[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
Other Title: The Case For Impeachment The Case For Impeachment Why We Can No Longer Afford George W. Bush Lewis Lapham/Harper's Magazine, March 2006 On December18 of last year, Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D., Mich.) introduced into the House of Representatives a resolution inviting it to form a select committee to investigate the Administrations 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. Although buttressed two days previously by the news of the National Security Agencys illegal surveillance of the American citizenry, the request attracted little or no attention in the press-nothing on television or in the major papers, some scattered applause from the left-wing blogs, heavy sarcasm on the websites flying the flags of the militant tight. The nearly complete silence raised the question as to what it was the congressman had in mind; and to whom did he think he was speaking? In time of war few propositions would seem as futile as the attempt to impeach a president whose political party controls the Congress; as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee stationed on Capitol Hill for the last forty years, Representative Conyers presumably knew that to expect the Republican caucus in the House to take note of his invitation, much less arm it with the power of subpoena, was to expect a miracle of democratic transformation and rebirth not unlike the one looked for by President Bush under the prayer rugs in Baghdad. Unless the congressman intended some sort of symbolic gesture, self-serving and harmless, what did he hope to prove or to gain? He answered the question in early January, on the phone from Detroit during the congressional winter recess. To take away the excuse, he said.. that we didnt know. So that two or four or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, Where were you, Conyers, and where was the United States Congress? when the Bush Ad- ministration declared the Constitution inoperative and revoked the license of parliamentary government, none of the company now present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity, can say that somehow it escaped our notice that the President was setting himself up as a supreme leader exempt from the rule of law. A reason with which it was hard to argue but one that didnt account for the congressmans impatience. Why not wait for a showing of supportive public opinion, delay the motion to impeach until after next Novembers elections? Assuming that further investigation of the Presidents addiction to the uses of domestic espionage finds him nullifying the Fourth Amendment rights of a large number of his fellow Americans, the Democrats possibly could come up with enough votes, their own and a quorum-of disenchanted Re- publicans, to send the man home to Texas. Conyers said: I dont think enough people know how much damage this administration can do to their civil liberties in a very short time. What would you have me do? Grumble and complain? Make cynical jokes? Throw up my hands and say that under the circumstances nothing can be done ? At least I can muster the facts) establish a record, tell the story that ought to be front-page news. Which turned out to be the purpose of his House Resolution 635-not a high-minded tilting at windmills but the production of a report, 182 pages, 1,022 footnotes, assembled by Conyerss staff during the six months prior to its presentation to Congress, that describes the Bush Administrations invasion of Iraq as the perpetration of a crime against the American people. It is a fair description. Drawing on evidence furnished over the last four years by a sizable crowd of credible witnessesgovernment officials both extant and former, journalists, military officers, politicians, diplomats domestic and foreignthe authors of the report find a conspiracy to commit fraud, the administration talking out of all sides of its lying mouth, secretly planning a frivolous and unnecessary war while at the same time pretending in its public statements that nothing was further from the truth. The result has proved tragic, but on reading through the reports corroborating testimony [1] sometimes could counter its inducements to mute rage with the thought that if the would-be lords of the flies werent in the business of killing people, they would be seen as a troupe of off-Broadway comedians in a third-rate theater of the absurd. Entitled The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War, the Conyers report examines the administrations chronic abuse of power from more angles than can be explored within the compass of a single essay. The nature of the administrations criminal DNA and modus operandi, however, shows up in a usefully robust specimen of its characteristic dishonesty. That President Bush comes to power with the intention of invading Iraq is a fact not open to dispute. Pleased with the image of himself as a military hero, and having spoken, more than once, about seeking revenge on Saddam Hussein for the tyrants alleged attempt to kill my Dad, he appoints to high office in his administration a cadre of warrior intellectuals, chief among them Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, known to be eager for the glories of imperial conquest.[2] At the first meeting of the new National Security Council on January 30, 2001, most of the people in the room discuss the possibility of preemptive blitzkrieg against Baghdad.