Anyone who thinks they have all the Answers before they've even heard the Question - is Dangerously Deluded! Real Truth Requires Vigilance, Perseverance and Courage, regardless of Party and who wields Power. Left, Right, Center, Corporations, Government, Unions, Criminals or the Indifferent.
There is a dramatic and growing split between rank and file Democrats (particularly those of an activist bent such as those on DKos or DU) and Democratic politicians in Washington who have basically placed Impeachment "Off the Table." Many Democrats have been frustrated and even outraged by this - but have they truly listened to the reasons why?
Nancy Pelosi: I made a decision a few years ago, or at least one year ago, that impeachment was something that we could not be successful with and that would take up the time we needed to do some positive things to establish a record of our priorities and their short-comings,
Pelosi statement here alludes to a point of mine, which bears repeating.
Impeachment and Removal, though frankly necessary, is not yet a possibility except as a pointless exercise in vainglory. Just as failed subpoenas have further emboldened the rampant lawlessness of this Presidency, a failed Impeachment Vote or even a failure to Remove in the Senate would make Bush nigh unto a God. All powerful. Unstoppable.
Senator Feingold, who at one point stood virtually alone on the issue of Censure, has also tamped down Impeachment Expectations in his own DKos Diary
I believe that the President and Vice President may well have committed impeachable offenses. But with so many important issues facing this country and so much work to be done, I am concerned about the great deal of time multiple impeachment trials would take away from the Congress working on the problems of the country. The time it would take for the House to consider articles of impeachment, and for the Senate to conduct multiple trials, would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for Congress to do what it was elected to do – end the war and address some of the other terrible mistakes this Administration has made over the past six and a half years.
Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold wrote a diary on this site recently...a smoke screen for why he was being a wimp and not taking the will of the people with him when he had to vote on the get-out-of-Iraq bill. He wanted HIS cake and to eat it, too.
At issue was a motion by Senator Robert Byrd (D - W.V.) to dismiss all charges against the President. The vote was 44 to 56. 44 Democrats voted yes. 55 Republicans and one Democrat voted no.
55 Republicans. And one Democrat. Just one. Russ Feingold.
Regardless of whether you feel that Feingold is either gutless or some form of hypocrite, it should be noted that he does have a point when he essentially says there are bigger fish to fry than Bush.
There is for example, The War Occupation.
This week the Senate staged a dramatic All-Nighter in an attempt to break a Republican Filibuster over an Iraq Redeployment Timetable. Despite several hints that Republicans such as Pete Dominici, George Voinovich, John Warner, Olympia Snowe, Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar just might be willing to finally budge and break with the President on Iraq - only Senators Snowe, Hagel, Susan Collins and Gordon Smith actually did by voting to end the Filibuster against Levin-Reed.
(It should also be noted that the only Democrat voting against ending the Filibuster - was Harry Reid for procedural reasons so that he could bring the measure up again in the future. And of course, Lieberman.)
Even if these 8 Republican Senators, including Collins and Smith, have all made it to the fence and just might bolt this upcoming September - it's still not quite enough to have the Veto Proof Super-Majority they need to override the President on Iraq - but it's close.
Four Republicans jumped the Shark, after the August recess and Reid's tabling of the measure until September - even more are likely, but what remains to be seen is whether it will be enough?
Getting our soldiers out of the shooting gallery that Iraq has become, while stepping up efforts to renew diplomacy between the various tribal factions, not through the ineffectual Iraqi Parliament but rather through the means of a Diplomatic Summit with all concerned parties, including Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia who seem to be provider the bulk of foreign fighters needs to be our primary focus.
The delicate issues of Shia revenge for the brutal rule of Saddam, the impending Sunni Genocide and how these issues affect Iran (which is largely Shia) and the Saudis (who are largely Sunni) need to be address in a regional context, yet President Bush (or rather Darth Cheney) won't even allow the State Dept to engage with all the major players in the region.
Meanwhile the Iraqi parliament inches ever closer to voting for Withdrawal Authority on it's own.
One way or another, in the next two months there will be a showdown and his War will very likely begin to come to a close.
But what if, instead, the Senate was in the midsts of a heated Impeachment Trial?
How likely would it be that Senate Democrats would be able to peel off the three or four more votes they need for a successful veto override and begin to ramp down our involvement in Iraq, if they were embroiled in a pitched battle over removing President Bush?
And more importantly, how close would the effort to remove Bush be to succeeding?
At this point in time, not very likely.
Although many of us, including Senator Feingold, might agree that there have been many activities for which either Bush or Cheney could possibly be Impeached - we have yet to find and reveal a truly smoking gun that leads directly to the President and Vice President as deliberately subverting their constitutional obligations in the way that the Nixon Tapes did 30 years ago and led to approval of Three Articles of Impeachment by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974.
Just look at a sample from Article 1, the Obstruction of Justice charges against Nixon.
making false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States;
withholding relevant and material evidence or information from lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States;
approving, condoning, acquiescing in, and counseling witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States and false or misleading testimony in duly instituted judicial and congressional proceedings;
interfering or endeavouring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional Committees;
approving, condoning, and acquiescing in, the surreptitious payment of substantial sums of money for the purpose of obtaining the silence or influencing the testimony of witnesses, potential witnesses or individuals who participated in such unlawful entry and other illegal activities;
endeavouring to misuse the Central Intelligence Agency, an agency of the United States;
disseminating information received from officers of the Department of Justice of the United States to subjects of investigations conducted by lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States, for the purpose of aiding and assisting such subjects in their attempts to avoid criminal liability;
making or causing to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States into believing that a thorough and complete investigation had been conducted with respect to allegations of misconduct on the part of personnel of the executive branch of the United States and personnel of the Committee for the Re-election of the President, and that there was no involvement of such personnel in such misconduct: or
endeavouring to cause prospective defendants, and individuals duly tried and convicted, to expect favoured treatment and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony, or rewarding individuals for their silence or false testimony.
And more from Article 2, all of which are based on actions personally taken by Nixon himself, or specifically directed his subordinates to take.
He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.
He misused the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, and other executive personnel, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens, by directing or authorizing such agencies or personnel to conduct or continue electronic surveillance or other investigations for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; he did direct, authorize, or permit the use of information obtained thereby for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; and he did direct the concealment of certain records made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of electronic surveillance.
He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens, authorized and permitted to be maintained a secret investigative unit within the office of the President, financed in part with money derived from campaign contributions, which unlawfully utilized the resources of the Central Intelligence Agency, engaged in covert and unlawful activities, and attempted to prejudice the constitutional right of an accused to a fair trial.
He has failed to take care that the laws were faithfully executed by failing to act when he knew or had reason to know that his close subordinates endeavoured to impede and frustrate lawful inquiries by duly constituted executive, judicial and legislative entities concerning the unlawful entry into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, and the cover-up thereof, and concerning other unlawful activities including those relating to the confirmation of Richard Kleindienst as Attorney General of the United States, the electronic surveillance of private citizens, the break-in into the offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, and the campaign financing practices of the Committee to Re-elect the President.
In disregard of the rule of law, he knowingly misused the executive power by interfering with agencies of the executive branch, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Criminal Division, and the Office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, of the Department of Justice, and the Central Intelligence Agency, in violation of his duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
Although similar allegations could be (and have been) lodged against President Bush (Article 3 addressed Nixon's attempts to avoid Congressional subpoenas, much like Bush has done but in Nixon's case - thanks to the White House taping system - there was conclusive proof that his use of executive priviledge to dodge these subpoenas was false. We do not have similar proof of this in Bush's case, yet...), in many ways these actions were carried out by surrogates such as Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, Andrew Card, Kyle Sampson or Monica Goodling - not by Bush personally.
Until we have conclusive proof that Bush specifically authorized these actions (and that what he has authorized is clearly illegal and has withstood all appeals and arguments to the contrary - unlike the NSA Case and the Plame Suit), what we have (so far) is essentially nothing. Meanwhile Bush is doing his best to ensure that it stays that way be invoking Executive Privilege whenever, and wherever he can up to and including attempts to block implementation of Contempt of Congress charges against Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers.
Based on the current conclusive evidence, or lack thereof, the we currently have against Bush - any attempt to Impeach him would fail miserably.
There's even a likelihood that it wouldn't even get through the House, let alone full removal in the Senate.
Some (on Dkos) have argued strenuously that this is a "false dichotomy", that the War will only end with the end of the Bush Presidency, and they may have a point there. The problem is that right now the chances and slim and nil that we will get the 67 votes needed to Remove Bush in the Senate. Pushing forward on Impeachment without sufficient evidence to bring forward those votes will be seen as nothing more than partisan pay-back for Clinton in 1998, Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004, and also that the effort is just as likely to harden Republicans even further against compromise on Iraq. The result in this case would be "Lose - Lose." You may have an Impeachment, but you wouldn't change the course in Iraq or Remove anyone from office. That's not acceptable to me. If we play this game, we should be playing to win.
There are those who would argue, and I would tend to agree, that the Bush Administration has been nothing short of a massive criminal enterprise which has defrauded and abuses the American Public on issues ranging from Election Fraud, to Environmentalism, War Crimes, Torture, Pseudo-Science, Exploiting Terrorism, Disaster Relief Failures to just plain common-sense, and that failing to have a serious and severe accounting for this rampant misconduct will leave a permanent stain on our nation. It will give a blueprint and carte-blanche for continued abuse of power to any future President - including President Hillary Clinton - making them a virtual Dictator, a High Overlord in a nation of serfs.
