As I said in this space two weeks ago, if Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about having sex with an intern, then George Bush needs to be impeached for the deliberate lies he and his cabal told to start a war that has now taken the lives of more than 1,700 young American men and women and countless Iraqi citizens, plus threatens to bankrupt the country.
One of our "Sound Off" callers insisted last week that only "Bush haters" would say such things.
Another took to task the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which passed a resolution calling for the president's impeachment at its convention a week ago, for being "foolish and shortsighted."
"They bathe themselves in the lies, falsehoods and accusations against the Bush administration, unable to accept their losses, which will continue as far as we can see into the future," the caller insisted.
If I were that caller, I wouldn't bet a lot on those assumptions, for it's becoming clear that Americans are beginning to realize what an utter disaster this administration has been for their country. The president's approval ratings are at historic lows - well below 50 percent - and even the war he bamboozled Congress and the people to approve is being questioned by not a minority any more, but the majority of the American people.
What the opinion polls show is that many more than just "Bush haters" have seen enough.
The recent disclosures of secret memos of meetings involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair's staff have underlined just how cynical and deceitful the people entrusted to lead the United States were in fabricating intelligence to get this war under way. It has become clear that they never had any intention of letting the United Nations try to settle the dispute. It seems clear now that they had made up their minds nearly a year before that Saddam Hussein was to be forcibly deposed.
Yet Bush and his lieutenants kept telling the American people that war would be waged only as a last resort.
As Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said last week, "The veracity of those statements has - to put it mildly - come into question."
Because the administration refuses to answer questions about the so-called Downing Street memo and others that have surfaced since and because Bush's party controls all of Congress, Conyers had to resort to a "public forum" to gather testimony on the issue.
In a matter of a few days, more than a half million Americans signed petitions backing Conyers in urging the president to explain the memos. So far, Bush has dismissed it all as "falsehoods" and refused to comment further.
But the people want answers. Even those who don't hate Bush don't like being lied to.
Lying presidents need to be impeached. That's what the Republicans in Congress told us only a few years ago.
So let's get on with it.
Dave Zweifel is editor of The Capital Times.
© 2005 Capital Times
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