- The reality of Vice President Dick Cheney's unprecedented,
awesome and totally illegal power and authority over the people of America,
the United States Congress, the Supreme Court, and all bureaus and agencies
of American government, serves not only to invalidate totally the Constitution
and the very founding of the United States, but proves correct as well
the fears the Founders voiced when recognizing the threat of political
parties. Identifying what is right or wrong with this country and its
government no longer matters. Evaluating what is lawful and what is not
are now devoid of both a system of recognition and a remedy. Attacking
what is constitutional and what is not is now irrelevant; "it's just
a goddamned piece of paper." Healing and corrective measures available
to repair severely damaged and crippled government functions are overridden
by concerns of resultant political fallout and posturing
-
- For whatever reason the Washington Post chose in allowing
its staff writers, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, to launch their four-part
series exposing Dick Cheney as America's first functioning dictator, it
opened the door to Bruce Fein's call for Cheney's impeachment in his editorial
posted in Slate. Fein and the Post have legitimized and given substance
to Congressman Dennis Kucinich's House Resolution calling for just that
action.
-
- And in his July 9th article
published in The New Yorker commenting on the Post's effort and appropriately
entitled "The Darksider," Hendrik Hertzberg's opinion of Cheney's
Svengali-like domination of our clueless frat boy president is marvelously
articulated: "The story of the scowling, scheming, domineering, silently
sinister Vice-President and the spoiled, petted prince who becomes his
plaything is irresistible-set in a pristine White House, played against
an ominous, unseen background of violence and catastrophe, like distant
thunder, and packed with drama, palace intrigue, and black comedy."
-
- After the Post's series and Bruce Fein's call for Cheney's
impeachment, augmented by and made all the more sobering given Fein's legal
credentials and constitutional knowledge, Cheney struck back immediately
and obviously ordered boy Bush to commute I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby's prison sentence, which will undoubtedly pave the way for a full
pardon. Bush admitted that "an individual in his administration"
did indeed deliberately expose undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame,
thereby facilitating retaliation against her husband, Joseph Wilson IV,
for his New York Times editorial letter exposing the fraudulent "intelligence"
citing Iraq's alleged Niger yellowcake activities. It is now painfully
obvious that Cheney placed that line in Bush's State of the Union Message
recalling the Vice President's unrelenting pressure on the CIA to provide
precisely that very justification for the Iraqi invasion and war.
-
- The arrogant and irreverent behavior of the Vice President
towards all Americans and American government institutions was aptly described
by Fein in his piece for Slate, wherein he also describes Cheney as having
a "sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law."
Cheney's sinister, secretive, conniving and retributive mindset makes
it now more readily apparent than ever that it was none other than he who
played the principle role in exposing Plame, a Title 18 felony. Libby
was successfully prosecuted and convicted of perjury and obstruction of
justice, while the real legal issue was that of the treason committed against
the government of the United States as covered in 18 USC 794. Review of
this section of the United States Code will reveal that the treason committed
by Cheney's office is greatly magnified when perpetrated during wartime.
-
- Like Fein, Hertzberg summarizes the laundry list of Cheney
offenses, but does so more succinctly while emphatically referencing the
Post's series: "But many of the details and incidents that Gellman
and Becker document are as new as they are appalling. More important,
the pattern that emerges from the accumulated weight of the reporting is,
as the lawyers say, dispositive. Given the ontological authority
that the Post shares only with the New York Times, it is now, so to speak,
official: for the past six years, Dick Cheney, the occupant of what John
Adams called 'the most insignificant office that ever the invention of
man contrived,' has been the most influential public official in the country,
not necessarily excluding President Bush, and his influence has been entirely
malign. He is pathologically (but purposefully) secretive; treacherous
toward colleagues; coldly manipulative of the callow, lazy, and ignorant
President he serves; contemptuous of public opinion; and dismissive not
only of international law (a fairly standard attitude for conservatives
of his stripe) but also of the very idea that the Constitution and laws
of the United States, including laws signed by his nominal superior, can
be construed to limit the power of the executive to take any action that
can plausibly be classified as part of an endless, endlessly expandable
'war on terror.'"
-
- Hertzberg deftly sums up into a critical mass the Cheney
offenses: "More than anyone else, including his mentor and departed
co-conspirator, Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney has been the intellectual author
and bureaucratic facilitator of the crimes and misdemeanors that have inflicted
unprecedented disgrace on our country's moral and political standing: the
casual trashing of habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions; the claim
of authority to seize suspects, including American citizens, and imprison
them indefinitely and incommunicado, with no right to due process of law;
the outright encouragement of 'cruel,' 'inhuman,' and 'degrading' treatment
of prisoners; the use of undoubted torture, including waterboarding (Cheney:
'a no-brainer for me'), which for a century the United States had prosecuted
as a war crime; and, of course, the bloody, nightmarish Iraq war itself,
launched under false pretenses, conducted with stupefying incompetence,
and escalated long after public support for it had evaporated, at the cost
of scores of thousands of lives, nearly half a trillion dollars, and the
crippling of America's armed forces, which no longer overawe and will take
years to rebuild."
