

 

Intolerable. Impeachable.

 

Even Attorney General Gonzales agrees with these sentiments. During his

January 2005 confirmation hearings before Congress, Sen. Russ Feingold queried

Gonzales on whether Mr. Bush has, " at least in theory, the authority to

authorize violations of the criminal law under duly enacted statutes simply

because he's commander in chief? " Gonzales replied, " Senator, this president is

not - I - it is not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize

actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes. "

 

Mr. Gonzales, it appears, did not get the memo.

 

Rep. John Conyers and the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee

have compiled a massively detailed, impeccably-researched report on the

activities of this administration titled " The Constitution in Crisis: The

Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and

Coverups in the Iraq War. " The report runs some 273 pages. A portion of the

Executive Summary reads as follows:

 

In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the

Vice President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled

Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war with Iraq;

misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification

for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment

and other legal violations in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation

against critics of their Administration.

There is a prima facie case that these actions by the President, Vice-President

and other members of the Bush Administration violated a number of federal laws,

including (1) Committing a Fraud against the United States; (2) Making False

Statements to Congress; (3) The War Powers Resolution; (4) Misuse of Government

Funds; (5) federal laws and international treaties prohibiting torture and

cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; (6) federal laws concerning retaliating

against witnesses and other individuals; and (7) federal laws and regulations

concerning leaking and other misuse of intelligence.

 

While these charges clearly rise to the level of impeachable misconduct, because

the Bush Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have blocked the

ability of Members to obtain information directly from the Administration

concerning these matters, more investigatory authority is needed before

recommendations can be made regarding specific Articles of Impeachment. As a

result, we recommend that Congress establish a select committee with subpoena

authority to investigate the misconduct of the Bush Administration with regard

to the Iraq war detailed in this Report and report to the Committee on the

Judiciary on possible impeachable offenses.

 

This report was completed before the revelations of Bush-authorized domestic

spying, and its release has added to the maelstrom. Upon issuance of the report,

Rep. Conyers put forth three resolutions for consideration by the House of

Representatives:

 

H.RES.635 : Creating a select committee to investigate the Administration's

intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war

intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against

critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.

H.RES.636 : Censuring President George W. Bush for failing to respond to

requests for information concerning allegations that he and others in his

Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to

go to war in Iraq, misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding

the justification for the war, countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman, and

degrading treatment of persons in Iraq, and permitted inappropriate retaliation

against critics of his Administration, for failing to adequately account for

specific misstatements he made regarding the war, and for failing to comply with

Executive Order 12958.

 

H.RES.637 : Censuring Vice President Richard B. Cheney for failing to respond to

requests for information concerning allegations that he and others in the

Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to

go to war in Iraq, misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding

the justification for the war, countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman, and

degrading treatment of persons in Iraq, and permitted inappropriate retaliation

against critics of the Administration and for failing to adequately account for

specific misstatements he made regarding the war.

 

Columnist John Nichols offered an astute analysis of the meaning behind the

Conyers report, the proffered resolutions, and their issuance on the heels of

the NSA revelations. " The Conyers resolutions add a significant new twist to the

debate about how to hold the administration to account, " wrote Nichols. " Members

of Congress have become increasingly aggressive in the criticism of the White

House, with U.S. Senator Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, saying Monday, 'Americans

have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous

President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a

consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country's law-abiding

citizens, and against our Constitution.' "

 

" Even Republicans, " continued Nichols, " including Senate Judiciary Committee

chair Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, are talking for the first time about

mounting potentially serious investigations into abuses of power by the

president. But Conyers is seeking to do much more than schedule a committee

hearing, or even launch a formal inquiry. He is proposing that the Congress use

all of the powers that are available to it to hold the president and vice

president to account - up to and including the power to impeach the holders of

the nation's most powerful positions and to remove them from office. "

 

Many political pragmatists will tell you that impeachment is a pipe dream.

If the God of the Righteous roared down from Heaven and denounced George W. Bush

from the top of the Capitol dome, Republicans in Congress would denounce Him as

a traitor, paint Him as standing against the troops, and accuse Him of aiding in

the War on Christmas. In other words, the odds that enough Republican members of

the House would turn against this administration and support impeachment are

about as good as the odds of my cat winning next year's Kentucky Derby.

 

Even if the odds are defied and impeachment hearings are successfully

undertaken, one must go many steps down the ladder to find an official worthy of

the office. Impeach Bush and you get Cheney. Impeach Cheney and you get Dennis

Hastert. Impeach Hastert and you get Ted Stevens, the 82-year-old Senator from

Alaska who recently threatened to resign from the Senate if funding for his

" Bridge to Nowhere " was stripped and delivered to aid in the aftermath of

Hurricane Katrina.

 

Pragmatism is good, but hardly the point in this matter. We have gone far

beyond consideration of the odds, of the smartest and safest course. This is not

about Clintonian lies about sex, nor is it even about Nixonian spying on

political appointees. In the simplest terms, we now have a self-appointed

dictator occupying the highest office of the land. Of course, the catch-all

excuse for these reprehensible actions is that Bush is protecting our freedoms

against the terrorists. But if our freedoms are destroyed, what is left to

protect? If the rule of law no longer has meaning, why bother? If that which

makes this nation good and great is burned out from within, there is nothing

left to defend.

 

Calls for the impeachment of George W. Bush must be heeded, and the House

must act. This must happen not because it is pragmatic, not because it stands a

chance of succeeding. This must happen because the issues at hand demand it. If

we as a nation do not impeach a sitting President for such a vast array of

blatantly illegal activities, activities directed at the American people

themselves, then as a nation of laws we have lost our way. We have no meaning.

We are finished, and the ideals for which so many have served and fought and

died are ashes.

 

Intolerable. Impeachable.

 

 

what is peace

to the people

who work the land

and die in wars?

it was learned in a game

that was played by us all

who held the top of the hill

from the rest was called the king

and I can't believe it all

was good for humankind