I would contend that this situation will be made even more dire if Impeachment is attempted and fails, because if it fails it will do so because either a majority in the House or at least 38 Senators will have openly endorsed and legitimized the concepts behind the "Unitary Executive" and permenently reduced the power of Congress. Once that happens there will be no real way to deter any future President from exploiting similar theories of neo-dictatorship. None.
The Bush Administration must be held accountable for his crimes against the American Public - unfortunately, it probably won't happen this year and possibly not the next. But holding him accountable doesn't mean that the Bush-wacker himself personally has to be the one to go under the bus - it just might happen to be Gonzo who might wither under the Impeachment Lamp after both Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten have spent some quality time in the House Jail for Inherent Contempt.
It would be a powerful symbolic visual to have the House Sargent at Arms marching up and arresting Miers and Bolten, then holding them until they either crack and squeal the way Judith Miller did, or simply rot until the end of Bush's term. That would be good enough for me - if we are also able to End the Occupation of Iraq in the bargain.
Bush himself, isn't that important as Nancy Pelosi has stated.
and the President is... ya know what I say? The President isn’t worth it... he’s not worth impeaching. We’ve got important work to do...
What is important, is the lawless of the Bush Administration. And taking out those who enable that Administration to function, removing Bush's Pawns one by one - Domino by Domino - just might be the better plan for now. It holds his administration accountable for their actions, but doesn't necessarily bog the Congress down in the time it has remaining with an impossible impeachment trial.
There is of course, the possibility that the only way to End The Iraq Occupation - or prevent an unprovoked attack on Iran - might be to Remove Bush from Office Now, rather than letting him slip out the back door on Jan 20, 2009 - but that's a bridge we won't be crossing until September and the current Defense Authorization Money runs out.
Vyan
P.S. Feingold also has a new pair of Censure Motions Against the President (partially inspired by the criticism he received on Kos) Small steps, but going in the right direction.
And just for the record I understand perfectly, I simply disagree tactically with "Impeach Now" particularly if we actually want to have a successful Conviction and Removal in the Senate.
As of now, that's not gonna happen - but it might in the future if we play our cards carefully.
The first issue is "Impeach Who" exactly?
Just for the record, I think we're only a hair's breath away from Impeaching Gonzales. If the IG investigation of his obstruction with Monica Goodling isn't just a white-wash, and Congress doesn't sit on it's hands with his obvious and repeated perjury before various committees - his ass his grass.
Gonzo needs to be taken out first, that's clear. He's the cock-blocker that's keeping us from establish a a Special Counsel to look into all the other wrong-doings of Bush and Co.
But if you're talking about Impeaching either Bush or Cheney - I think that's simply going to have to wait for a few more months, possible even a year or so until after the above (Removing Gonzales, Implementing a Special Counsel) is accomplished.
(I should note however that with Cheney's little "I'm not in the executive branch" speil while trying to avoid reporting requirements for classified information and today's revelations that he spied on White House Staffers, and set up a secret campaign of Global Warming Denial he just might be gone sooner than Gonzo at this rate. You never can predict these things perfectly.)
buhdydharma said:
It is my contention that these comments come from reading PARTS of impeachment diaries...as well as conflating a FEW poorly reasoned and presented impeach arguments with those of the more responsible impeachment advocates.
Speaking entirely for myself, I didn't write my diary yesterday based on "PARTS" of anything. I've written my own share of Impeachment diaries. To Wit.
The other direct inspiration for my comments yesterday were many of the comments I recieved to my Contempt of Congress Diary from the day before that. Examples:
We need to start impeachment hearings for BOTH Gonzales AND Cheney NOW!
The clock is ticking!
(This I happen to think is a somewhat fair point, the timetable I suggested yesterday would put Impeachment taking place right after the Presidential Primaries in June of '08 - which could be more than a little bit awkward, but if the case is strong and air-tight enough - ultimately that won't matter.)
we are not gonna stop this war in this current term.
However, we CAN establish for posterity formal articles of impeachment, which will put on the record the crimes of the Bush admin.
Such will also reinvigorate our own base.
Such will also shake up the Bushie "I can't recall" defense. And the "executive privilege" defense.
And, it will be during the impeachment hearings themselves where we will discover new & interesting things;
Another poster here astutely said, when Rodino & Dash (of Watergate fame) proceeded to formal impeachment hearings, they never knew beforehand that John Dean would flip or that Butterfield would tell us about the WH taping system.
Rodino & Dash proceeded to formal impeachment hearings of NIXON with a lot LESS stuff than Conyers ALREADY has!
Impeachment isn't the real goal, and neither is removal the real goal;
THE FORMAL DISCOVERY AND FORMAL DOCUMENTATION OF BUSH CRIMES is the real goal!
Oh yeah,
THE NIXON TAPES CAME OUT ONLY AS A RESULT OF FORMAL IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS, WHICH HAD TO FIRST BE HELD!!
My diary yesterday was simply an attempt to consolidate and organize my responses to some of the above comments - particularly the last one since I felt it operated under a historical fallacy.
The simple fact is that the Nixon Tapes came out months before formal impeachment hearings began - so that's clearly an invalid justification to "Impeach Now". I was correcting his (or her) misunderstanding.
Next buhdydharma said:
To reiterate one point that somehow has been constantly and I dare say, maliciously ignored....NO responsible Impeach advocate has suggested that impeachment is not reliant on thorough investigations.
EVER.
We can certainly debate the "responsible" issue, but just from the comments I've quoted some people have indeed made that very suggestion, essentially arguing that we either already have everything we need or it's only through Impeachment proceedings that we can peirce the veil of "executive priveledge" as was noted by this commenter.
Conviction only comes after the evidence. My guess is that if you polled Americans on the question, "would you support the removal of the President if he were found to have committed crimes against the country and the constitution?" an overwhelming majority would say yes.
Impeachment, and impeachment alone, can enable those revelations, because only by impeachment can we cut through "executive privilege" stonewalling. That is why it is urgent and necessary.
The "Executive Priviledge" issue may also be a fair point, but there's more than one way to skin a Bush. We still have some time left to let the court battle over that issue resolve itself.
And, in point of fact, a very similar question to the one suggested by that commenter was asked by an LA Times Bloomberg Poll last April.
"If George W. Bush broke the law when he authorized government agencies to use electronic surveillance to monitor American citizens without a court warrant, do you think that is an impeachable offense, or not an impeachable offense?"
All Adults IS 36% IS NOT 56%
Democrats IS 53% IS NOT 36%
Republicans IS 17% IS NOT 80%
Independants IS 37% IS NOT 53%
"Democratic Congressman John Conyers has called for creation of a committee to look into impeaching Bush and removing him from office. Do you think Congress should or should not impeach Bush and remove him from office?"
Should 33% Should Not 66%
Not exactly the stunning results one would expect, eh?
The point here is that the case for Impeachment has not even begun to be made yet (and the MSM isn't helping since they've hardly ever bothered to poll on the question since last year!) Congress has yet to find the "smoking gun" that would make the case complete in Bush's case.
Then buhdydharma said:
Point two, and the one that has been highlighted recently....NO ONE expects Nancy Pelosi to read an impeachment diary and suddenly throw up her hands and throw her own assessment, her own read of the politics and her common sense to the wind because of an impeachment diary on Dkos....and immediately start proceedings!
Well, of course not... but - and this is big but - we do have to hope that we, in our own small way, can have an impact on policy. These diaries aren't neccesarily written specifically for legislators - we write them primarily for each other. To help ourselves negotiate and develop activist action plans, build marching orders and implement them.
Nancy Pelosi may not read a specific Impeachment Diary, but many of us will and then get on the phone and call her office at (202) 225-0100...
Or write her a letter at
Office of the Speaker H-232, US Capitol Washington, DC 20515
Or post on her blog The Gavel and let her know what you think directly.
Secondly, my issue isn't with Speaker Pelosi doing "something against her better judgement" - I personally was more concerned with the level of growing impatience, cynicism and frustration that was clearly evident when Congress failed to override Bush's Veto of the Troop Redeployment plan and choose to Punt Until September, at which point I wrote Don't Panic to point out that despite Kucinich and Edwards' posturing Dems had no more viable options until they were able to gain more Republican support. As Dana Milbank pointed out that evening on Countdown they didn't even have the requisite 60 votes to re-submit the vetoed bill again It was D.O.A. Time for Plan B.
This is what I don't want to see continue. We need to stay in this fight for the long haul, we can't afford to let cynicism and defeatism push us out of the public sphere as an activist force.
I was speaking to US - not them (Congress).
Then buhdydharma said:
Demanding impeachment on Dkos WILL NOT make it happen. To think we don't know that is ridiculous and as I have said, insulting. So instead of thinking all impeachment advocates are idiots, try taking a second to ask what our strategy and thinking actually is!
On this point I actually completely disagree. Demanding that Congress change - via DKOS and other outlets - DID MAKE IT HAPPEN. Oh sure, the Repubs did a lot to help what with the Abramov, The Dukester, The Foley Follies and Maccaca Man. But we helped keep those stories alive and kicking GOP Ass.