-
- There is absolutely no other way of dealing with this
American domestic and massive international crime wave than by the immediate
and total impeachment of both Vice President Richard Cheney and President
George Bush. For nothing that is political can escape the massive totalitarian
ruination that Cheney-Bush has brought forth. As Hertzberg states, our
military is being destroyed and will take years to rebuild. Our economy
is being destroyed, and may deteriorate to where it cannot be re-established
as the vibrant force it once was. It doesn't take an economics rocket
scientist to figure out that a nation that cannot provide its citizens
with even basic consumer products is a nation that cannot successfully
wage endless wars to enslave the citizens of other nations. America
may still have the capability to make military materiel and weapons of
mass destruction, but remember the logistics debacle that doomed Hitler's
1941 invasion of Russia. Simple boots and winter jackets weren't producible
or deliverable to the shivering and starving Wehrmacht fighting the Russian
winter and the Red Army.
-
- And as to the sustaining natural resources America will
require as a world-dominating global power, the natural resources we are
attempting to steal in the Mid East will only be used to blow up things,
and not to create food, clothing and housing for a nation whose economy
is rapidly deteriorating in pursuit of power. We as a nation are slipping
into third world status by investing all our wealth in things that go boom,
blow up people and what they have built, while failing to appreciate the
basic needs we as a people require to enjoy the Creator's beneficence in
having given us life. What is one to do with a billion dollar jet fighter,
or an M1A1 tank, or a $50,000 artillery shell, when all that is really
needed is to feed, clothe and shelter one's family?
-
- Cheney-Bush are destroying the two-party political system,
the Constitution, our wealth, our ability to feed, clothe and house ourselves,
our money system, our system of government and its laws, and virtually
everything that is and was American. Only an extremely dedicated idiot
and brain-damaged moron would utter: "Impeachment is off the table!"
The fact is, it's the ONLY thing left on the table! We will soon be out
of all other options that have any semblance of beneficial value for our
very survival! As has been <http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2214.shtml>pointed
out by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Cheney-Bush needs another 9/11 and a war
with Iran to distract US temporarily from our own demise!
-
- In his article for Online Journal of July 20th and carried
also on Prisonplanet.com entitled, "My wake-up call: Watch for another
9/11-WMD experience," Roberts writes: "In the July 18 Los Angeles
Times ('Bush the Albatross'), Ronald Brownstein reminds us that Bush's
behavior is disastrous for his political party. Unpopular presidents 'have
consistently undercut their party in the next election.' Brownstein reports
that '88 percent of voters who disapproved of the retiring president's
job performance voted against his party's nominee in past elections. .
. . On average, 80 percent of voters who disapproved of a president's performance
have voted against his party's candidates even in House races since 1986.'"
-
- Roberts goes on: "Brownstein notes that with Bush's
dismal approval rating, this implies a total wipeout of the Republicans
in 2008. A number of pundits have concluded that the reason the Democrats
have not brought a halt to Bush's follies is that they expect Bush's unpopular
policies to provide them with a landslide victory next year." And
this is precisely what I have alluded to concerning partisan politics substituting
for doing what is right and what is so vitally needed immediately. So
why must impeachment be initiated by Congress immediately?
-
- Roberts explains: "There is a problem with this
reasoning. It assumes that Cheney, Rove, and the Republicans are ignorant
of these facts or are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed
after Bush has his warmonger-police state fling." Roberts goes
on: "Isn't it more likely that Cheney and Rove have in mind events
that will, once again, rally the people behind President Bush and the Republican
Party, that is fighting the 'war on terror' that the Democrats 'want to
lose'? Such events could take a number of forms. As even diehard Republican
Patrick J. Buchanan observed on July 17, with three US aircraft carrier
battle groups in congested waters off Iran, another Tonkin Gulf incident
could easily be engineered to set us at war with Iran. If Bush's
intentions were merely to bomb a nuclear reactor, he would not need three
carrier strike forces. Lately, the administration has switched to blaming
Iran for the war in Iraq. The US Senate has already lined up behind the
latest lie with a 97-0 vote to condemn Iran."
-
- What more damage could the Cheney-Bush crime machine
do? The Senate is already totally behind the American dictatorship as
concerns Iran; the same lies and deliberately cooked and fraudulent intelligence
is now being propagandized and delivered to the American people by the
mass media-government complex. Of course Roberts is right, and the so-called
oversight that the Senate is demanding as their right and seemingly in
the process of being satisfied by subpoenas to the Cheney dictatorship
has been further delayed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy's
gracious grant of additional time so Cheney can set up the attack on US
and/or Iran. The subpoenaed documents will be a total waste of time and
be overtaken by the events of a new 9/11 and war with Iran.
-
- It is clear that Democrats are only concerned with the
next election. They aren't the least bit disturbed that our Bill of Rights
and habeas corpus, the latter a right English-speaking people have enjoyed
since King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215, has been suspended by Cheney.
They aren't concerned that Cheney has legalized and continues to expand
authorized torture that had been abolished by the Geneva Conventions.
They aren't at all concerned that the whole world now sees Cheney and America
in precisely the same light as they formerly saw Hitler and Nazi Germany.
