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Bush/Cheney: Unimpeachably Impeachable
Last week's four-part Washington Post feature on Vice President Dick Cheney removed any doubt in my mind as to whether he and President George W. Bush have committed the kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant impeachment.
While President George W. Bush bears the ultimate responsibility, the nature of the evidence against Cheney and his closest associates is so specific and overwhelming that it makes sense to impeach and bring him to trial first.
Subpoenas from Capitol Hill are flying downtown into executive office buildings like paper airplanes, but the potential for obfuscation and delay is immense, and the danger to the Republic speaks for a more urgent, simpler approach.
As hundreds are killed each day in the misbegotten war in Iraq with no end in sight, the same officials who brought us Iraq—with the vice president in the lead— are salivating for war on Iran.
There is a blizzard of possible charges warranting impeachment, and that is part of the problem. It's not only outrage fatigue, it is knowing how to sort through what Thomas Jefferson called "a long train of abuses and usurpations" to select the most heinous, when it is difficult to discern which of them most offends our Constitution and the rule of law.
Suggestion: From the most heinous, select just one for which there is ready proof—one not susceptible of the kind of diddling that has been so prevalent in Washington these past several years.
Why not focus on a high crime that the Bush administration has already admitted to, with claims it is above the law and the Constitution: electronic eavesdropping on Americans without the required court warrant.
This charge has the additional advantage of precedent. It was included in the second (of three) Articles of Impeachment voted against President Richard Nixon by a 28 to 10 vote by the House Committee on the Judiciary on July 27, 1974.
That charge was "electronic surveillance of private citizens" in violation of the law and similar illegalities. Impeachment Article 2 stated that for these abuses:
"Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office."
Similarly, as William Goodman, former legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has suggested, pride of place among the various possible charges against those of the George W. Bush administration should be given to the crime of unlawful electronic surveillance; namely, failing to take care that the laws were faithfully executed, by directing or authorizing the National Security Agency and various other agencies within the intelligence community to conduct electronic surveillance outside the statutes Congress has prescribed as the exclusive means for such surveillance.
What makes this a no-brainer is that the administration has proudly admitted to sponsoring an electronic surveillance program that violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.
On Dec.17, 2005, a day after the New York Times front-paged an article on the administration practice of eavesdropping on Americans without the required court warrant, administration front man George W. Bush bragged about authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without the court order required by FISA.
The president stated defiantly, "I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al-Qaeda and related groups."
By what authority did the Bush administration ignore the FISA requirement for a court order for such eavesdropping? "The authority vested in me by Congress, including the Joint Authorization for Use of Military Force [and] constitutional authority vested in me as commander-in-chief."
That these arguments are quite a stretch is clear from the adjectives used by respected jurists to describe them. "Ludicrous" is the one most often applied. "The program appears on its face to violate existing law," wrote a group of distinguished lawyers, several of whom worked in senior positions in Republican as well as Democratic administrations.
Anatomy of a Crime
While the buck still stops in the Oval Office, it lingers for an inordinately long time with the vice president. And, clearly, that is the way Bush prefers it.
Sen. Bob Graham recalls that when he became chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the president told him, "The vice president should be your point of contact in the White House [and] has the portfolio for intelligence activities."
And, sure enough, when the chairmen and ranking members were invited to the White House for their first briefing on electronic eavesdropping, they were ushered into the vice president's office where Cheney chaired the discussion.
One of the authors of the FISA law, longtime NSA director, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman (ret.), expressed serious reservations at the flouting of FISA during a New York Public Library panel discussion on May 8, 2006.
"There clearly was a line in the FISA statutes which says you couldn't do this," said Inman. He went on to call specific attention to an "extra sentence put in the bill that said, 'You can't do anything that is not authorized by this bill.'"
Inman spoke proudly of the earlier ethos at NSA, where "it was deeply ingrained that you operate within the law and you get the law changed if you need to." As for now, Inman insisted, "What you want is to get away from this idea that they can continue doing it."
He placed the blame squarely on Vice President Dick Cheney, whose attitude he said was: "We don't need law. The president has authorized these in the past and can authorize them now."
Inman added that this attitude explains why there was no attempt to change the law. Whether Bush eventually decides to change course and work with Congress on this issue will depend on "whether the president walks away from the vice president on this issue," said Inman.