It not so much a matter of "demanding" but of making consistent persuasive arguements which gradually change the mind of others progressives, and those people tell two people.. and they tell two people... and eventually you have a groundswell that Congress can't possibly ignore.
BUT... my point remains that although we should absolutely be pushing for Impeachment, since there are literally hundreds of good reasons for it, we Don't have to kick a gift horse like possible Contempt of Congress Charges in the Mouth simply because the issue isn't moving fast enough for our tastes.
Patience is not Appeasement!
There's a huge difference between Impeaching Now... and Impeaching with the intent of Winning in the Senate and Removing Bush (and Cheney) from Office. I know many people don't believe that can be done - but I can tell you one thing, it sure as shit won't get done if we don't even try to visualize it.
To me: Impeachment's Too GOOD For 'em, they need to be Removed.
We may or may not get there, but Removal should be the goal.
There are two primary reasons for this 1) We are not going to end the Iraq Occupation while Bush is still President, he'll go down to the last gasp of his Administration on Jan 19th 2009 still clutching Baghdad in his cold dead fingers and 2) We are not going to send a serious message to all future Presidents that the type of blatant lawlessness and arrogance that this Adminstration has perpetrated Will Not Be Tolerated by this nation or we risk Permenent Damage to The Rule of Law - unless we Impeach, Remove and hopefully Convict!
If we don't reign these fuckers in - and I mean Hard - there is literally nothing to stop it from happening again, and again and again. Just listen to Mitt Romney "I would open Two Guantanemos" - or listen to Guiliani whose practically ready to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran. Or McCain...
"Bomb bomb bomb.. bomb bomb I..."
This shit has to be stopped cold.
These guys are too irresponsible to be trusted with the family car, let alone the country. The Authoritarian Dickheads who've totally hijacked the GOP have to know that they can't get away with it. Ever.
On every other point made by buhdydharma I completely agree.
I don't think or expect that Nancy Pelosi will become President even if somehow my best case scenario does manage to pan out and both Shooter and Bushie are removed. Most likely we'll wind up with a limp Senate-safe "Ford II" regent to ride out the demise of Bushco. It simply wouldn't be appropriate to make this issue into a partisan coup.
That's not what it's about.
(Although in full disclosure it hasn't stopped me from making a "President Pelosi '07" T-Shirt Design just for the fun of it.)
Anyway....
I stand in solidarity with buhdydharma on the point that we need to address these issues wisely and strategically. We need to be strong, DKOS Strong, learn to handle the setbacks and contain ourselves from lashing out at our own side when they're honestly paddling as fast as they can through the morass of obstruction and that our government was designed to be.
A government that works too quickly, works rashly. Isn't that exactly what we saw under the Republican Congress as they passed bills in the middle of the night and decided to stop doing the entire country's business to invervene in the health decisions of one lone florida woman in a hospice?
I was not intending to shout-down those who feel passionate about Impeachment, or to discourage them from speaking out and letting people know how they feel - rather I sought to re-assure them that "Yes, brother - look at what Conyers is doing - and recognize that It is good"
Yeah, verily.
Contempt of Congress is for Today.
Impeachment (of Gonzales) is for Tommorrow (or in the next fwe weeks)
Cheney and Bush have a few months before it's their turn.
I know that this pack of rabid criminals running the White House and the Government have got you hopping mad with ignoring Richard Clark, ignoring the Cole, ignoring the PDB, ignoring the attempted invervention on Rice and the Crawford One-on-One with Tenet on Osama, Yellowcake, no al-Qaeda in Iraq, trumped up links between Saddam and 9-11, ignoring the insurgency, ignoring the Iraqi People, ignoring Afghanistan, Body Armor, Abu Ghraib, Tora Bora, Gitmo, revoking Habeaus Corpus, the Katrina aftermath, ignoring both Fact and Science on climate change and stem cells, the Voter Caging, Freedom Fries, the midnight ride to Terry Schiavo's hospice, the Domestic Spying, The NSL's, outing Valerie Plame-Wilson, Diebold, Abramov, Safavian, Guckert, the "fucking faith-based thing", the midnight ride to Ashcroft's bedside, the Partisan Purging of DOJ and Civic Rights Division, Walter Reed, the Cheney Branch of Government and most of all -- the endless lies and bullcrap about all the above.
But take deep breath say these words with me.
"It's not time to Impeach, not yet."
This diary is directly squarely at the Impeach First, Ask questions later crowd.
And I'm sure "Ok, smart-guy - why not?" is what many of you are saying right now.
Unfortunately the answer isn't simple, so bear with me - but the main problem is the fact that Bush hasn't been caught red-handed yet.
Just yesterday I posted a rec'd Dkos diary on the Contempt of Congress motion being brought forward by John Conyers judiciary committee. That news was met here, at the Impeachment Captial of the Web, with a great deal of skeptism and frustration. It was too weak, too timid. Yet I think that objectively Conyers is doing exactly what he needs to do and shouldn't jump the gun all the way to drawing up articles of Impeachment against Bush because of one simple fact.
There was even a Defense Argument by Major Danby posted against my many and various charges to which I submitted a Rebuttal and then rested my case.
Back then we didn't have majority control of congress. Impeachment was an abstraction. A wishful dream. Now Dems do have control and many of us are getting quite upset at the "lack of progress" so far - many of us are ready to throw up our hands in frustration at the inaction of the Congress Critters.
Congress's approval rating is even lower than the President's and that's saying something - but what it says isn't good.
I understand this frustration, really I do, but the fact is that things are going exactly as they should.
Back then I was speaking generally, and including the idea of Impeaching Rumsfeld (who was still in office) as well as Gonzales and Cheney, but now I'm just focusing on Bush himself and in my view it simply isn't his time yet.
Oh, we thought we had him with the Downing Street Minutes, but not quite because you see - "fixing the facts around the policy" were the words of various British ministers who were quoting (apparently) the words of Tenet and Rice, but not Bush.
We thought we had him with Downing Street II, when it was revealed that Bush had admitted to Blair that it didn't matter whether Saddam had WMD's or not, he was invading anyway.
Unfortunately, being an F-inking Liar to the press and the American people isn't a criminal offense and so far isn't Impeachable.
And I don't care what Arlen Specter says about there being a law against "False Official Statements" (something he's mentioned several times in relation to Alberto Gonzales) - there isn't one. That term refers to a set of Military Regs, and could lead to a court-martial for members of the military who lie on official documentation, but it doesn't exist in criminal law.
So yes, he lied about not planning to fire Rumsfeld - annoying - but not Impeachable.
Going Count by Count...
Intelligence Fraud : Much of the real mischief took place far downstream from Bush. It happened with Douglas Feith who stovepiped and cooked intelligence while the DIA kept vital info such as the real facts about al-Libby and Curveball hidden and Cheney kept pressing the Niger-Yellowcake story alive despite 14 different skeptical rebuttals. That's a hit on the "Rumsfeld and Cheney Cabal" as Lawrence Wilkerson has described it - but not Bush.
Domestic Espionage: This issue remains on appeal after Judge Anne Diggs-Taylor's viciously pointed ruling on the NSA wire-tapping programs. She did declare that It was a crime one which we know has been specifically authorized and implemented by Bush personally - but we don't yet know what the appeals courts will say and whether they Supremes will back Diggs-Taylor or not.
There is also the fact that a FISA Judge has since signed off on the program, which again makes the issue largely moot - for now.
Except for the Midnight Ride to Ashcroft's bed which is a new revelation and may open up direct links both to breaking the law, since that version of the NSA program was found to be illegal by the DOJ - and was temporarily implemented by the White House anyway over the objections and threats to resign by Ashcroft and Comey. Gonzo is looking at perjury for his false Congressional testimony - but, we still don't yet have any direct links to Bush other than his making the phone call to Ashcroft's wife indicating that Card and Gonzo were "heading over". Who exactly made the decision to override the DOJ has not yet been revealed.
War Crimes: This mostly leads back to Gonzales' advice and attempts to circumvent Geneva by trumping up this "Enemy Combatants" pseudo status nonesense - and to Rumsfeld for authorizing interrogation techniques outside the Army Field Manual guidelines. Bush has been an accessory after the fact, but it's largely their crime.
Criminal Negligence: Last year I argued for Impeachment in the wake of Katrina, the failure to respond to 9-11 warnings, the deteriorating situation in Iraq and Bush's abuse of Signing Statements. Unfortunately Bush was far from the only one who totally fucked-up in these situations. Ample blame can and will be thrown at Ray Nagin, Kathleen Blanco, Rumseld, Tommy Franks, Colin Powell, George Tenet and others. The legal basis for Bush's use of signing statements has not been challenged or verified either way. Again annoying, probably extra-constitutional - but not illegal, yet.
All the above is very different from what actually occured in either Nixon's case or Clinton's impeachment - they were both busted cold.
The Paula Jones Story and suit broke while Clinton was running for President in 1992, it didn't metastisize into a full-blown disaster until six years later in 1998 when Clinton was caught in carefully crafted perjury trap during his deposition and further pummelled during in his Grand Jury testimony. It was his own words under oath that got him into trouble, not the actions of anyone else.