All they are focusing on is the meaningless and hollow victory of the
2008 presidential election which will decide on a new captain for our sinking
Titanic ship of state.
-
- Confirming Roberts' assessment of a soon-to-be-executed
9/11-WMD experience is Mike Whitney's July 18th <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18036.htm>piece
written for Information Clearing House and also carried on Prisonplanet.com.
Opining on New World Order globetrotter Henry Kissinger's visit to Russian
President Vladimir Putin in Russia, Whitney makes certain we all understand
how the government-mass media complex has taken extra steps to ensure that
Kissinger's "diplomatic" mission to Moscow was kept a total secret,
thereby confirming that Dictator Cheney's was behind this secret mission
of "diplomacy."
-
- Whitney in his "Kissinger's Secret Meeting With
Putin" writes, "Kissinger was accompanied on his junket by a
delegation of high-powered political and corporate big-wigs including former
Secretary of State George Schultz, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin,
former Special Representative for Arms Control, Nonproliferation and Disarmament
Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr., former Senator Sam Nunn and Chevron Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer David O'Reilly. Wow. Now, there's an impressive
line up. The group was (presumably) sent to carry out official government
business as discreetly as possible. The media obviously complied with
White House requests and kept their mouths shut."
-
- It is a known fact that Russian President Putin vehemently
opposes Cheney-Bush's international maneuvering to isolate and then incorporate
all nations into the bankers' New World Order. Putin is a dedicated nationalist.
He would never commit the kind of treason that Cheney is guilty of in
debasing and destroying his own country for the "greater good"
of an international communist New World Order. And Putin has notified
Dictator Cheney that he is not exactly pleased with Cheney-Bush incursions
via NATO in the Kosovo-Caspian Basin area that threaten Russia's oil and
natural gas pipeline interests.
-
- Whitney writes: "The array of talent in Kissinger's
delegation suggests that the US and Russia are engaged in sensitive, high-level
talks on issues ranging from nonproliferation and Missile Defense, to energy
exploration and development, to the Iranian 'enrichment' program and partitioning
of Serbia (Kosovo), to the falling dollar and the massive US current account
deficit. The US and Russia are at loggerheads on many of these issues
and relations between the two countries has steadily deteriorated."
These are yet more benefits of the one-man government of Dick Cheney.
-
- Whitney goes on: "No one really knows what took
place at the meetings, but judging by Kissinger's parting remarks, things
did not go smoothly. He said to one reporter, 'We appreciate the time
that President Putin gave us and the frank manner in which he explained
his point of view.' In diplomatic phraseology, 'frank' usually means that
there were many areas of strong disagreement. Presumably, the main 'bone
of contention' is Putin's insistence on a 'multi-polar' world in which
the sovereign rights of other nations are safeguarded under international
law. Putin is ferociously nationalistic and he will not compromise Russia's
independence to be integrated into Kissinger and Co.'s wacky new world
order."
-
- When I was in grammar school, we had to participate in
numerous simulated attack/self-defense drills anticipating possible nuclear
attacks by the former "Evil Empire," the Soviet Union. Now,
a Russian President is doing more to ensure our national sovereignty than
the President of the United States, the Vice president of the United States,
and the do-nothing election-blind, spineless, gutless Congress. It seems
the only one with a gut is the Department of Homeland Security Scheming
Skull, Michael Chertoff, the former number two guy in our Department of
Justice who quietly released the five high-fiving Mossad agents who helped
place the explosives in the World Trade Towers. His "gut feel"
is that another terrorist attack is imminent. I finally agree with something
a member of the Cheney-Bush crime machine has said.
-
- These are the reasons immediate impeachment proceedings
are necessary. The Democrats, if they were to act immediately, could not
only save their party, but the two-party system, their country and world
peace all in this one necessary double impeachment effort. There is no
need for any delay. The Cheney-Bush dictatorship has offered zillions
of opportunities to call their bluff, and continues to do so in dodging
subpoenas, ignoring official letters requesting information and clarification,
and other door-opening crimes and effronteries. Time is rapidly running
out for this golden opportunity for Democrats to save themselves and US.
In the most recent poll, 45 percent of Americans want Bush impeached,
but a whopping 54 percent want Cheney impeached. That is unprecedented!
-
- The government-mass media complex knows of this poll,
and yet hasn't even acknowledged its importance or uniqueness. This is
the first time in the history of this former republic that such a massive
hatred for a vice president has ever been expressed by Americans! How
can a vice president generate so much hatred amongst the general populace?
And even more importantly for consideration, how is it that hatred for
the vice president exceeds that of the president? Isn't it clear that
the American people know who's running the show? Isn't it clear that Cheney-Bush
must act soon and bring about yet another 9/11-WMD experience to save themselves?
Isn't it clear that unless Democrats act immediately, everything in American
politics will be forever lost?
-
- Impeachment may indeed soon be permanently off the table,
but for the most horrific of reasons, reasons which will defy all manner
of correction or remedy.
-
-
- © THEODORE E. LANG 7/23/07 All rights reserved
-
- Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.
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