John Dean, no stranger to White House intrigue, also sees Cheney's hand behind the defiance of inconvenient laws like FISA. Dean's sources tell him that there is serious doubt that the president and his staff is well informed as to what Cheney is doing, why he is doing it, or how he is doing it.
Bush may be the "decider," says Dean, "but by shaping the debate and controlling the paper flow, Cheney decides what the decider will decide."
Eminence Grise Behind Eminence Grise
Please welcome David Addington, Cheney's kemosabe, his main man, his legal adviser of many years, a strong advocate of the "unitary executive" concept invented by the Bush administration to amass power under, well, one executive.
Addington worked closely with Dick Cheney on the Iran-Contra Affair, and played a strong supporting role with those who set out to ensure that no one was held accountable. Addington came in with the vice president as his chief counsel and became his chief of staff as well, after Irv Lewis Libby left.
Addington is the author of the so-called "torture memo" of Jan. 25, 2002—the one signed by then-chief counsel to the president, Alberto Gonzales, calling provisions of the Geneva treaties on prisoners of war "quaint" and "obsolete."
Assigning a "new paradigm" to the post-9/11 world, that memo advised Bush that he could authorize torture by simply saying that the U.S. would treat prisoners "humanely, as appropriate, and as consistent with military necessity." This the president did in an executive memorandum on Feb. 7, 2002.
Addington's legal legerdemain was applied liberally to the issue of warrantless eavesdropping, as well. Most are unaware that Addington earned his spurs while working in the CIA's Office of General Counsel (OGC) under Director William Casey, certainly a kindred soul in terms of respect for the law—national or international.
The so-called "family jewels" released by the CIA last week provide insight into the corrosive effect of folks like Casey and Addington on the professionalism and integrity of those working in the Office of General Counsel.
To be sure, there were liberties taken with law and regulation before Casey, but before Casey and Addington there was also high sensitivity to observing the letter of the law regarding surveillance of Americans. One sees in the correspondence reflections of the ethos of the lawyers I encountered during my 27-year Agency career.
There were abuses like illegal wiretaps, despite admonitions from directors like William Colby against monitoring American citizens. But the correspondence is replete with examples of operations abruptly shut down after an OGC determination that they violated CIA statutory responsibilities.
The documents show, for example, OGC putting the kibosh on radio intercepts made from abroad, but with one terminal in the U.S. Well before the FISA law, Agency officials were particularly uncomfortable with widespread electronic surveillance of American citizens.
As national security blogger Noah Shachtman has noted, it is clear from the "family jewels" material that many in the leadership of the Nixon-era intelligence community were relatively successful in avoiding becoming drawn into the kind of comprehensive, intrusive electronic eavesdropping that would later become a hallmark of the George W. Bush-era intelligence community.
CIA Director Michael Hayden's timing in releasing the "family jewels" begs interpretation. Without any sense of irony, Hayden told CIA staffers that internal reforms and increased oversight have given the CIA "a far stronger place in our democratic system." Right.
The post-9/11 warrantless electronic surveillance program he devised as head of NSA, at the direction of Cheney and the president tears that claim to shreds.
Martinet
Hayden's followed illegal orders to create an aggressive NSA program skirting strict 30-year old legal restrictions on eavesdropping on American citizens. As NSA director from 1999 to 2005, Hayden did the White House's bidding in devising and implementing that program without adequately informing Congress—as required by law.
When an unauthorized disclosure revealed the program to the press, Hayden agreed to play point man with smoke and mirrors. Small wonder that the White House later deemed him the perfect man to head the CIA.
Hayden, of course, evidences no outward embarrassment. A whiff of conscience showed through his nomination hearing, though, when he flubbed the answer to a soft-pitch from administration loyalist, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri:
"Did you believe that your primary responsibility as director of NSA was to execute a program that your NSA lawyers, the Justice Department lawyers, and White House officials all told you was legal and that you were ordered to carry it out by the president of the United States?"
Instead of the simple "Yes" that was anticipated, Hayden paused and spoke rather poignantly—and revealingly:
"I had to make this personal decision in early October 2001, and it was a personal decision...I could not not do this."
Why should it be such an enormous personal decision whether or not to obey a White House order? No one asked Hayden, but it requires no particular acuity to figure it out.
This is a military officer who had indoctrinated NSA employees with what used to be known as NSA's "First Commandment"—Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on U.S. Citizens; an officer who, like the rest of us, had sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; a military man well aware one must never obey an unlawful order.
That, it seems clear, is why Hayden found it a difficult personal decision. Did the new, post-9/11 "paradigm" — created by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington — trump the Constitution?
