Now that the U.S. government's chief weapons inspector in Iraq has, in effect, confirmed an obvious truth -- that President George W. Bush and his closest advisers promoted a non-existent nuclear and chemical weapons threat from Iraq to justify a war -- an obvious question presents itself: Why aren't Americans talking seriously about impeachment?

After all, Mr. Bush now stands plausibly accused of the lofty crime of subverting the Constitution of the United States -- that is, lying to Congress about an imminent danger to the American people in order to collect enough votes to authorize his corporate/imperial project in Iraq. Yet, outside of a few brave remarks from Senator Robert Graham, and the considered opinion of Watergate stool pigeon John W. Dean, almost nobody dares speak the "I" word.

Is the notion really so preposterous? Reasonable people can disagree about the "intent" of the founding fathers when they wrote the clause that states that "the president . . . shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors."

But one doesn't need to be a constitutional scholar to interpret the meaning of a civil covenant that leaves plenty of room for political maneuver.

Indeed, the genius of James Madison and his colleagues lay not so much in their literal specificity, but in their deliberate ambiguity. Depending on the era and circumstances, one man's high crime is Bill Clinton lying about sex with Monica Lewinsky in front of a grand jury; another's is Richard Nixon's involvement in (and lying about) the Watergate burglary cover up. Lately, my idea of a high crime is lying to Congress, before the authorization for war was voted last Oct. 11 -- a time when the administration was touting an atomic bomb threat from embargo-starved Baghdad.

Those who imagine there might be some "strict constructionist" guide to launching an impeachment should consider Alexander Hamilton's elucidation of the Senate's purview in the event of an impeachment trial. "The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the conduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust," he wrote. "They are of a nature which may with particular propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself."

Can there be any greater violation of the public trust than to bear false witness to the people's representatives in pursuit of short-term political gain? Can there be injuries more immediate to society than to send American citizens to their death on a fraudulent pretext? With each shooting of a U.S. soldier in Iraq, the case for impeachment grows stronger.

Until now, most critics of the administration have focused on the President's alleged lie in his January 28th State of the Union address about Iraq's phantom uranium purchases from Niger. Distracted by the current furor over who in the administration leaked the name of Joseph Wilson's CIA-employed wife, the attack dogs are forgetting an important point -- that lying after Oct. 11, the day the Senate passed the war bill -- isn't as politically (or, I suspect, legally) significant as lying before the vote, when the rush to war could have been halted. Anyway, Mr. Bush's alibi -- that the British were the source on Niger "yellowcake" -- is tough to get around, since Tony Blair seems mafia-like in his devotion to lying to protect his friend George Bush.

But look at what Mr. Bush was saying on Sept. 7, 2002 when he appeared at a press conference with Mr. Blair at Camp David. The British Prime Minister had just invoked "the threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability," and added for emphasis "that threat is real." And then, significantly: "We only need to look at the report from the International Atomic [Energy] Agency this morning showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapons sites to realize that."

Mr. Bush took the ball from Mr. Blair and ran for darkness. In response to the question, "Can you tell us what conclusive evidence of any nuclear -- new evidence you have of nuclear weapons capabilities of Saddam Hussein, Mr. Bush replied, "We just heard the Prime Minister talk about the new report. I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied -- finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic -- the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."

Well, there wasn't any new report from the IAEA. Nor had there ever been one specifying a timetable for Iraq's acquisition of an atom bomb. A prosecutor could do a lot with that.

And 9/7 was only the start. By the time the congressional resolution was drafted and ready for a vote, Mr. Bush, either personally or through his surrogates, had asserted an al-Qaeda connection with Saddam that didn't exist, and had larded his first lie about the "six months away" menace with all sorts of other A-bomb claptrap, my personal favorite being the attempted purchase of "high-grade" aluminum tubes (they were intended for conventional rockets).

These are big lies. And if Mr. Bush suborned his henchmen to lie on his behalf, as Richard Nixon did in Watergate, it would seem an equally grave crime against the Constitution.

I'm sorry that Senator Graham is such a realist. "The fact is. . .Tom DeLay and the other [Republican] leadership of the House are not going to impeach George W. Bush," Mr. Graham told a TV interviewer in July.But not all the Republican members of the House are so cynical, nor so politically self-destructive. If Mr. Bush continues to fall in the polls, GIs keep dying, and l'affaire Wilson leads to the appointment of a special counsel, the rodents might start fleeing the sinking ship, seeking cover in the vagaries of Article II, Section IV.

Then Mr. Bush's question, "What more evidence do we need?" might finally take on the significance it deserves.

John R. MacArthur is publisher of Harper's Magazine.

© 2003 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.

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