A Call For Impeachment!
The problem of withdrawing from Iraq has been in the news as a constant media staple as of late. The entire world is looking at the US and wondering how it is that the only lasting “super power” has managed to get itself into such a pickle. That the US has to either abandon the invasion and allow Iraq to fall into civil war, or remain as an occupation force until such time as the Iraqi government becomes stable enough to manage its own affairs, is a dilemma caused by either utter incompetence or complete disregard for the facts of the matter.
It took the US approximately 15 years after its Revolutionary War to establish stability of government. Over the next 217 years many of the kinks have had to be addressed. Still, we have issues of liberty, civil rights and how to deal with “the war on terror” without sacrificing fundamental first principles. How can we expect the Iraqi situation to resolve itself?
We are facing a return to the cold war renewed. Under the USA Patriot Act we have a return to the mentality that we experienced under the reign of narrow-minded and short-sighted leaders like Joseph McCarthy. We have a siege mentality in our government ever since 9-11. President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and other members of our government see bogeymen everywhere. Our efforts to protect ourselves against terrorist action has given cause to throw aside fundamental principles of freedom, liberty, justice and human decency so that we can use secret places to employ torture.
We really cannot expect that the current Bush administration to let go of its position and withdraw US troops from Iraq. The reality is that George W. Bush has entrenched himself, and his entire administration, into a failed policy, and has everyone in his arsenal of advisors speaking out in defense of a wrong policy. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and others in the hierarchy of power are incapable of admitting that a mistake has occurred. Far be it from anyone in our entrenched republican administration to admit that there is a problem that needs a new approach.
In my view, Vice-President Cheney has just about admitted the incompetence of the administration during his speech to the American Enterprise Institute:
“The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight, but any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped, or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false. Senator John McCain put it best: ‘It is a lie to say that the President lied to the American people.’” – VP Dick Cheney
While Cheney is busy defending the administrations entrenched position, staunch conservative republicans are defending the decisions made regarding Iraq with lies, misrepresentations or faulty memories. In a recent airing of NBC Meet The Press, Senator John Warner (R-VA) stated:
“Well, anyway, the grandfather served on the Armed Services Committee as a senator. That'sa family that's been known for its integrity and public service for generations. Our president would not intentionally take any facts and try and mislead the American public, in my judgment.”
The problem is that Senator Warner has forgotten that George H.W. Bush—former president and father of the current president—was an integral member of the administration that brought us the Iran-Contra Affair. Then Vice-President Bush (and former director of the CIA) wrapped himself in the American flag and violated federal law to trade guns, money and other valuables for hostages held in Iran. It appears that at least two generations of the Bush family that Senator Warner adamantly defends have violated the oath of office taken as elected and/or appointed members of the executive branch. Our current situation is not the first time a man named Bush has misled the citizens of the United States.
Every reasonable person can see what Ellen Fitzpatrick laid out on CBS Face The Nation:
“….very difficult to turn the energies and the resources and the genius and the leadership ofthe country towards these very important, compelling issues that you've raised when so much money and energy and thought is going into waging this war in Iraq. We're spending a lot of this country's resources in Iraq. And it strikes me, in looking over the history of the longer period, we had a Cold War that dominated much of the second half of the 20th century. We had about a 10-year respite and now we've entered a war on terrorism. The war on terrorism in some ways is beginning to shape up as a kind of strategy, rhetorical advice and reality that resembles the Cold War. That is, there's enormous fear about national security. There is a chilling effect on civil liberties and issues about how a democracy deals with this kind of threat. There's an enormous expenditure of resources, of economic resources. There is an enemy out there that we're struggling through military intervention to engage. And I think there are important parallels here that make it difficult to address some of the domestic concerns.” – Ellen Fitzpatrick
We are indeed struggling to maintain our own freedom while we are putting our own military in harm’s way for the freedoms of others half-way around the world. We are occupiers on foreign soil without just cause for being there. We remain at our own discretion, not by the will of the Iraqi people. We have entrenched ourselves into an inextricable situation. Our current administration cannot fathom a way to release ourselves from the tangled web woven by the lies, misrepresentations, and/or incompetence that is traceable to the highest levels of government.