President George W. Bush assured us on Jan. 23, 2006, "I had all kinds of lawyers review the process." Seems so. The same ones who were concurrently devising ways to "legalize" torture and indefinite detention without due process.
No American, save perhaps Admiral Inman who was present at the creation of FISA, knew the FISA law better than Hayden. Nonetheless, the general conceded that he did not even require a written legal opinion to satisfy himself that the new, post-9/11 comprehensive surveillance program, to be implemented without warrant and without adequate consultation in Congress, could pass the smell test.
If Addington and Cheney said it was okay, it must be okay. When one of his NSA director predecessors learned what Hayden had agreed to do, he said angrily, "He ought to be court-martialed." I agree.
Addington's tenure with CIA lawyers seems to have left a residue of malleability that the George W. Bush administration has found very helpful.
Intercepting Americans communications? Torture? Kidnapping? Extraordinary Rendition? You name it, we can justify it. All this makes things a lot easier for Cheney and Addington to work their will on the bureaucracy.
Another gift from Bill Casey. Not only did he corrupt analysis on the substantive side of the Agency; he also deprofessionalized the operational side, promoting yes-people, such that you end up with the bunch of amateurs caught kidnapping and "rendering" a suspected terrorist in Italy. And the corruption included the Office of General Counsel.
Who is Stepping Up to the Plate?
An African American judge, Anna Diggs Taylor of the U.S. District Court in Detroit ruled on Aug. 17, 2006, that the surveillance program was unconstitutional (against the Fourth Amendment prohibition on "unreasonable searches and seizures") as well as illegal (violating FISA).
She emphasized that "the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution."
The government appealed Judge Taylor's decision, and the surveillance program continues, since the Sixth Circuit Court has granted a stay.
In keeping with Thomas Jefferson's warning that the only remedy for the kind of situation in which we find ourselves is removal of those responsible, some courageous members of the House of Representatives have signed on as co-sponsors of Dennis Kucinich's (D-Ohio) bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.
I find it highly interesting that seven of the 11 co-sponsors are African-American, with black women leading the way. Seems they have a more highly developed sense of the implications of the oppression that comes of ignoring, breaking, or bending the law.
They have an excellent model in the late Barbara Jordan, D-Texas, an African-American legislator and educator who made such a valuable contribution while sitting on the House Committee on the Judiciary during the hearings on impeaching President Richard Nixon.
I will not soon forget her stirring words on July 25, 1974:
"Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, 'We, the people.' It is a very eloquent beginning. But when the document was completed on the seventeenth of September 1787 I was not included in that 'We, the people.' I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision, I have finally been included in 'We, the people.'
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.... [As was said at] the North Carolina ratification convention: 'No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity.'"
Jordan stressed James Madison's reminder at the constitutional convention that those who "subvert the Constitution" are "impeachable."
Congressman John Conyers, D-Michigan, also a member of the Committee on the Judiciary in 1974, heard those words. He is now chair of that key committee. Inexplicably, he is now hiding from those words.
Wake up, John. Show some courage.
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29 Comments so far
Show AllNot likely from these spineless Democrats we've elected. Barack Obama doesn't believe these offenses are impeachable. Nor, obviously, does Nancy Pelosi. I'm frightened of what is happening to our civil liberties now that Presidents, Presidential candidates, and Congressmen think that it's acceptable to illegally wiretap citizens, violate habeas corpus, and lie to attack other countries. Our government has gone to a very scary place.
Bush is the result of a Nixon pardon. What will be the terrible result of a Bush-Cheney non-impeachment? It all hangs in the balance. When George Washington was offered more than the Presidency he refused. Bush is a traitor to the father of our country in his expansion of powers and his lawlessness. He needs to be stopped and calling him to account is the only way. That way is impeachment of both Bush and that ugly little man they call Cheney. Without it we are doomed to future failure. But what do I know?
John Conyers, you're no Barbara Jordan.
IMPEACHMENT for Bushist self-admitted and defiantly continued unConstitutional and illegal unwarranted searches of US citizens' domestic telecommunications and seizure of such records! Exactly!
They should join federal inmate No. 28301-016. (AKA Libby)
The fact that the Dems have lost their fire speaks to something they were told around the time they caved to the "no defeat dates" allowed on the Iraq funding bill. You could see it in Nancy's eyes and her face as she looked defeated and well, scared. They were "talked" to, read the riot act, had the situation "explained" to them.