[3] In March the Pentagon circulates a document entitled Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oil Field Contracts; the supporting maps indicate the properties of interest to various European governments and American corporations. Six months later, early in the afternoon of September 11, the smoke still rising from the Pentagons western facade, Secretary Rumsfeld tells his staff to fetch intelligence briefings ( the best info fast... go massive; sweep it all up; things related and not) that will justify an attack on Iraq. By chance the next day in the White House basement, Richard A. Clarke, national coordinator for security and counterterrorism, encounters President Bush, who tells him to see if Saddam did this. Nine days later, at a private dinner upstairs in the White House, the President informs his guest, the British prime minister, Tony Blair, that when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq. By November 13, 2001, the Taliban have been rousted out of Kabul in Afghanistan, but our intelligence agencies have yet to discover proofs of Saddam Husseins acquaintance with Al-Qaeda.[4] President Bush isnt convinced. On November 21, at the end of a National Security Council meeting, he says to Secretary Rumsfeld, What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq?...I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret. The Conyers report doesnt return to the Presidents focus on Iraq until March 2002, when it finds him peering into the office of Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, to say, Fuck Saddam. Were taking him out. At a Senate Republican Policy lunch that same month on Capitol Hill, Vice President Dick Cheney informs the assembled company that it is no longer a question of if the United States will attack Iraq, its only a question of when. The vice president doesnt bring up the question of why, the answer to which is a work in progress. By now the administration knows, or at least has reason to know, that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, that Iraq doesnt possess weapons of mass destruction sufficiently ominous to warrant concern, that the regime destined to be changed poses no imminent threat, certainly not to the United States, probably not to any country defended by more than four batteries of light artillery. Such at least is the conclusion of the British intelligence agencies that can find no credible evidence to support the theory of Saddams connection to AI Qaeda or international terrorism; even the best survey of WMD programs will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile and CW/BW weapons fronts ... A series of notes and memoranda passing back and forth between the British Cabinet Office in London and its correspondents in Washington during the spring and summer of 2002 address the problem of inventing a pretext for a war so fondly desired by the Bush Administration that Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britains MI-6, finds the interested parties in Washington fixing the intelligence and the facts... around the policy. The American enthusiasm for regime change, undimmed in the mind of CondoleezzaRice, presents complications. Although Blair has told Bush, probably in the autumn of 2001, that Britain will join the American military putsch in Iraq, he needs legal justification for the maneuversomething noble and inspiring to say to Parliament and the British public. No justification currently exists. Neither Britain nor the United States is being attacked by Iraq, which eliminates the excuse of self-defense; nor is the Iraqi government currently sponsoring a program of genocide. Which leaves as the only option the wrong-footing of Saddam. If under the auspices of the United Nations he can be presented with an ultimatum requiring him to show that Iraq possesses weapons that dont exist, his refusal to comply can be taken as proof that he does, in fact, possess such weapons.[5] Over the next few months, while the British government continues to look for ways to wrong-foot Saddam and suborn the U.N., various operatives loyal to Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld bend to the task of fixing the facts, distributing alms to dubious Iraqi informants in return for map coordinates of Saddams monstrous weapons, proofs of stored poisons, of mobile chemical laboratories, of unmanned vehicles capable of bringing missiles to Jerusalem.[6] By early August the Bush Administration has sufficient confidence in its doomsday story to sell it to the American public. Instructed to come up with awesome text and shocking images, the White House Iraq Group hits upon the phrase mushroom cloud and prepares a White Paper describing the grave and gathering danger posed by Iraqs nuclear arsenal.[7] The objective is three-fold--to magnify the fear of Saddam Hussein, to present President Bush as the Christian savior of the American people, a man of conscience who never in life would lead the country into an unjust war, and to provide a platform of star-spangled patriotism for Republican candidates in the November congressional elections.[8] The ad campaign rolls out on September 7, when Britains Tony Blair stands in front of the television cameras at Camp David, Maryland, with President Bush to say that a new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency shows new activity at Iraqs nuclear weapons sites.