Even those on the democrat side of the government must admit that they were incompetent. One would think that anyone with over 10 years of legislative experience would know how to verify and validate intelligence data. So, those senators and representatives that claim they supported the measures proposed by the Bush administration because of misleading intelligence ought to be flushed out of office for their incompetence. The republican senators and representatives should not only resign—or at least agree not to run for re-election—but should admit that they force-fed the authorization of the invasion of Iraq down the throats of the minority—and duped the citizenry—in the same purely partisan approach that has been the norm in congress for over 12 years.
Still, we have politicians at the highest levels claiming that they have they well-being and interests of the troops in mind. They claim that criticisms of the current administration, or its policies, undermines the sacrifice of the ground-pounder serving faithfully in Iraq. In reality, what undermines the sacrifice of our military service members is a policy that was so poorly planned that we did not provide proper equipment and armor to protect them from unnecessary harm. What undermines the sacrifice of “our boys in uniform” is the statements of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that we have to “go to war with the Army we have, not the Army we want.” What defiles the honor of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines serving in Iraq is the lack of proper funding for veterans that have been wounded. What destroys our reputation as a great country is our disregard for the fundamental principles that protect members of the military from torture and abuse by casting aside the rules and international laws stated in the Geneva Conventions.
We have become the despot that we have sought to oust from the world. We condemned Saddam Hussein for torture, but we are advocating its use—and using it in secret places—to get our way. We know that torture doesn’t provide reliable intelligence, but we have been using it. We know that violating the Geneva Conventions will justify the torture and maltreatment of our own troops. We know that the maltreatment of prisoners has outraged Iraqi citizens. (We know that we should be outraged by the maltreatment of prisoners as well!).
How can we claim to be a democracy under such conditions of incompetence or malfeasance? Why haven’t we taken Mr. Bush to task? Why aren’t we asking the hard questions about the truth of the matter? If we are left with only two possible conclusions—incompetence or utter contempt for the Constitution—why haven’t we sought impeachment? It is not enough to chastise Mr. Bush, et al., for his errors. It is not enough to drag the matters at hand before the public via the media. It is time to hold the decision-makers responsible for the incompetence, or malfeasance, that has gotten us into this pickle. If we impeached Bill Clinton for lying under oath, why haven’t we impeached Bush and Cheney for breaching the oath of their office?
December 21, 2005
It took the US approximately 15 years after its Revolutionary War to establish stability of government. Over the next 217 years many of the kinks have had to be addressed. Still, we have issues of liberty, civil rights and how to deal with “the war on terror” without sacrificing fundamental first principles. How can we expect the Iraqi situation to resolve itself?
We are facing a return to the cold war renewed. Under the USA Patriot Act we have a return to the mentality that we experienced under the reign of narrow-minded and short-sighted leaders like Joseph McCarthy. We have a siege mentality in our government ever since 9-11. President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and other members of our government see bogeymen everywhere. Our efforts to protect ourselves against terrorist action has given cause to throw aside fundamental principles of freedom, liberty, justice and human decency so that we can use secret places to employ torture.
We really cannot expect that the current Bush administration to let go of its position and withdraw US troops from Iraq. The reality is that George W. Bush has entrenched himself, and his entire administration, into a failed policy, and has everyone in his arsenal of advisors speaking out in defense of a wrong policy. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and others in the hierarchy of power are incapable of admitting that a mistake has occurred. Far be it from anyone in our entrenched republican administration to admit that there is a problem that needs a new approach.
In my view, Vice-President Cheney has just about admitted the incompetence of the administration during his speech to the American Enterprise Institute:
“The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight, but any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped, or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false. Senator John McCain put it best: ‘It is a lie to say that the President lied to the American people.’” – VP Dick Cheney
While Cheney is busy defending the administrations entrenched position, staunch conservative republicans are defending the decisions made regarding Iraq with lies, misrepresentations or faulty memories. In a recent airing of NBC Meet The Press, Senator John Warner (R-VA) stated:
“Well, anyway, the grandfather served on the Armed Services Committee as a senator. That'sa family that's been known for its integrity and public service for generations. Our president would not intentionally take any facts and try and mislead the American public, in my judgment.”