I short, they have identified with their captors (the Reptilian repigs) and are now "on-board, with the program". Millions of dollars can do that, so can threats to families, careers and reputations.
I have seen the enemy, and they are us.
Yup, jjpeter. Anthrax letters to Dem leaders in 2001 worked jest fine, thanky. Then Senator Wellstone and his family were murdered by "bad weather." Powell marched off to the UN with bogus "proof" of WMD (all the better to protect his mythical reputation as a great Amurkin, the very same Uncle Tom who covered up MyLai massacre in 1968 for his military masters).
Cheneybushcriminals must have some incredible crap on Pelosi/Reid/Obama/Biden/Dodd et al...they are collectively terrified by their own shadows. With the exception of Kucinich --a true giant of a man, and taller actually than James Madison.
John Edwards appears not to fear the cheneybushcriminals...but in fact he has three children and a brave but dying wife to protect. Just as Kerry quickly caved in 2004 to preserve his wife and daughters. Yeah, he too got the message real quick.
So that's where we are folks: at the mercy of sociopathic Caligulas and fiddling Neros and a Praetorian Guard aka Blackwater. America is finished, the dream is over.
In the final analysis, it's corporatism that must be impeached if our system of government is to return to our founders' principles. Impeaching these utterly corrupt hooligans is the necessary first step, but only the first. We mustn't stop until all of them are driven out of the city on the hill.
The lies leading to the invasion of Iraq and the invasion itself violated the War Powers Act, the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Charter, the Supreme Law of the Land, the U.S. Constitution's Impeachment Clause, the U.S. federal anti-conspiracy (18 U.S.C. § 371), and the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996.
Support for such crimes by the congress, the media, and many private citizens does not invalidate the impeachment imperative. If such support could invalidate impeachment, then powerful networks could defy any law, and quickly erode the rule of law, and the foundation of the society.
Such support for the US prez & VP's crimes as a response to 9/11 is illegitimate, as any response seriously damaging the rule of law is an unacceptable response. In fact, that criminal response to 9/11, supported by the congress, has made America less safe and has cultivated the terror networks.
And that's only the tip of the iceberg. That criminal response to 9/11 has distracted from the task of bringing the terrorists to justice, has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, will force trillions of dollars of wealth redistribution in the US against the public will, and further pushes a highly destructive and unnecessary reliance on petroleum upon Americans while truly efficient alternatives such as high speed passenger trail have been feasible for decades.
So the criminals should be first impeached for the illegal/immoral lies/invasion, to restore the rule of law and to protect the public interests, generally, from encroaching tyranny.
i have posted this on a previous blog, but perhaps it is worth repeating it here in order to try to continue to amass irrefutable evidence.
«It occurs to me we are all preaching to the converted, except for an occassional infiltrated sniper. What is necessary is to reach out to the non converts who are in a position to do something. More precisely, try to persuade those sitting on the ideological fence to come to the rescue of the democratic values.
Here is my thought. For a fascist machinery to work, it is necessary for all its cogs to work sufficiently well. The US is not a fascist country; at least, not yet. Therefore, in the current administration's machinery there's got to be some cogs who are not fascist and who are having serious doubts about what Bush and Cheney are doing to their country. Some may have probably felt the urge to do something about it, but don't know what or how.
Here is my proposal. Write a collective letter to the editor of the Washington Post, or a similar widely read Washington paper, or if necessary collect money for a paid advertisement in the following terms:
«Dear members of the Administration,
We, the people of the United States, appeal to you, the people working in Washington on our behalf, to come to the rescue of the democratic values upon which this country was founded. We know Bush, Cheney and their cronies have been running this country for their own benefit and in their own self interest, thereby leading it away from its true role in the world and our own best interests. We know that in the course of your daily work you come across facts that disturb you; memos, phone calls, conversations, actions and directions that you know are immoral, illegal and unworthy of a public servant. We hereby urge you to come forth and denounce such actions by sending an email to «address@commongdreams.org» [or whatever is most appropriate.] Your name will remain secret, if you wish, but your revelations will create a reaction in the institutions of our government designed to check and balance the abuses of public officials who break the law and betray the faith entrusted by the people. Only you can save what is left of our democratic republic now. Be a hero or a heroine and blow the whistle on the foul players who are threatening our country in a manner far worse than any terrorist.»
