Still time to impeach President
Bush
"Impeachment would also lay the groundwork for
possible criminal action"
By Bob Sommer
Midwest Voices, October 3, 2008
go to original
See Article III.1 Manipulating
Intelligence and Lying to Justify War
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George W. Bush admitted to the
Times in June that his gun-slinging
rhetoric made the world believe that he was
a “guy really anxious for war”
in Iraq. Will an unimpeached Bush be revered
as an elder statesman for an America waging
war in 2019?
Source: Times Online
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The year is 2019. It’s Sunday evening. Eighty-eight-year-old
Morley Safer’s special guest on “60 Minutes”
is an expert on national security, an elder statesman.
The image of former President George W. Bush fills
the screen. His hunched shoulders quiver in a chuckle
as Morley asks whether he’s finally cleared
the last of the brush from his ranch.
Bush’s wartime presidential expertise is needed.
War rages from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas,
while newly drafted U.S. troops mass along the Canadian
border.
Now in her second term, President Sarah Palin never
blinked when she stared down the Canadian prime minister,
who muttered in French, something about moose poaching.
It’s war.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge came up short
of oil (though Sandals has rehabilitated it as a tropical
resort). America’s mission is to liberate Canadians
from their socialist health care system.
Revenue from tar-sand oil will pay for the invasion.
Palin can see Canada from America.
OK, that was fiction.
But the prospect of Bush morphing into a sage elder
statesman is realistic and disturbing.
As a former president, Richard Nixon successfully
remade himself despite disgrace in office and a near-miss
with impeachment — for true “high crimes
and misdemeanors,” not your garden-variety lying
about an affair with an intern.
If President Gerald Ford hadn’t pardoned Nixon,
perhaps the Bush administration would have been less
eager to flout the Constitution.
Instead, Bush apparently took Nixon’s infamous
1977 remark to David Frost for his personal motto:
“Well, when the president does it, that means
that it is not illegal.”
Bush’s 2001 declaration, “You are either
with us or you are with the terrorists,” inaugurated
a dark age of smear and fear. The Constitution became
an obstacle to conducting state business under the
aegis of the “war on terror.”
Sober and presumably educated people debated whether
torturing human beings and spying on citizens were
acceptable. The possibility that the Constitution
could withstand, indeed guide us through, times of
crisis was a nonstarter with this administration.
The arguments for impeaching Bush and Dick Cheney
are exhaustive: the fraudulent sale of the Iraq war
to the American people, the illegal invasion of that
country, violation of the Geneva Conventions, illegal
domestic surveillance, arbitrary detentions, torture,
disinformation, and gross negligence after Hurricane
Katrina.
On June 9, Rep. Dennis Kucinich stood tirelessly
on the House floor for nearly five hours to read an
array of 35 articles of impeachment. (http://impeachment.kucinich.us/)
Rep. Jim McDermott agonized before supporting the
measure.
“America cannot regain its moral leadership
in the world,” he said, “if America cannot
hold its leaders accountable for their actions at
home.”
Apologists for Bush need only ask themselves if impeachment
would be in order for a Democratic president with
his identical record. Notable conservatives like constitutional
scholar Bruce Fein and former Congressman Bob Barr
favor impeachment.
The question isn’t whether impeachment is warranted,
but Why now? Hurricane W has blown through. We have
enough to worry about with the cleanup.
I asked that question of David Swanson, the press
secretary for Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign
and co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org.
“The point is to establish that presidents
have to obey laws,” he responded. “There
is no better way to do that than to impeach Bush and
Cheney, and that will remain true until someone even
worse occupies the White House.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the
table because she and many Democrats believed it wouldn’t
succeed and would be divisive.
But what of the law and the precedents set by Bush?
Presidential “signing statements” now
mean the law doesn’t apply to the president.
Politics trumps justice in the Justice Department.
Habeas corpus is a quaint Latin phrase.
Torture is routine. Science means whatever you want
it to mean. Endless war will consolidate power in
the presidency.
Impeachment would also lay the groundwork for possible
criminal action; impeachment hearings uncovered Nixon’s
secret Oval Office tapes.
Bush was charged to “take care that the laws
be faithfully executed.” His record tells otherwise,
which is more than sufficient cause to begin impeachment
hearings.
Bob Sommer’s novel, “Where the Wind Blew,”
was released in June by The Wessex Collective. He
lives in Overland Park.
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