[9] On September 8, National Security Advisor Rice appears on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer , to picture a mushroom cloud in Americas future, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, on Face the Nation, invites Bob Schieffer to imagine a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction. On the same day, Vice President Cheney shows up on Meet the Press to assure Tim Russert that first of all, no decisions been made yet to launch a military operation. The President stays on both messages, informing reporters gathered at an Oval Office photo op on September 25 that when discussing the War on Terror, You cant distinguish between Al-Qaeda and Saddam, and then on October 1, after meeting with members of Congress, Of course, I havent made up my mind if were going to war with lraq.[10] The autumn sales promotion reaches its crescendo on October 7, when the President, speaking to a live television audience from the Cincinnati Museum Center, pulls all the dead rabbits out of Karl Roves magic hat--Saddam possessed of horrible poisons and diseases and gasses and atomic weapons... we know that Iraq and Al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. ... America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof-the smoking gun-that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. .. Four days later in Washington, on the evening of October 11, Congress passes HJ Resolution 114, granting President Bush the power to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq. The grant excuses the President from the obligation to consult Congress on a formal declaration of war; its preamble reiterates the administrations fantastic assertions about Iraqs demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, [combining] to justify action by the United States to defend itself. .. Passage of the resolution, by a vote of 77 to 23 in the Senate, certifies as true what is known to be false and thus enlists Congress as an accomplice in the systematic perpetration of a criminal fraud. Its war policy thus firmly established in all the major media markets, the Bush Administration over the span of the next five months holds fast to the policy of deceiving itself as well as the American people and the Congress. While the Pentagon assembles its forces for Operation Iraqi Freedom on March 20, 2003, President Bush continues to present himself as the victim of outrageous circumstance. In answer to a reporters question at a White House press conference, he says, You said were headed to war in Iraq--I dont know why you say that. I hope were not headed to war in Iraq. Im the person who gets to decide, not you. Vice President Cheney tells Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, that unless his scouts soon find Saddams WMD in Iraq, the United States will not hesitate to discredit inspections in favor of disarmament; meanwhile, having come to believe the lies stuffed into his mouth by informants paid to do just that, he appears on Meet the Press to say, My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. President Bush in his State of the Union Address on January 28 falsely informs Congress that Saddam has been trying to buy enriched uranium in Africa; at the U .N . Security Council on February 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell conjures up the sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network. [11] The Conyers report doesnt lack for further instances of the administrations misconduct, all of them noted in the press over the last three years-misuse of government funds, violation of the Geneva Conventions, holding without trial and subjecting to torture individuals arbitrarily designated as enemy combatants, etc.-- but conspiracy to commit fraud would seem reason enough to warrant the Presidents impeachment.[12] Before reading the report, I wouldnt have expected to find myself thinking that such a course of action was either likely or possible; after reading the report, I dont know why we would run the risk of not impeaching the man. We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the countrys good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the worlds evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nations wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal-known to be armed and shown to be dangerous.[13] Under the three-strike rule available to the courts in California, judges sentence people to life in jail for having stolen from Wal-Mart a set of golf clubs or a childs tricycle. Who then calls strikes on President Bush, and how many more does he get before being sent down on waivers to one of the Texas Prison Leagues ? Last December when Representative Conyers introduced House Resolution 635-together with two ancillary resolutions censuring President Bush and Vice President Cheney, each of them for failing to respond to requests for information about the origins of the Iraq war-the word impeach was still regarded as excessive hyperbole, the unmentionable I-word, not to be seen or heard in the circles of proper Washington opinion. A month later and the word was in general circulation, if not with reference to the misbegotten killing in Iraq at least in the context of the Presidents directing the NSA to monitor, if necessary without first obtaining a court order, any and all telephone and email traffic, in, out, or around the United States, that might turn up a reference (ideological, operational, metaphorical, coincidental, or conversational) to an act (factual or fictional, past, present, or future) of terrorism. So wide a spreading of government flypaper obviously was bound to collect (by accident, if not by design) a great deal of information about a great many American citizens under the impression that their words were their own. The Presidents directive, a felony under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (punishable by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine), also