Nixon's near impeachment was a different story, but it was still his own words that did the trick. It also took quite a long while find out what those words actually were.
The Watergate Break-In took place in June of 1972, all five burglars were tried and convicted by January of 1973 for breaking and entering. It was a minor little case, until one of the burglars wrote a letter to the presiding judge.
In March 1973, James McCord, one of the convicted burglars, wrote a letter to Sirica charging a massive coverup of the burglary. His letter transformed the affair into a political scandal of unprecedented magnitude.
With the help of Mark Felt (Deep Throat) Woodward and Bernstein at the WaPo as well as Senate investigators began to slowly unravel exactly what McCord's letter was really talking about.
All the witnesses rallied around the president, until in June of 1973 John Dean testified - and gasp - told the truth!
But that didn't break open the floodgates, it just made Nixon circle that wagons even tighter. Dean was written off as a kook.
The story was over.
A month later in July the existence of the White House taping system was revealed during congressional testimony by Alexander Butterfield. Congress subpoened the tapes which led to Nixon trying to fight those subpoenas with the Saturday Night Massacre on October 20, 1973 having Robert Bork fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox when Attorney General Elliot Richardson refused to drop the axe himself.
This move is what turned the Republicans against Nixon - before they or anyone else even knew what was really on the tapes. Eventually Nixon complied with the subpoena and after people heard the tapes and their transcripts in April of 1974 it was all over but the shouting.
But here's the kicker...
Impeachment proceedings against Nixon didn't begin until May 9th of 1974 almost one year after Dean's initial testimony and almost two years after the initial break-in.
We haven't yet had anyone stand up and truly spill the beans the way John Dean did in 1973 or Fawn Hall and Ollie North did in 1986. We haven't yet found the smoking gun tape, a piece of evidence which specifically points to crimes by Bush himself. We haven't had a Saturday Night Massacre - all because many people in the current administration were there during Watergate [as well as] Iran-Contra and they are specifically trying to avoid getting caught in the same way.
When it does happen, it probably going to be from something we haven't anticipated yet.
So with all this in mind, what I have to say to the IMPEACH NOW people is ... calm down and have a bit more patience.
We're going the right direction, and we're right on schedule - at this point we're looking at a constitutional showdown on the contempt of congress charges by late summer/early winter. Either Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton are going to court (and prison) or we're going to get the the truth in detail early next year - possibly both - just in time for fabulous mid 2008 Summer Impeachment and Removal Trial Extravoganza! .
Don't forget to bring the hot-dogs and the charcoal.
In the meantime, rather than obsessing over Bush - let's focus on Gonzo, 1) he's already in major criminal jeopardy and 2) he's the gatekeeper on access to yummy Special Counsel goodness.
Once we get a real dogged SC on the case, all bets are off the table.
As would be appropriate in an actual Impeachment Trial - Major Danby has posted a "Defense Against Impeachment" arguement that is quite thorough and cogent as should be expected in any case of this level of seriousness.
I never had any expection that Impeachment would be easy, if I beleived so I wouldn't have started writing the series - I felt that we needed a "roadmap" to pull most of the issues as we understand them now, before the 110th Congress begins it's investigations.
In this diary I take my turn providing a Prosecutorial Rebutal to the arguements of the Defense in order to bring the series to an appropriate close.
Let The Court of Truth be Now in Session. You are now the Jury.
Opening Statement by the Defense.
The overarching observation I begin with is that you impeach a person, not an administration. Every attempt at Presidential impeachment (and to my knowledge, all others) begins with the President voluntarily taking an action that he knew or should have known was wrong.
* Andrew Johnson intentionally provoked a Constitutional Crisis by firing Sec. Seward in contravention of the Tenure in Office Act, which he believed was unconstitutional. (Rightly, the Supreme Court later held.) * Richard Nixon intentionally ordered that hush money be paid for people who had committed a burglary and committed espionage on behalf of his campaign. * Bill Clinton was intentionally misleading (if not actually lying) under oath in his deposition regarding a civil case in which he was a defendant. (Yes, what he did wasn't technically illegal -- and to my mind not nearly impeachable -- but there was no doubt that he knew the truth and intended to conceal it for his own gain.)
I clearly agree the Impeachment relates to individuals, not an entire Administration - however what I was alluding to through-out my entire Impeachment Series was the fact that Congress has to be ability to not only Impeach the President, they can also Impeach the Vice-President or members of the Cabinet.
On the issue what a potential Impeachment target "should have known" - I do not agree that President Clinton should have known that his unwillingness to divulge information that he wasn't really asked - was "wrong". A lifetime ago I wrote my own rebuttal to the Starr Report. The Charges against Clinton were based on Perjury, Witness Tampering and Obstruction of Justice.
Allegation #2 reads as follows:
In his civil deposition, to support his false statement about the sexual relationship, President Clinton also lied under oath about being alone with Ms. Lewinsky and about the many gifts exchanged between Ms. Lewinsky and him.
The primary problem with this allegation was the Clinton didn't claim he wasn't ever alone with Monica Lewinsky - he admitted that he was and gave examples of when that could have occured such as
"A... when she worked at the legislative affairs office, they always had somebody there on the weekends. I typically worked some on the weekends. Sometimes they'd bring me things on the weekends. She – it seems to me she brought things to me once or twice on the weekends."
Q. So I understand, your testimony is that it was possible, then, that you were alone with her, but you have no specific recollection of that ever happening?
A. Yes, that's correct. It's possible that she, in, while she was working there, brought something to me and that at the time she brought it to me, she was the only person there. That's possible.
Certainly there was more to the story, the problem is that the they didn't ask him about it during the Jones deposition. His failure to volunteer additional information that he wasn't asked is not a "wrong" act on his behalf.
Back to the current President, almost.
So I take it as a given that we need to find similar personal knowledge, in advance of a crime, on Bush's part. Otherwise we may end up in the situation that we did with Iran-Contra where the investigation could not show that Reagan himself ever quite connected the dots -- due to his own incuriousity and feeble thinking -- to see that actions he ordered (or at least acquiesced to) were illegal. And that didn't work out so well.
In Iran-Contra many of the subordinates involved chose to "fall on the sword" and protect the President through plausible deniability and by lying to Congress. But Reagan did eventually admit wrong-doing.
Reagan's admission in March 1987 that "it was a mistake" to trade weapons for hostages was what saved his reputation, according to Cannon.
Reagan said at the time, "A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
As far as I'm concerned Iran-Contra worked out fine - because it resulted in changing the President's behavior and sending several criminals to jail, at least until Federalist Society Judges overturned the various perjury and contempt of Congress convictions that had been given to various Reagan Administration Officials.
The minimum requirements for fraud are that you (1) intentionally (2) represent to someone else (3) that something is true, (4) when it is not true and (5) when you know is not true, intending that (6) they will take some action (7) that benefits you.
1. PNAC wanted to "invade." Arguably relevant to "motive," but "motive" isn't at issue here.
2. Bush said he wanted to invade Iraq "if I have the chance." Pretty much irrelevant to impeachment. The question is whether he did it by illegal means. If I want a Mercedes, and later you see me driving one, that doesn't mean that I stole it.
Actually "motive" is at issue here - since it statisfies requirement (7). In this case the benefit that Bush would have received by invading Iraq is exactly as he stated - he stated that he would gain political capital, and be better able to implement his legislative agenda.
3. About yellowcake: (a) Bush never said that the yellowcake story was true, but that the British government believed it to be true (so element (3) of the crime is not satisfied);
It's clear that by mentioning the issue during his state of the union Bush was expressing that he believed the story, not what the British Government believed. If he believe something different from what the British believed - it was incumbent upon him to make the distinction. He did not, instead he said:
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
This is not a statement of what the British government believed, "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" is stated as a fact, not an opinion of the British. Add to that his statments during the Cincinnati speech.
The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists.
He would be - Kim Jong-Il?
None of these statements were true, and there was ample information available in the State Dept, Energy Dept, IAEA, CIA and DIA to refute all of it prior to October 2002. Further the NIE stated that the Niger claim was "highly dubious" and as a result references to it were removed from the Cincinnati speech, it also said it was highly unlikely that even if Saddam Hussein possesed WMD's that he would use them unless he was provoked. So naturally, Bush provoked him.
(b) the questionable acts described are those of his advisors -- note where Vyan quotes people saying "*they* put it back in, they preferred to perpetuate a lie" (so element (1) isn't satisfied, and remember that you can't impeach the administration, just the man);
As stated above, you can Impeachment individual members of the Administration. In this case the target(s) - exempting those who've already resigned - would be Cheney and members of his staff such as Scooter Libby, Stephan Hadley and Donald Rumsfeld who were all heavily involved in what Wilkerson describes as "The Cabal".
The ultimate question though is whether Bush himself was a willing member of the "Cabal" or simply improperly served by those beneath him. I think the answer to this is found in several places.
Bush was personally briefed by George Tenet and chose to ignore the information provided by Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri - that Iraq no longer had WMD in September of 2002. This was before the Cincinnati speech, before the passage of the Iraq Force Resolution and cleary before the 2003 SOTU.
European CIA Chief Tyler Drumheller was told "Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme.
And speaking of manufacturing a fraud...
Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of "flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours". Mr Bush added: "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]".
Defense Continued...