This needs editing, corrections, deletions and additions and it may not work, but it will certainly instill a no small amount of fear in the sanguine hearts and pacemakers of those who are fueling so many of our discussions these days. What is needed is one, two, many Deep Throats who help the citizens of the US impeach these shameless crooks.
Eduardo Villagrán»
If this doesn't work, then within the limitations of sample size and bias the US may have already become a country run by fascists.
Or we can do it the easy way: screw impeachment, arrest the bastards. Breaking the FISA law Cheney/Bush continue to ignore is an arresting offense, and it specifically points out that even a "sitting President" can be arrested and charged.
Or the military can storm the White House and arrest Cheney/Bush and minions for being domestic enemies of our Constitution. Either way, faster and more fun than impeachment, which we all know does not carry the force of law. Even if the Senate were to find Cheney/Bush "guilty," there is nothing that says such a verdict means removal from office. And does anyone think anything other than a perp walk is gonna crowbar these bastards from their final power perch?
Isn't Congress's failure to impeach an impeachable offense? Since when does the Speaker of the House decide whether or not impeachment is on the table?
Scooter will serve no prison time Bu$h the inferior has just commuted his sentence. If he is quiet will he get the pardon? Turn in tomorrow for another ass covering by Bu$h the inferior.
Of course, these guys have committed enough crimes and violations of the U.S. Constitution to deserve 20 lifetimes in prison plus the death penalty, but we need to decide that it's worth letting the Neocons name the next President after these jerks are removed from office. That person will then enter the '08 Presidential race as the INCUMBENT, and with their ability to steal elections as evidenced in 2000 and 2004, we will get at least 8 more years of the same intolerable destruction of our Democracy!
We need a PLAN beyond IMPEACHMENT!!!
We need a plan beyond impeachment, but impeachment has to come first.
Eliminating the power of presidential pardon is vital. No criminal president is ever held accountable because his successor will always have a vested interest in keeping the office involved in criminal actions.
HELP! I'm having a hard time keeping up my hopes up that the Cheney/Bush nightmare is going to end. If impeachment hasn't happened by now, I fear it will NEVER happen. I've thought long and hard about all the comments I've read here and fully agree with wrenchmonkey when he says we're going to have another "terrorist" attack, Bush will call for martial law and elections will be suspended indefinitely. Not gonna happen, you say? Well, they let 9/11 happen, even helped it happen (ignored warnings about it from France, Spain, Egypt and other countries). Bottom line is they got away with it. What's to stop them from doing something else along those lines? And, you better believe that the next "attack" will be even more horrific than 9/11. It has to be or it won't "work" to scare us again.
So, we need to impeach Cheney, then Bush. But, Pelosi says it's off the table. Congress won't even stop funding the wars so we can't rely on them to do it. Sure, we can arrest them, but what happens when the case reaches the supreme court? Didn't they put Bush in office in 2000 after he cheated Gore in Florida and Ohio? So, who do we turn to?
Yea, I'm afraid I also agree with canardtahiti about our elected officials (with a few notable exceptions) running scared for their lives (and those of their loved ones) because our government always seems to assassinate our peace mongers JFK, Martin Luther King, John Lennon. Why, you ask? Because there's no money to be made in peace, only in war (Haliburton, Lockheed Martin, Blackwater, etc.)
With all the retired generals (and not so retired), Washington insiders and some GOP loyalists speaking out against our current regime, is there really no stopping them?
The Bill of Rights is not for us, the little people. So our rulers have no problem with trampling on our 'constitutional rights.' We have none. Never had them under the present system. We have only the show of such rights, a show which is always and quickly scrapped whenever it becomes inconvenient to them.
"Nancy Pelosi will be denounced now and forever not for failing to impeach the President and Vice President, but for not having the courage to really try.
For this reason alone she deserves not to be elected again. For this reason alone she deserves to be shunned by all Americans"
Here is a letter I sent to the round hole in Senator Obama's campaign office:
---------------------
Dear Senator Obama
Regarding impeachment of Bush-Cheney, you said:
>"There's a way to bring an end to those practices, you know: vote the bums out," the presidential candidate said, without naming Bush or Cheney. "That's how our system is designed."
You just lost the vote of this long-time Democrat voter. Seriously, the voting system is broken and our government is very much so 'designed' to impeach for MUCH LESS than already demonstrated by this bunch in the White House. The nation's reputation with its stated high regard for the rule of law is in the gutter. In the gutter and bleeding and you have officially stated that it is not your business! The long list of impeachable actions is the objective, historical viewpoint, not simply my opinion or that of some 'bloggers'. If you refuse to acknowledge this reality, then I trust neither you as a man, nor your grip on reality, and I am now even more concerned, if that is possible, for the future of real democracy in this formerly great nation.
