President Barack Obama should be impeached for approving air strikes against Libya, Rep. Dennis Kucinich said in an interview Monday. “President Obama moved forward without Congress approving,” the liberal Ohio Democrat told Raw Story. “He didn’t have congressional authorization, he has gone against the Constitution, and that’s got to be said.” Several other members of Congress have also chastised the Obama administration for not doing enough to sell the intervention to Congress, let alone to the American people.
Kucinich went a bit further in his Monday remarks than he did over the weekend when, as POLITICO reported, he questioned why the U.S. strikes weren’t impeachable offenses while on a Democratic Caucus conference call.
Obama’s decision “would appear on its face to be an impeachable offense,” though he conceded in the interview that he’s unsure whether Congress would move ahead on a trial. Kucinich wanted to impeach former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney for their roles in leading the United States into war in Iraq and for their oversight of the conduct of the war, but was blocked by Democratic leadership.
“Now, it doesn’t necessarily follow that simply because a president has committed an impeachable offense, that the process should start to impeach and remove him,” he said. “That’s a whole separate question. But we have to clearly understand what this Constitution is about.”