(3) so there's no evidence on record to show that Bush himself did not believe the story to be true or, more to the point, that he believed it was not true (as opposed to, say, mostly but not entirely proven) based on his advisors' representations, (so element (5) of the crime is not met).
According to the record he didn't care whether it was true or not. Bush was willing to paint as US plane as if it was a from UN on the hopes that Saddam would fire on it and prove that he had broken UN sanctions. That suggestion statisfies all 7 elements of criminal fraud right there. According to Downing Street - the policy had already been set in July of 2002, long before the President's State of the Union or Colin Powell's UN speech. From that point foward it was a matter of "selling the war" - not finding out the truth.
4. Most of the other things "they" did or didn't know do not refer to Bush's own demonstrated knowledge; nor does the fact that any of these turned out not to be true, or that with hindsight turned out to be based on a weak premise, prove that the proponents of the information knew that it was false. Did the CIA say otherwise?
Yes they did, the NIE said that Saddam was unlikely to use WMD even if he had them according to Senator Bob Graham - who along with Sen. Durbin has requested the NIE in the first place.
There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so [use WMD's] unless he was first attacked.
...
Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.
Continued...
All Bush has to say is that he didn't fully trust the CIA's position. If he knew that they were anti-war, he would have had reason for skepticism. Most of the stuff dealing with Powell, etc., doesn't implicate Bush's knowledge.
This suggests facts not in evidence.
5. Bush's 2003 SOTU can be defended against constituting fraud. When Bush said "This is a regime that agreed to international inspections -- then kicked out the inspectors," this is not literally untrue (element (4) not satisfied), though it's misleading as hell; as Vyan's diary shows, Saddam did kick out "the" inspectors, if by that one means American inspectors (a misleading but permissible construction) in 1997.
Misleading but technically true statements are permissible? - You mean like "It depends on the what the meaning of "Is" is?" or "I did not have 'sexual relations' with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky?"
In both of these cases, Bill Clinton was telling the truth as he saw it. "There is no relationship" depended on whether one of Clinton's attorneys was speaking in present tense or past tense. What Clinton was saying was the statement was true in present tense, and false in past tense. He was admitting that had been a relationship, but it was over at that time. In this case, he was actually admitting something against his own interests - that his lawyer might have been lying.
The definition of 'sexual relations' was not something Clinton made up, it was a very specific list of items provided by the Jones attorneys, and in Clinton's judgement he didn't do anything on the list - Monica did. They never asked him what Monica did.
Yet again, misleading - true - but permissible? Not hardly according to existing precedent.
By contrast Bush did not claim that the Saddam kicked out the American inspectors, he clearly implied that he'd kicked out all the inspectors and that simply isn't true. If he'd said "some" it might have been closer to the truth.
His counsel will argue that even if that was misleading, it didn't matter, because Bush did believe that Saddam posed a serious danger and possessed WMDs and the additional puffery he ladled on to help make the political case for war doesn't constitute fraud. As for the fact that Saddam didn't violate the agreement -- if Saddam thought that he has a chemical and bio weapons program, then we certainly can't say that Bush knew for certain that he did not (element (5) unsatisfied.)
Saddam knew full well that he had no chemical weapons since he'd ordered them destroyed in 1991. He actually announced this fact to his own Generals three months before the war.
So then we get to the crux of Vyan's argument in point 1:
If Bush didn't know what he was claiming were complete falsehoods - he should have known. It's HIS JOB TO KNOW. Whether he personally initiated the fraud isn't the point, he helped perpetrate it. He legitimized it. He is the one ultimately responsible.
No. That is simply not the law of fraud, absent specific statutory language (such as you may see in some Sarbanes-Oxley requirements) to the contrary. Here's a perfectly good defense against fraud: Bush relief on the advice of competent advisors, the most senior of which were approved by the Senate, in these areas, and he believed in good faith that Saddam had at least some WMDs and therefore posed a threat to the U.S. It is not "his job to know"; it's his job to take the information he has, form an opinion, and promote a policy that is not, to his knowledge, opposed to the facts.
The record shows, including the NIE, that Bush had been told by several competent advisors - who had been approved by the Senate such as George Tenet - that there was significant doubt regarding Saddam's WMD status.
The reason I say that it was Bush's "job to know" isn't based on the law of fraud - it's based on the Presidential Determination section of HJ 141, which like Sarbanes-Oxley did include very specific requirements for the President to meet prior to using force against Iraq.
(b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION.
In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon there after as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, and
The President was required by the Iraq Force Resolution itself to report to Congress his determination that further attempts at diplomacy would not be effective at protecting the United States from Saddam Hussein. The core of my fraud charge is based on this point - the President was required to prove that Saddam was a imminent threat, he was required to know by the resolution he himself had signed in October of 2002, but according the Downing Street Minutes (with various levels cooberation) Bush and his Administration were already commited to regime change regardless of the facts at least as early as the previous July.
I submit that there is no reasonable way that document delivered to Congress to justify the use of force against Iraq under the requirements of HJ 141 could not have been fraudulent.
1. Let's start by dispensing with the Constitutional argument. There is already no warrant needed. You can get authorization for a warrant after a call -- it's now three days; the Democratic Congress wants to make it a whole week. No one is still challenging the fact that you don't need a warrant in advance for surveillance. For "chasing down terrorists" -- as Vyan quotes the President -- then you do. But then we have probable cause, thanks to this surveillance -- a program that is highly supported by the American people, unlike, say, paying hush money or lying during depositions.
The issues isn't whether you need a warrant in "advance" of doing listening - it's whether you need a warrant and any judicial oversight to verify that probable cause has been met ever. The President's position is now that he doesn't need to meet probable cause and doesn't need to secure a warrant at all, which is clearly extra-constitutional.
And I wouldn't say the program is "Highly supported".
"As you may know, the Bush Administration has been wiretapping telephone conversations between U.S. citizens living in the United States and suspected terrorists living in other countries without getting a court order allowing it to do so. Do you think the Bush Administration was right or wrong in wiretapping these conversations without obtaining a court order?"
9/15-17/06 Right 55% Wrong 45% Unsure 3%
2. FISA doesn't intend to tie the President's hands during wartime. Congress never intended FISA to prevent the Administration from defending against direct attack on the United States.
And truth be told, the President hands would not be "tied" if he were to simply use FISA as it currently exists to obtain surveillance warrants. The existing three-day grace period guarantees this.
3. If FISA does do so, it's an unconstitutional encroachment on the President's powers as the unitary executive. During wartime, the constitution demands deference to the President's authority as Commander-in-chief. Etc. If the unitary executive model is correct, then the President's actions are proper. "If the President does it, it's not a crime," some guy once said.
No, the Constitution makes no such demand. The only change which is created by the existence of a war, is the option for the Congress to temporarily suspend Habeas Corpus - the Constitution does not grant the President any special dispensation or additional powers during wartime.
4. AUMF authorized these actions. [OK, I can't write much to support the argument, but they will make it and some will buy it.]
That has been debunked by Hamdi V Rumsfeld, which states that there is a "judicial role" to be played involving the handling of terrorists.
5. Much of what the Administration is accused of is not actual interception of the content of messages, but the equivalent of looking at the outsides of envelopes without opening them. This is legal.
If we were talking about the U.S. Mail - it would be, but we aren't. Tracking the "wrapper" of an email or phone call - without accessing the content - required the installation of a "Pen and Trap" or equivelent device similar to those which have been installed it would violate 18 USC § 3121.
(a) In General.— Except as provided in this section, no person may install or use a pen register or a trap and trace device without first obtaining a court order under section 3123 of this title or under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978
Defense continued...
6. Most importantly, the President was relying on the advice of competent counsel, the leaders of which were approved by Congress, in all of these matters. It may be that the President's position was mistaken; Presidents win some court cases and lose them, but we don't talk about impeachment when they lose a case. (LBJ favored minority set-asides ruled unconstitutional in Adarand. Was his action impeachable?) Even if the President's actions were wrong here, he was acting on legal advice. To find an impeachable offense here, you have to include that not only was the advice he was given about FISA, the AUMF, and the unitary executive wrong, but that it was so obviously wrong that the President was unreasonable to accept it. The fact that the author of one such memo was approved by Congress to a lifetime appointment on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and that another is a prominent professor at a leading law school, both positions being attained after their participation in these activities was known, shows that -- at worst -- the position was arguable. To say that the President risks impeachment for relying on the legal advice of counsel would weaken the Presidency irreparably. This is not the standard we would use when the penalty at issue was a mere fine, let alone the Presidency.
Well, if they could consider Clinton's attorney saying "There is no relationship" to be Impeachable - I think the bar has been signicantly lowered in this area.
However, I think again that the Supreme Court Hamdi decision where the Court required Judicial Review in relation to terrorist suspects and established that "War is not a Blank Check" for the President has largely eviscerated any legitimate argument supporting this program.
The fact the Gonzales and the DOJ continue to ignore this is a good argument for the Impeachment of Gonzales on malpractice grounds for giving advice to a client that knowingly precipitated and justified a criminal act.
(A) Vyan argues that the Gonzales Memo suggesting exempting Taliban fighters from the protection of Geneva is prima facie evidence of a crime, stating that "We Are Signatories and as such we are required to abide by Geneva." But this doesn't contradict the memo, In fact, Vyan himself quotes the relevant portion:
In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peace time, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.
