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.
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
“Any person subject to this chapter who—
(3) is derelict in the performance of his duties; shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”
Under the U.S. Codes Misconduct
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.
Criminal Negligence.
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
Exhibit B: The Iraq Quagmire
From Crooks and Liars.
On June 20, 2005 (a year ago)-Dick Cheney said that the insurgency was in it's last throes. He was talking to the National Press Club today and said:
Video-WMP Video-QT
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.
From Thinkprogress.
“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.
From Gen Zinni on Meet the Press (Video)
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.
Casualty Count: 2,954 (And rising)
Exhibit C: Nuclear Proliferation
Since Bush took office North Korea has developed and tested a Nuclear Device. President Clinton had managed to freeze the North Korean Nuclear program in it's tracks.
North Korea did not separate a gram of plutonium while Bill Clinton was in office. He also stopped their missile tests.
Bush poured warm water on the wheels by walking away from that arrangement in his first few months in office.
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.
Casualty Count: 1723.
Exhibit E: Signing Statments
The Presidential Oath of Office is as follows:
"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.".
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.
From the Boston Globe.
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."
The Congressional Research Service has also denouced these statements.
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.
From the Medical Sentinel (Published in 1999).
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.
...
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.
The future of our nation depends on it.
Vyan