"There is a blizzard of possible charges warranting impeachment, and that is part of the problem.... It is difficult to discern which of them most offends our Constitution and the rule of law."
Congress will get no free passes from me on this issue. The rule of law is the "Rule of Law"; you either respect it or you don't....plain and simple. It is not only the executive branch that is currently obstructing justice, Congress is "equally" responsible for not exercising its power to hold these people responsible for contempt of Congressional authority. Co-equal means just that! It seems that both branches of government should face charges for "obstruction of justice".
This is a government "Of the People", not the politicians. And frankly, I'm not the least bit surprised to discover that 7 out of the 11 co-sponsors of the Kucinich bill to impeach Dick Cheney are African-American, with black women leading the way. Black women in politics today are well aware they have two strikes against them; being black and being women. Is there really any question that the "good-old-boys" (white men) still run this country? We need only take a head-count to grasp this reality!
"Jordan stressed James Madison's reminder at the constitutional convention that those who "subvert the Constitution" are "impeachable.""
Let us not forget this and the many who are involved in "subverting the Constitution".
This voter would never repeat his mistake of voting for John Kerry. Neither he will vote for any Democrat, unless new Democratic Party leadership dereliction of duties of current fuhrership.
Alas, this voter, as well as all other voters, may not have an opportunity to vote in this DisUnited States for the next 50 years.
A caller on Air America today said that impeachment would tie down the Bushits like it did with Clinton, and keep them from doing more harm.
I wonder what made Conyers change?
WASN'T there an ominous moment in a press conference a couple of years back when director hayden asserted that the test for searches in the 4th amendment was "reasonable belief",when,ofcourse its really "probable cause" ? our government is to democracy what pappa johns is to pizza.
Nelson Mandela always used to say that the terms of resistance are determined by the oppressor. The bushies are only interested in 'hard power', they don't listen to soft power, like impeachment.
Maybe it is time to build up a popular armed resistance and seek support from the army. And then throw the guys unilaterally out of office and into jail, without impeachment. The constitution is trashed already; I guess you just have to write a new one, once you have got a civilised government again. It is sad to give up belief in peaceful resistance; I still would cling on to it, but for the resistance it is important to make tough strategic decisions.
Winnetou, Ghandi knew that peaceful and passive methods of resistance could only succeed so long as the power structure remained "responsive" to pressure.
Ghandi and Martin Luther King both recognized that their methods would not have succeeded in Nazi Germany -- that regime (and many others) being non-responsive to anything but brute force.
Now (and since the 2000 PNAC coup), this cheneybush criminal regime is utterly non-responsive to legal, peaceful and passive resisitance by its own citizens. They have declared war on us.
If Congress is unable to muster the courage to impeach Bush/Cheney, at the very least, they should be able to muster the courage to impeach Abu Gonzales, whose fingerprints are all over all the legal abuses that have transpired: FISA, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the torture memo, abrogation of the Geneva accords, illegal wiretaps, the firing of the US attorneys, and so forth.
Talk about a slam dunk.
Left and right wing of the same bird.
"Now (and since the 2000 PNAC coup), this cheneybush criminal regime is utterly non-responsive to legal, peaceful and passive resisitance by its own citizens. They have declared war on us."
This is the part that is the most scary to me. The American people collectively have the wisdom to know that this group is corrupt and not worthy of retaining office. The problem is Cheney/Rove Inc. couldn't care less. As long as they can manipulate popular opinion enough, as long as they can keep people guessing as to just how bad it is, as long as they can sow enough F.U.D. (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) to make people wonder whether they would be better off without them, they will retain power. The more power they have, the more they will be able to manipulate, etc. The system is in need of serious correction. But how?
Bush, for once, told the truth when he said he would continue doing what he's doing even if only Pickles and Barney the dog agree with him. He doesn't give a rip what the public thinks or wants. This is what happens when religious nuts who believe God made them president are installed in the White House.
I am also sorely disappointed in John Conyers; after years of receiving emails from him claiming that if there was a Dem majority in Congress he was going to start investigating BushCo with the intention of bringing impeachment proceedings, he's now backed-off that pledge. I can only wonder what they have on him or whether he was just manipulating us all along.