I've boldfaced the parts that Vyan did, but the critical section is what I've italicized: terrorists, including unrecognized governments, are not representatives or forces of states, and therefore they are not "High Contracting Parties" and the protections we have agreed to do not extend to them. Because of this mistake, Vyan raises a number of arguments related to treatment of "Prisoners of War" that are inapplicable to the Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. They aren't Prisoner's of War because they aren't fighting for a Geneva signatory.
I did make a mistake, but not the one you claim. I didn't quote the right paragraph of the Conventions.
Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.
Any signatory or High Contracting Party to the Conventions is required to abide by the Convention in all cases, not simply when they are in armed conflict with another High Contracting Party.
I would also agree that Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are not "Prisoners of War" under the Convention until they has been a competent tribunal to determine this on a case by case basis, and then prior to such a tribunal any persons captured by opposing forces are afforded the full protection of the conventions under Article 5.
Article 5
The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.
Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.
Furthermore, Congress has implicitly if not explicitly accepted this in numerous of its acts, by both commission and omission. Should the President now be impeached for a "crime" that Congress has agreed up until now is not a crime based on a fair interpretation of Geneva?
The likelyhood of the Military Commissions Act passing Constitutional muster is extremely low, and partly why the restrictions on Habeas Corpus within the bill are so onerous. If - no when - the new Congress acts to restore Habeas and remove these restrictions this law is likely to fall into itself like a souffle. The fact that Congress repeated the President's error does not change the fact that it is a gross Constitutional error.
This issue was indeed the one where various members of the Bush Administration had the highest and most serious vulnerability, hence their urgency in utilizing the 109th Congress to provide legal cover for their actions with the MCA before the end of their term. For the time being they have "innoculated" themselves on this count.
(C) The Rumsfeld memo is subject to a similar analysis as the Bybee memo.
Possibly, pending a judgement on the matter from the Supreme Court or a repeal/amendment to the MCA.
(D) Extraordinary rendition fell within the power of the President under the theory of the Unitary Executive. Again, impeachment on this point means fighting that out.
Bring it.
(E) If Hamdan did make previous Bush Administration actions potential war crimes, the Military Commissions Act settled that they are not, and impeachment will take place after passage of the MCA, not before. Many of the Bush Administration's actions have been retroactively "cleansed" by a bipartisan vote and cannot serve as a basis for impeachment.
Agreed. As I said, they've been "innocolated" for the time being. Any future SCOTUS decision which overturns all or portions of the MCA will reopen this issue.
(F) Again, consider the "advice of counsel" defense. The President is entitled to rely on the advice of his competent counsel. Taking away that right would be a disaster. This means that you must show not simply that the President was wrong, but that the President was not reasonable in accepting this advice. That's a high bar to clear.
Going again back to the Clinton precedent, Ken Starr argued that Bill Clinton was engaging in Obstruction of Justice when he gave factually inaccurate information to his staff, including White House Counsel - even when there was no pending legal proceeding related to that issue, and none of the persons he was speaking with were on any witness list.
Essentially he was considered to be "under oath" at all times even in private conversations with his secretary Bettie Currie. The bar is already pretty darn low.
What I'm suggestion though is that there is no legal protection for an attorney who gives his client advice to specifically circumvent and break the law, and that is exactly what Gonzales and Bybee have done here. The charge is that their advice was knowingly false, and that it was requested specifically by the President in order to persue illegal activities.
Conclusive proof of this intent does not currently exist in the record, but sufficiently targeted Congressional subpeonas are IMO likely to discover quite a bit of information that we don't current have which just might resurrect this charge even while the MCA is still in effect.
I have presented a Count 4: Criminal Negligence - which was not included in the Defense argument, but for the sake my carpal tunnel - I'll leave that for another time.
In this, the last segment in my multipart series on why George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Condoleeza Rice and Michael Chertoff must be Impeached, Removed, Indicted, Arrested and Prosecuted for their crimes against the American People - I examine what may be the most devastating charge against these men (and woman), their gross dereliction of duty which has which has directly and indirectly led to the loss of nearly 10,000 American Lives.
The Impeachment Case Against George W. Bush - Count 4 : Dereliction of Duty and Criminal Negligence. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleez Rice, Micheal Chertoff and Donald Rumsfeld did commit a series of inexcusable errors of judgement and failures of leadership amounting to malfeasance, misconduct, dereliction of duty and criminal negligence.
Every captain, engineer, pilot, or other person employed on any steamboat or vessel, by whose misconduct, negligence, or inattention to his duties on such vessel the life of any person is destroyed, and every owner, charterer, inspector, or other public officer, through whose fraud, neglect, connivance, misconduct, or violation of law the life of any person is destroyed, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
To constitute a crime, there must be an actus reus (Latin for "guilty act") accompanied by the mens rea (see concurrence). Negligence shows the least level of culpability, intention being the most serious and recklessness of intermediate seriousness, overlapping with gross negligence. The distinction between recklessness and criminal negligence lies in the presence or absence of foresight as to the prohibited consequences. Recklessness is usually described as a 'malfeasance' where the defendant knowingly exposes another to the risk of injury. The fault lies in being willing to run the risk. But criminal negligence is a 'misfeasance or 'nonfeasance' (see omission), where the fault lies in the failure to foresee and so allow otherwise avoidable dangers to manifest. In some cases this failure can rise to the level of wilful blindness where the individual intentionally avoids adverting to the reality of a situation.
Exhibit A: Al-Qeada
The most sacred of Presidential duties is that of protecting the people of the United States from Foreign Attack. To Date, President Bush and his Administration have utterly failed to address the attacks against the United States intiated by Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Ladin including the Oct 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.
Six years after the Cole bombing and five years after the fall of the World Trade Center - Bin Laden and his chief deputies remain at large.
Rather than head the warnings provided by Counter-Terrorism Chief Richard Clarke - who called for an urgent NSC Principles meeting on Al-Qaeda on January 25th 2001(PDF) just five days after Bush inaguration - President Bush and his administration did nothing.
The Al Qida terrorist organization led by Usama Bin Ladin has stitched together a network of terrorist cells and groups to wage jihad. Al Qida seeks to drive the United States out of the Arabian Peninsula and elsewehre in the Muslim World. It also seeks to overthrow moderate governments and establish theocracies similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Al Qida network is well financed, has trained tens of thousands of jihadists, and has a cell structure in over forty nations. It is also seeking to develop and aquire weapons of mass destruction.
The United States Goal is to reduce the Al Qida network to a point where it no longer poses a serious threat to our security or that of other governments. That goal can be achieved over a three to five year period, if adequate resources and policy attention are devoted to it.
Yet Clarke was ignored, and found his position downgraded. No longer would he be one of the NSC Principles (key members of the FAA, FBI, CIA and other agencies tasked with national Security issues) and no longer would he have the ability to call a Principles meeting in the case of an emergency. No resources were directed toward dismantling Al-Qeada and no significant policy attention was paid. Not until after September 11th and it made no difference.
Before the 9-11 Commission Condoleeza Rice claimed that she had not been presented a plan to address al-Qaeda.
The January 25, 2001, memo, recently released to the National Security Archive by the National Security Council, bears a declassification stamp of April 7, 2004, one day prior to Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission on April 8, 2004. Responding to claims that she ignored the al-Qaeda threat before September 11, Rice stated in a March 22, 2004 Washington Post op-ed, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration."
Unfortunately for Rice - the Plan she says she didn't receive was attached the Clarke's Jan 25th Memo and is Right Here.(PDF)
Not only did Rice recieve warnings and a plan from Clark, she was also advised that Al-Qaeda would be the "most series issue" facing the Bush Administration from outgoing National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and even President Clinton himself.
Bush supporters have attempted to blame Clinton for the lack of response to 9-11. But the record is clear that the responsibility for the bombing of the Cole was not established until after he left office. (What a disaster it would have been for a American President to respond to an attack on America - without first verifying the source of the attack, hmm??)
As was revealed by Bob Woodward, Clarke's memo wasn't the only warning that was ignored.
The CIA'S top counterterrorism officials felt they could have killed Osama Bin Laden in the months before 9/11, but got the "brushoff" when they went to the Bush White House seeking the money and authorization.
CIA Director George Tenet and his counterterrorism head Cofer Black sought an urgent meeting with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 10, 2001, writes Bob Woodward in his new book "State of Denial."
They went over top-secret intelligence pointing to an impending attack and "sounded the loudest warning" to the White House of a likely attack on the U.S. by Bin Laden.
Woodward writes that Rice was polite, but, "They felt the brushoff."
Interestingly Rice has squirmed on the hook concerning this issue - claiming at first that the meeting didn't happen before the 9-11 Commission, and then that it did happen only that the threat "wasn't that serious", but then again it was apparently serious enough that instead of giving Tenet and Black the "Brush-off" she suggested that they repeat their presentation to Donald Rumself and John Ashcroft on July 17th.
It would be fair to state that having Tenet and Black repeat their Powerpoint slideshow was at least a "response" (even if Ashcroft strangely doesn't seem to remember it) - but it certainly wasn't the clarion call to arms and full meeting by all the NSC Principles that Clarke had urgently requested 6 months previously.