The problem is that Senator Warner has forgotten that George H.W. Bush—former president and father of the current president—was an integral member of the administration that brought us the Iran-Contra Affair. Then Vice-President Bush (and former director of the CIA) wrapped himself in the American flag and violated federal law to trade guns, money and other valuables for hostages held in Iran. It appears that at least two generations of the Bush family that Senator Warner adamantly defends have violated the oath of office taken as elected and/or appointed members of the executive branch. Our current situation is not the first time a man named Bush has misled the citizens of the United States.
Every reasonable person can see what Ellen Fitzpatrick laid out on CBS Face The Nation:
“….very difficult to turn the energies and the resources and the genius and the leadership ofthe country towards these very important, compelling issues that you've raised when so much money and energy and thought is going into waging this war in Iraq. We're spending a lot of this country's resources in Iraq. And it strikes me, in looking over the history of the longer period, we had a Cold War that dominated much of the second half of the 20th century. We had about a 10-year respite and now we've entered a war on terrorism. The war on terrorism in some ways is beginning to shape up as a kind of strategy, rhetorical advice and reality that resembles the Cold War. That is, there's enormous fear about national security. There is a chilling effect on civil liberties and issues about how a democracy deals with this kind of threat. There's an enormous expenditure of resources, of economic resources. There is an enemy out there that we're struggling through military intervention to engage. And I think there are important parallels here that make it difficult to address some of the domestic concerns.” – Ellen Fitzpatrick
We are indeed struggling to maintain our own freedom while we are putting our own military in harm’s way for the freedoms of others half-way around the world. We are occupiers on foreign soil without just cause for being there. We remain at our own discretion, not by the will of the Iraqi people. We have entrenched ourselves into an inextricable situation. Our current administration cannot fathom a way to release ourselves from the tangled web woven by the lies, misrepresentations, and/or incompetence that is traceable to the highest levels of government.
Even those on the democrat side of the government must admit that they were incompetent. One would think that anyone with over 10 years of legislative experience would know how to verify and validate intelligence data. So, those senators and representatives that claim they supported the measures proposed by the Bush administration because of misleading intelligence ought to be flushed out of office for their incompetence. The republican senators and representatives should not only resign—or at least agree not to run for re-election—but should admit that they force-fed the authorization of the invasion of Iraq down the throats of the minority—and duped the citizenry—in the same purely partisan approach that has been the norm in congress for over 12 years.
Still, we have politicians at the highest levels claiming that they have they well-being and interests of the troops in mind. They claim that criticisms of the current administration, or its policies, undermines the sacrifice of the ground-pounder serving faithfully in Iraq. In reality, what undermines the sacrifice of our military service members is a policy that was so poorly planned that we did not provide proper equipment and armor to protect them from unnecessary harm. What undermines the sacrifice of “our boys in uniform” is the statements of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that we have to “go to war with the Army we have, not the Army we want.” What defiles the honor of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines serving in Iraq is the lack of proper funding for veterans that have been wounded. What destroys our reputation as a great country is our disregard for the fundamental principles that protect members of the military from torture and abuse by casting aside the rules and international laws stated in the Geneva Conventions.
We have become the despot that we have sought to oust from the world. We condemned Saddam Hussein for torture, but we are advocating its use—and using it in secret places—to get our way. We know that torture doesn’t provide reliable intelligence, but we have been using it. We know that violating the Geneva Conventions will justify the torture and maltreatment of our own troops. We know that the maltreatment of prisoners has outraged Iraqi citizens. (We know that we should be outraged by the maltreatment of prisoners as well!).
How can we claim to be a democracy under such conditions of incompetence or malfeasance? Why haven’t we taken Mr. Bush to task? Why aren’t we asking the hard questions about the truth of the matter? If we are left with only two possible conclusions—incompetence or utter contempt for the Constitution—why haven’t we sought impeachment? It is not enough to chastise Mr. Bush, et al., for his errors. It is not enough to drag the matters at hand before the public via the media. It is time to hold the decision-makers responsible for the incompetence, or malfeasance, that has gotten us into this pickle. If we impeached Bill Clinton for lying under oath, why haven’t we impeached Bush and Cheney for breaching the oath of their office?
December 21, 2005
posted by Jim Downey at 6:04 PM
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