by Dave Lindorff
The largely unstated word at the massive anti-war demonstration and march in Washington on Saturday was “impeachment.†Not that it wasn’t on demonstrators’ lips and signs, but it wasn’t coming from the podium.
The march, organized by United for Peace and Justice, was instead deliberately focused narrowly on the issue of ending the war in Iraq and preventing an invasion of Iran. But clearly, behind that was the sense that the US government is in the hands of a cabal of warmongers and anti-democratic usurpers who are intent on broadening the war in the Middle East, not ending it , and that the Democrats in the 110th Congress haven’t got the spine to stop them (a group from Seattle actually addressed this with a giant white spine float emblazoned with the words “investigate, impeach, indictâ€).
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the new head of the House Judiciary Committee, was a late addition to the roster of speakers at the rally on the National Mall. He told the cheering throng that while Bush may have been “firing the generals who tell him that we’re losing the war in Iraq,†he “can’t fire you.†Then he added, in a none-too-veiled hint that impeachment may be coming, “But we can fire him!â€
The crowd went wild, with chants of “Impeach him!â€
The stage has been set.
Bush and Cheney have
stated publicly that they will not be swayed by the November election,
or by polls or demonstrations, all making it clear that the vast
majority of Americans want the Iraq War ended quickly. They have thrown
down the gauntlet saying that they will ignore any Congressional
resolution condemning the escalation of American involvement in Iraq.
They have made it clear by sending a Naval armada to the Persian Gulf
and by their threatening statements, that they are getting ready to
attack Iran despite universal international opposition and warnings
from military experts that it would be a disaster.
There is really only one way to stop the madness: impeachment.
Investigations into administration wrongdoing won’t do it.
Demonstrations won’t do it.
Critics of impeachment, especially among the Democratic leadership, and
even some progressive Democrats, say it is too soon. They say, with an
excess of caution, that the first step should be investigations.
This is a misunderstanding, or a deliberate distortion, of what the impeachment process is.
The impeachment process itself begins with investigations. To argue that first a case for impeachment has to be proved before
a bill of impeachment should be submitted in the House is akin to
saying that a case of murder must be proved before an indictment can be
brought. In fact, the proper procedure, laid out by the Founding
Fathers, is for a member of Congress to submit a bill of impeachment
claiming that the president has violated his oath of office, or has
engaged in actions that threaten the Constitution or the rule of law.
That bill goes to the House Judiciary Committee which must decide
whether the bill makes a serious enough charge to warrant going to the
full House to request the establishment of an Impeachment Committee,
armed with subpoena power, to investigate. (Alternatively, of course, a
state’s legislature can submit a joint resolution calling for
impeachment, which may happen soon.)
Should a majority of the
House vote to impanel the Judiciary Committeee as an Impeachment
Committee, that is when the investigation would begin in ernest—a
process we saw in action twice in recent memory, first in the case of
Richard Nixon, and second with Bill Clinton.
In Bush’s case, there is ample evidence already in the public record to
justify multiple bills of impeachment. Just to name a few, we know:
em>* A federal judge has ruled, after hearing evidence from both
sides, that President Bush violated the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA), a felony, and the Fourth Amendment of the
Constitution by authorizing warrantless monitoring of the
communications of American citizens.
em>* The president violated the US Criminal Code and the Geneva
Conventions by both authorizing torture of prisoners in captivity, and
by failing to act to prevent and to punish torture when it was brought
to his attention.
em>* The president has abused his power by assuming legislative
powers to invalidate duly passed acts of Congress through his issuance
of so-called “signing statementsâ€â€”a process not even mentioned by the
Constitution, which assigns “all legislative authority†to the
Congress.
On these and a number of other issues, there is really no need for
investigations at all. The crimes against the Constitution are obvious,
blatant and self-evident. (And in the case of NSA spying, are actually
laid out in a federal judge’s opinion.)
All that is lacking at this point, is a principled, courageous and patriotic House leadership to initiate the process.
To hear a presentation of the full case for impeachment against the
president, and against some of the key members of the administration,
including Cheney, Gonzales and Rice, check out the new release of a
video, “The Case for Impeachment,†by Squeaky Wheel
Productions,available at:
a href="http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=apfnorg">The Case for Impeachment
(Be sure and pass this link on to everyone you know, and to your congressional representative!).
*ED NOTE: Since I have been received a rather caustic email by the the alleged photographer - I have chosen to remove the photograph in question (which I placed with the article - not Lindorff). Though we progressives may have our differences - I thought we were in the battle together... but anyway.
Here's a word of advice - if you don't want your images reproduced elsewhere on the net - then it's not a good idea to publish them without watermarks, using a pseudonymn on one of the Internet's largest public Internet forums. It's difficult to contact someone without having their real name and email address.
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