From Clarke's Book "Against All Enemies" Page 236.
During the spring as inital policy debates in the Administration began, I e-mailed Condi Rice and NSC Staff colleagues that al-Qaeda was trying to kill Americans, to have hundreds of dead in the streets of America. During the first week in July I convened the CSG and asked each agency to consider itself on full alert. I asked the CSG agencies to cancel summer vacations and official travel for the counterterrorism response staffs. Each agency should report anything unusual, even if a sparrow should fall from a tree. I asked FBI to send another warning to the 18,000 police departments, State to alert the embassies and the Defense epartment to go to Threat Condition Delta.
It would be yet another 2 months before any meeting was held what-so-ever. But on August 6th the President received a PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) which was no doubt fostered by the efforts of Clarke and Tenet - which stated "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike Inside U.S.".
"After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington," the document stated.
The document further stated that the New Year's Eve 2000 plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport may have been bin Laden's first attempt at a terrorist strike inside the United States.
"Al-Qaida members -- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks," the document said.
Bush's reported response to the briefer? "Well, now you've covered you're ass."
Less than a week before 9-11, on September 4th the meeting that Richard Clarke had urgently requested in January had finally occurred.
It remains debatable whether a more robust reponse to Clark, Tenet, Black, Berger and Clinton's warnings about Bin Laden might have prevented 9-11, whether the Pheonix Memo would have set off some red flags - or the 52 warnings of a possible al-Qeada highjacking which was received by the FAA intelligence unit had gone up the chain - or whether searching Moussaoui's hard-drive might have revealed some of the details of the plot - but one thing is certain. They couldn't have done any less than the did - because what they did was effectively NOTHING UNTIL IT WAS FAR TOO LATE.
Contrast this to the how Clarke's concerns and warnings that there were no protections in place against a plane being hijacked and crashed into the Atlanta Olympic Stadium in 1996 resulted in Vice President Gore personally chairing the NSC Principles meeting - just one week after being asked. After grilling the Principles on their security plan - which they didn't yet have - he put the "fear of God" into them and said.
"I know General Shelton over there could probably personally scare away most terrorist, but we can't put Hugh on every street corner. We need a better plan than this." Turning to me on his right Gore handed me all the authority I needed. "Dick, I am going to ask you to pull that together, use whatever resources these agencies have that are needed. Anybody got any problem with that?"
The plan and tactics that were then developed for the Olympics were later reused and expanded for the Millenium Alerts. As a result the attempts to bomb LAX, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels were all thwarted.
The crux of the charge here against the Bush Administration isn't that they didn't prevent 9-11 (Gore's direct involvement with the Principles didn't prevent Eric Rudolph from bombing the Atlanta Olympics), it's that they didn't even try despite ample and urgent warnings. They were effectively asleep at the wheel.
When 9-11 occured, what did Bush do? Stare at "My Pet Goat" for 4-1/2 minutes. Dick Cheney hid in a White House Bunker. Condoleeza Rice stood aside (thank god) and the person left effectively running the Country from the Situation Room during the entire crisis - was Richard Clarke!
Following 9-11, the Bush Administration continued it's trend of failure by allowing a wounded and trapped Bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora.
This is a pattern on the part of Bush and the cronies in his Administration, a pattern that blatantly disregards the need to dispatch their duty as public servants, a pattern that is tantimount to criminal negligence. Given the information they had been provided, it was their duty to do everything they could before the problem festered - and they utterly failed in that duty.
Casualty Count including New York, Washington and Pennsylvaia : 3030
Q: Do you think that you underestimated the insurgency's strength?
Cheney: I think so, umm I guess, the uh, if I look back on it now. I don't think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we've encountered....
Despite the advise given by General Shinseki to include enough troops to maintain the peace in a post-invasion Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld choose a different path.
“We didn’t send enough troops in to quell the insurgency in the first place.” L. Paul Bremer, the former head of the administration’s coalition provisional authority, admitted in October 2004 that the United States failed to deploy enough troops to Iraq in the beginning. According to Bremer, the lack of adequate forces hampered the occupation and efforts to end the looting immediately after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. “We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness. We never had enough troops on the ground,” he said.
Once "Mission Accomplished" was declared they stopped really caring about Iraq. Last year exactly how badly the Reconstruction effort had been completely bungled and handed off to inexperienced ideologues finally came to light.
“We thought political allegiance was a more important job requirement than know-how and left reconstruction in the hands of inexperienced party loyalists.”
The Washington Post reported last year the $13 billion reconstruction project in Iraq was headed up by young, inexperienced politicos whose main qualification was they’d applied for jobs with the Heritage Foundation. Clueless, they were unable to get the project up and running. Today, only $2.2 billion of the funds allocated for the reconstruction of Iraq have been distributed.
In September, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) called that record “beyond pitiful and embarrassing; it is now in the zone of dangerous.” Two years after the invasion, Iraqis are suffering from major food shortages and the country is producing less electricity than it was before the war. In addition, the deterioration of water and sewage systems has led to the spread of hepatitis and outbreaks of typhoid fever.
And the above doesn't include the $8.8 Billion that was just plain lost in Iraq by the transitional government.
They have failed our troops and needlessly contributed to their death and injuries through their negligence.
The New York Times reported that a “secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor.” Body armor “has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field.” Additionally, the Pentagon has refused to reimburse troops who purchased their own armor. [New York Times, 1/7/06; AP, 9/30/05]
After making the fatal flaw of de-Baathification and dismantling the Iraqi Army without disarming the Iraqi army. Bush and Rumsfeld have also failed at the effort to train Iraqi Security forces. Wapo.
In dozens of official interviews compiled by the Army for its oral history archives, officers who had been involved in training and advising Iraqis bluntly criticized almost every aspect of the effort. Some officers thought that team members were often selected poorly. Others fretted that the soldiers who prepared them had never served in Iraq and lacked understanding of the tasks of training and advising. Many said they felt insufficiently supported by the Army while in Iraq, with intermittent shipments of supplies and interpreters who often did not seem to understand English.
Over the last year the Insurgency has continued to grow, Moqtada al-Sadr's militia forces have grown to nearly 60,000 - his prominence has risen to the point that he has nearly shutdown the Iraqi goverment.
All of this could have been foreseen and avoided, if the occupation had been handled by the State Department - who like Clark's al-Qaeda plan, also had plans for Iraq sitting on the shelf.
I saw the - what this town is known for, spin, cherry-picking facts, using metaphors to evoke certain emotional responses or shading the context. We know the mushroom clouds and the other things that were all described that the media has covered well. I saw on the ground a sort of walking away from 10 years’ worth of planning. You know, ever since the end of the first Gulf War, there’s been planning by serious officers and planners and others, and policies put in place - 10 years' worth of planning were thrown away. Troop levels dismissed out of hand. Gen. Shinseki basically insulted for speaking the truth and giving an honest opinion.
All of these failures are clear examples of negligence which should be laid directly on the doorstep of "the Decider" who initiated and maintained them by refusing Donald Rumsfeld's resignation 3 three times, until finally accepting on November 8th 2006.
For years, the United States and the international community have tried to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear and missile development and its export of ballistic missile technology. Those efforts were dealt a severe setback in early October (2003), when Pyongyang acknowledged having a secret program to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons, shocking Washington and capitals around the world.
...
The Clinton administration subsequently pursued talks with Pyongyang to limit its ballistic missile programs but was unable to finalize an agreement. After suspending talks in March 2001 pending a policy review, the Bush administration expressed a willingness to meet with Pyongyang, but President George W. Bush also named North Korea part of an “axis of evil” and linked progress on nonproliferation with other issues that delayed talks. North Korea’s admission of having a uranium enrichment program now calls into question the future of U.S.-North Korean relations, in particular the implementation of the Agreed Framework.
The end result of yet another example of Bush's failure to act responsibly is that North Korea abandoned the framework that had been agreed to under Clinton.
U.S. intelligence had detected signs near the end of the Clinton years that the North Koreans were trying to evade the freeze by beginning a uranium program. When confronted with the evidence in 2002, the North Koreans admitted it and offered to put that program on the table as part of a comprehensive deal. Bush used it as an excuse to walk away from negotiations. He thought he did not need to talk to the North Koreans. He thought he could overthrow the regime.
He failed. He issued threats and drew lines in the sand. The North Koreans walked right past them. They threw out the IAEA inspectors in December 2002, while Bush was preparing to invade Iraq. The month after the invasion, they withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In 2005, they reprocessed plutonium from the fuel rods Clinton had made them keep in pools under IAEA inspection. They took another load of fuel out of the reactor and processed more plutonium. They reloaded the reactor to make even more plutonium. They tested missiles, they made bombs, now they have tested a bomb.
Bush did nothing.
Again. Just as he has repeatedly refused to engage and negotatiate with Iran, regardless of the progress made when Kennedy talked to Kruschev, when Nixon went to China, when Reagan talked to Gorbachev - Bush continues to refuse to do his job - and the result has put millions of Americans, and the world, at greater risk.
And this becomes truly criminal when it's revealed that some Bush administration officials wanted North Korea to have the bomb so that they could justify an invasion, and yet another round of regime change.
October 2006: Senior Bush administration officials wanted North Korea to test a nuclear weapon because it would prove their point that the regime must be overthrown.