nullified the Fourth Amendments guarantee of protection against unreasonable search and seizure. AB was to be expected, the first stirrings of objection appeared in the left- wing blogs, tens of thousands of citizens posting violently worded dissents on http://impeachbush.org, also at http://afterdowningstreet.org and http://impeachcentral.com. On December 19, two days after President Bush affirmed his commander in chiefs right to affix wire taps whenever and wherever he so chose, Senator Robert Byrd (D., W.Va.) issued a statement saying that we are a nation of laws and not men. ... I defy the Administration to show me where in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or the U.S. Constitution, theyare allowed to steal into the lives of innocent Americans and spy. ...These astounding revelations about the bending and contorting of the Constitution to justify a grasping irresponsible administration under the banner of national security are an outrage. ... Representative John Lewis (D., Ga.) told a radio interviewer in Atlanta that George W. Bush is not a king, he is President, going on to say that if the chance presented itself he would sign a bill of impeachment. John Dean, White House counsel in the Nixon Administration and a man familiar with the arts of bugging phones and obstructing justice, observed, in conversation with Senator Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), that Bush is the first president to admit to an impeachable offence.[14] In the conservative quarters of opinion the objections were equally vigorous. On December 19, Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute allied with the Republican doctrine of small governments supporting large armies, sat for an interview on a Washington public radio station known for its liberal bias and audience. I think that if were going to be intellectually honest here, he said, this really is the kind of thing that Alexander Hamilton was referring to when impeachment was discussed. The next day, writing in the Washington Times, Bruce Fein, former associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, said of President Bush that he presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law ; he later extended the thought by saying that if the President maintains this disregard or contempt; for the coordinate branches of government, its that conception of an omnipotent presidency that makes the occupant a dangerous person. By the third week in January the word impeachment had been mentioned often enough in polite company to achieve a presence in the vocabulary of Senator Arlen Specter (R., Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Appearing on ABCs This Week on January 15, Specter said that he planned a February hearing on the matter of the warrantless domestic spying program, but even if it were to be found that the President exceeded his authority, impeachment was not the appropriate rebuke. Pressed on the point by George Stephanopoulos, Specter said: Impeachment is a remedy. After impeachment, you could T have a criminal prosecution, but the principal remedy, : George, under our society is to pay a political price.[15] Would that it were so. The Bush Administration doesnt believe in the theory of parliamentary government, much less in the notion of paying political prices. Its agents prefer the more frugal and efficient practice of stealing elections, gagging the voice of the Democratic minority in Congress, slandering people who presume to doubt either its wisdom or its virtue, conducting the business of government behind closed doors, alone with its Bibles and its pet Bismarcks in soundproof rooms. On the off chance that any God-fearing citizen didnt know what to expect, the president clarified the position in late December and again in early January, responding to what he clearly regarded as annoying questions about his directive to the NSA. Yes, he had told the NSA to take precautions, had done so more than once, would do so again. That was his job, to defend the American people; in time of war the Constitution gave him the right to do as he pleased, so did the act of Congress passed on September 14, 2001, three days after the loss of the World Trade Center. The fact that he was compelled to address the subject was shameful, impertinent, and unpatriotic on the part of the reporter who inquired about unchecked executive power and ascribed to him some kind of dictatorial position. ...which I strongly reject. Such questions also were dangerous, apt to bring on more terrorist attacks in the manner of 9/1 L The latter point was repeatedly rein- forced by Vice President Cheney, who firmly reminded audiences in New York and Washington-audiences composed primarily of lobbyists for the countrys media syndicates and weapons manufacturers-that we live in a dangerous world, demanding a robust executive authority in the White House to ward off the forces of moral anarchy and social chaos. Were at war, the President said on December 19, we must protect Americas secrets. No, the country isnt at war, and its not Americas secrets that the President seeks to protect. The country is threatened by freebooting terrorists unaligned with a foreign government or an enemy army; the secrets are those of the Bush Administration, chief among them its determination to replace a democratic republic with something more safely totalitarian. The fiction of permanent war allows it to seize, in the name of the national security, the instruments of tyranny. The question posed to the assembly is whether enough people care, and, if so, how do they respond