This astonishing revelation was buried in the middle of a Washington Post story published yesterday. Glenn Kessler reports from Moscow as he accompanies Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:
Before North Korea announced it had detonated a nuclear device, some senior officials even said they were quietly rooting for a test, believing that would finally clarify the debate within the administration.
Until now, no U.S. official in any administration has ever advocated the testing of nuclear weapons by another country, even by allies such as the United Kingdom and France.
Escalation Roulette is not a game the President or his administration should be playing.
Exhibit D: Katrina
Bush on Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer (Video).
"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
Yet again, Bush is wrong. Someone did anticipate the Breach of the Levees and that some did indeed inform the White House.
In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm's likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property, documents show.
A 41-page assessment by the Department of Homeland Security's National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), was delivered by e-mail to the White House's "situation room," the nerve center where crises are handled, at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, the day the storm hit, according to an e-mail cover sheet accompanying the document.
The NISAC paper warned that a storm of Katrina's size would "likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching" and specifically noted the potential for levee failures along Lake Pontchartrain. It predicted economic losses in the tens of billions of dollars, including damage to public utilities and industry that would take years to fully repair. Initial response and rescue operations would be hampered by disruption of telecommunications networks and the loss of power to fire, police and emergency workers, it said.
In other words city resources would be overwhelmed by the size of the catastrophy, effective and rapid state and federal aid would be crucial to preserve life. The warning was based on the result of Hurricane Pam, a simulation which had been perfomed during the previous year.
This point was also made directly to President Bush during a video conference days prior the Katrinas landfall.
(Video) Federal officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief of possible devastation just before Hurricane Katrina struck. Six days of video footage from briefings and transcripts were obtained by The Associated Press. The warnings were that the storm could [overtop] levees, risk lives in the New Orleans Superdome and overwhelm rescuers.A-P reports Bush didn't ask any questions during the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck on August 29th....more.
The briefer who brought up the subject of possible overtopped leaves was Max Mayfield, head of the National Weather Service. It was Max who was able to convinced New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to perform a full city-wide manditory evacuation on August 28th. That evacuation suceeded in removing 80% of the cities occupants, when most cities have no full evacution plan and would normally only expect about 30% of their citizens to leave.
Once Katrina hit and the levees did breach, local resources were overwhelmed. Rather than provide leadership and ensure that the support they needed was made available, Bush went on vacation.
Days passed while the U.S. Coast Guard and Fish and Wildlife Commission fielded a massive rescue operation, which unfortunately after saving people from drowning in their own homes desposited them to die of starvation and dehydration on the freeway overpass or Superdome. FEMA employee Marty Bahamonde who was in the Superdome was writing desperate emails to Director Michael Brown.
On Aug. 31, Bahamonde e-mailed Brown to tell him that thousands of evacuees were gathering in the streets with no food or water and that "estimates are many will die within hours."
"Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical," Bahamonde wrote. "The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out."
Medical supplies, MRE's, water and buses to take the evacuees out of the disaster area did not arrive for days. Fingerpointing between Mayor Nagin, Governor Blanco, Michael Brown and Home Secretary Chertoff are not acceptable.
An American city drowned and over a thousand Americans died of neglect while Bush fiddled with guitar.
Yet another example of criminal negligence and dereliction of duty on behalf of George W. Bush.
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
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President George W. Bush has violated that oath over 700 times through the use of extra-Constitutional Signing Statements designed to subvert the will of Congress.
WASHINGTON -- The American Bar Association's House of Delegates voted yesterday to call on President Bush and future presidents not to issue ``signing statements" that claim the power to bypass laws, and it urged Congress to pass legislation to help courts put a stop to the growing practice.
After an hour's debate, the ABA voted to declare that it ``opposes, as contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers, the misuse of presidential signing statements by claiming the authority . . . to disregard or decline to enforce all or part of a law the president has signed, or to interpret such a law in a manner inconsistent with the clear intent of Congress."
In a 27-page report written for lawmakers, the research service said the Bush administration is using signing statements as a means to slowly condition Congress into accepting the White House's broad conception of presidential power, which includes a presidential right to ignore laws he believes are unconstitutional.
The ``broad and persistent nature of the claims of executive authority forwarded by President Bush appear designed to inure Congress, as well as others, to the belief that the president in fact possesses expansive and exclusive powers upon which the other branches may not intrude," the report said.
Under most interpretations of the Constitution, the report said, some of the legal assertions in Bush's signing statements are dubious. For example, it said, the administration has suggested repeatedly that the president has exclusive authority over foreign affairs and has an absolute right to withhold information from Congress. Such assertions are ``generally unsupported by established legal principles," the report said.
Article II Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution regarding the President.
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
The duty of the President is not to reinterpret the laws, or to attempt to upsurp power from the Congress (or the Court) - his job is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
As he has failed in his duty in so many areas through neglect and dereliction, he has failed in this regard as well through willful disregard..
Conclusion.
U.S. Constitution Article II Section 4.
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Impeachment, according to the Founding Fathers, was the remedy for those officials who through professional or personal misconduct violated the public trust and vitiated our republican form of government. Accordingly, Article VI, Paragraph 3, of our constitution provides, "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution...." And Article II, Section 4 notes, "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
The Founding Fathers defined treason in Article III, Section 3, Paragraph 1: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
Bribery was, and remains, well understood, then and now --- namely, the intention to corrupt or influence, particularly public policy, by offering, or a government official accepting, something such as money or favor, quid pro quo, his vote or support in a particular public policy matter.
Which brings us to "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." As constitutional lawyer Ann Coulter correctly notes in her book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors --- The Case Against Bill Clinton (Regnery Publishing, 1998): "The derivation of the phrase 'high crimes and misdemeanors' has nothing to do with crimes in English common law for which public servants could be impeached," but had much to do with dishonorable conduct or a breach in the public trust.
I submit that President George W. Bush has repeatedly breached the public trust when he perpetrated a fraud on the American public using false intelligence to justify the Iraq War, when he commited Domestic Espionage against the American people, when he commited War Crimes and authorized Torture, when with his repeated dereliction of duty in regards to Al-Qaeda, our Troops in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, Nuclear Proliferation in North Korea and Iran, failure to respond to Katrina and Signing Statments which attempt to grant him not only the power to execute the laws, but to also re-write the law on the fly.
These charges are not restricted to George W. Bush, but also include other Constitutional Officers such as Richard Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Albero Gonzales, Michael Chertoff and Donald Rumsfeld who may have aidded and abetted in this High Crimes and Misdemeaners.
In a recent article on Findlaw, former White House Counsel John Dean has argued that the Impeachment of George W. Bush is an impossibility, and that consequently there should be a refocusing of energies on offices below that of Vice-President.
There Is No Chance Either Bush or Cheney Will Be Removed From Office
The Republican Congress shamed itself when it impeached and tried President William Jefferson Clinton. It was a repeat of what an earlier Republican Congress had done to President Andrew Johnson, following the Civil War. Both proceedings were politics at their ugliest.
Democrats, when they undertook to impeach Richard Nixon, moved very slowly, building bipartisan support for the undertaking. Nixon, of course, resigned, when it became apparent that the House had the votes to impeach and the Senate had the votes to convict, with his removal supported by Democrats and Republicans, and conservatives and liberals alike.
Getting the necessary two-thirds supermajority in support of impeachment in today's Senate, which is virtually evenly-divided politically, is simply not possible.
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Quite obviously, Bush and Cheney have not acted alone in committing "high crimes and misdemeanors." Take a hypothetical (and there are many): Strong arguments have been made that many members of the Bush Administration - not merely Bush and Cheney -- have engaged in war crimes. If war crimes are not "high crimes and misdemeanors," it is difficult to imagine what might be. Jordan Paust, a well-know expert on the laws of war and a professor at University of Houston Law Center, has written a number of scholarly essays that mince few words about the war crimes of Bush's subordinates. For example, many of their names are on the "torture memos."
I think Dean's point is well taken, but I would add this: If you can successfully and clearly lay out the case and address each issue concisely, and further show how they are connected - as I have attempted to do - it becomes clear that Impeaching George W. Bush is a neccesity, not for the High Crimes he has already commited, but to prevent what further Constitutional errors his is very likely to commit considering his track record. And further, their clear and highly illegal attempts to hide their crimes using an disinformation campaign of propaganda - only makes their guilt all the more obvious and damning.
The continuance of this Presidency and his Administration are a Clear and Present Danger to this Nation and the World.
I agree that simple numbers make it unlikely that the case will easily succeed in the Senate, and that Impeaching in the House only to fail to remove would be a sinful partisan mockery. However, by starting Impeachment at the most vulnerable point - which I would argue is probably Alberto Gonzales for his involvement in War Crimes now that Donald Rumsfeld has finally resigned - it may be possible to begin systematically dismantling the Bush Administration one piece at a time.
It's true that best way to collapse a house of cards is to take out it's foundation. Removing key players such as Gonzales would leave Bush exposed to not only Congressional subpeona's but a new 110th Congress-approved Attorney General who might not look quite so eskance at the appointment of a Independant Counsel such as Patrict Fitzgerald to seriously investigate the various and sundrie crimes of the Bush Administration and finally BRING. THEM. DOWN.