when, in the language of the Declaration of In- Jj dependence, a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism. Although the abuses and usurpations are self-evident, obvious to anybody who takes me trouble to read me newspapers, me Bush Administration makes no attempt to conceal the Object evinced in me design of its purpose, because it counts on the romanticism as well as on me apathy of an American public reluctant to recognize the President of the United States as a felon. Who wants to believe such a thing, much less acknowledge it as a proven fact? More people than dreamed of in the philosophy of Karl Rove or by the content providers to the major news media. The heavy volume of angry protest on the Internet, reflected in the polls indicating the Presidents steady decline in the popular esteem, suggests that at least half of the American electorate, in the red states and the blue, knows that the Bush Administration operates without reference to the rule of law, also that the President believes himself somehow divinely ordained, accountable only to Jesus and the oil companies, at liberty to wave what he imagines to be the scepter of the Constitution in whatever ways he deems best. But in the news media they find no strong voice of dissent, in the Democratic Party no concerted effort to form a coherent opposition. Which places the work of protecting the countrys freedoms where it should be placed--with the Congress, more specifically with the Republican members of Congress. What else is it that v9ters expect the Congress to do if not to look out for their rights as citizens of the United States ?So the choice presented to the Republican members on the Judiciary Committee investigating the Presidents use of electronic surveillance comes down to a matter of deciding whether they will serve their country or their party. I dont envy them the decision; the rewards offered by the party (patronage, campaign contributions, a fat retirement on the payroll of a K Street lobbying firm) clearly outweigh those available from the countrycongratulatory editorials in obscure newspapers, malicious gossip circulated by Focus on the Family and Fox News, an outpouring of letters and emails from grateful citizens not in positions to do anybody any favors. To the cameras on ABCs This Week Senator Specter said that impeachment was probably not the best remedy for the Presidents misconduct, and if the February hearings proceed along the lines of most Senate hearings, they will find that the best remedy is no remedy. In rebuttal to testimony arguing that the Presidents breach of federal law constitutes a crime, other witnesses will say that the Constitution authorizes the President to overrule the law, and after a prolonged mumbling of lawyers about the balance that must be struck between civil liberties on the one hand and the national security on the other, it will be discovered that the balance sometimes shifts to meet the circumstances, which is why, thank God, America is a great country-because it allows for the appearance of meaningful debate while at the same time making sure that the words have no consequences. If, however, the committee rises to the recognition of its constitution- al task-that of correcting the imbalances of power that sometimes can foul the machinery of fair and honorable government-it will take to heart the meaning of the word remedy-a corrective measure, not a punishment. It isnt the business of the Congress to punish President Bush. Any competent court in the country could arraign the Pre5identon charges identical to those brought against the crooked executives at Enron and Tyco International (fraud, misuse of stockholder funds, manipulation of intelligence) and send him off to jail dressed in an orange jump suit. Nor is it the responsibility of Congress to sit in moral judgment; the sermons can be left to the Reverend Pat Robertson and the Yale Divinity School. It is the business of the Congress to prevent the President from doing more dam- age than hes already done to the people, interests, health, well-being, safety, good name, and reputation of the United States--to cauterize the wound and stem the flows of money, stupidity, and blood. Lewis Lapham is the editor of Harper's Magazine. 1. The report borrows from hundreds of open sources that have become a matter of public record-newspaper accounts, television broadcasts (Frontline, Meet the Press, Larry King Live, 60 Minutes, etc.), magazine articles (in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books) , sworn testimony in both the Senate and House of Representatives, books written by, among others, Bob Woodward, George Packer , Richard A. Clarke, James Mann, Mark Danner, Seymour Hersh, David Corn, James Bamford, Hans Blix, James Risen, Ron Suskind, Joseph WiLson. As the congressman had said, Everything in plain sight; it isnt as if we dont know. 2 In January of 1998 the neoconservative Washington think tank The Project for the New American Century (which counts among its founding members Dick Cheney) sent a letter to Bill Clinton demanding the removal of Saddam Husseins regime from power with a strong-minded willingness to undertake military action. Together with Rumsfeld, six of the other seventeen signatories became members of the Bushs first administration-Elliott Abrams (now George W. Bushs deputy national security advisor), Richard Armitage (deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2005) , John Bolton (now U .S. ambassador to the U.N.), Richard Perle (chairman of the Defense Policy Board from 2001 to 2003), Paul Wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense from 200 1 to 2005), Robert Zoellick ( now deputy secretary of state). President Clinton responded to the request by signing the Iraq Liberation Act, for which Congress appropriated $97 million for various clandestine operations inside the borders of Iraq. Two years later , in September 2000, The Project for the New American Century issued a document noting that the unresolved conflict with Iraq pro- vides the immediate justification for the presence of the substantial American force in the Persian Gulf. 31n a subsequent interview on 60 Minutes, Paul ONeill, present in the meeting as the newly appointed secretary of the treasury, remembered being surprised by the degree of certainty: From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go. . .It was all about finding a way to do it. 4 As early as September 20, Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, drafted a memo suggesting that in retaliation for the September 11 attacks the United States should consider hitting terrorists outside the Middle East in the initial offensive, or perhaps deliberately selecting a non-Al-Qaeda target like Iraq. 5 Abstracts of the notes and memoranda, known collectively as The Downing Street Minutes, were published in the Sunday Times ( London) in May 2005; their authen- ticity was undisputed by the British government. 6 The work didnt go unnoticed by people in the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department accustomed to making distinctions between a well-dressed rumor and a naked lie. In the spring of 2004, talking to a reporter from Vanity Fair, Greg Thielmann, the State Department officer responsible for assessing the threats of nuclear proliferation, said, The American public was seriously misled. The Administration twisted, distorted and simplified intelligence in a way that led Americans to seriously misunderstand the nature of the Iraq threat. Im not sure I can think of a worse act against the people in a democracy than a President distorting critical classified information. 7 The Group counted among its copywriters Karl Rove, senior political strategist, An- drew Card, White House chief of staff, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and Lewis Scooter Libby , Dick Cheneys chief of staff. 8 Card later told the New York Times that from a marketing point of view. ..you dont introduce new products in August. 9 Bush confirms Blairs statement, saying, I dont know what more evidence we need. In Vienna, the day before, the IAEA issued a statement saying that there was no such report. 10 Collaborating in what was a team effort between March 2002 and March 2004, various high-ranking administration officials made 237 false or misleading statements (55 of them from President Bush himself) connecting Saddam to Al-Qaeda, exaggerating Iraqs biological and chemical weapons capabilities, misrepresenting Iraqs nuclear activities . 11 Powell occasionally complained about the falsehoods the administration obliged him to tell; a few days before delivering the U.N. speech he mentioned his unhappiness to Cheney, who told him, Your poll numbers are in the seventies, you can afford to lose a few points. 12 The legal precedent for finding a conspiracy to commit fraud against the United States rests on the Supreme Court ruling Hammerschmidt v. United States, which upholds the charge against individuals who obstruct lawful government functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest. It is not necessary that the government shall be subjected to property or pecuniary loss by the fraud, but only that its legitimate official action and purpose shall be defeated by misrepresentation, chicane or the over-reaching of those charged with carrying out the government intention. 13 As of January 17, 2006, the rap sheet listed 2,229 American military dead in Iraq together with an unknown number of Iraqi civilians; what looks to be the sum of $1 trillion, by some estimates $2 trillion, already committed to The Project for the New American Centurys real estate development in the Mesopotamian desert. Better reasons to impeach a president than the one pressed into service against Bill Clinton, whose penis was known to be aimless and shown to be harmless . 14 By the second week in January a Zogby poll showed a majority of Americans (52-43 percent) favoring impeachment of the President if he were to be found entangled in the coils of illegal surveillance; a resolution to that effect had been carried out with rousing applause by the city council in Arcata, California; seven other members of the House of Representatives had come forward to co-sponsor Conyerss Resolution 635-Lois Capps (D., Calif.), Sheila Jackson-Lee (D., Tex;), Zoe Lofgren (D., Calif.), Donald Payne (D., N.].), Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), Maxine Waters (D., Calif.), and Lynn Woolsey (D., Calif.). 15 Together with Specter, two prominent Republican senators called for congressional hearings on the matter of the NSAs spying program, Chuck Hagel (Nebr.) and Olympia Snowe (Maine); seven others expressed serious misgivings-Richard Lugar (Ind.), Susan Collins (Maine), Sam Brownback (Kans.), John Sununu (N .H.), Larry Craig (Idaho), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), John McCain (Ariz.) . Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: libertarianbob01 (#0)
He is sure right there. Why didn't he care about Clintons abuses though. Rings kind of hollow.
There are no replies to Comment # 1. End Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest |
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|