- It is clear now that George Bush and Dick Cheney have
been pushing hard for war with Iran for months, all the while knowing--and
trying desperately to hide the fact--that the entire US intelligence community
had established with a high degree of confidence that Iran poses no threat
of becoming a nuclear power, and that it is not playing any significant
role in Iraqi attacks on American troops in Iraq.
-
- These are acts not of policy but of treason. But aside
from Rep. Dennis Kucinich and a group of fewer than 30 backers, you don't
hear any calls from the Congress for impeachment. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi
and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership is busy squelching any
such talk.
-
- It is also well known that Cheney actually slinked behind
the State Department's back earlier this fall and tried, on his own, to
talk the Israelis into attacking Iran's nuclear facilities in hopes of
getting Iran to retaliate and thus drag the US into a war with Tehran.
-
- We now know, too, that the White House, including key
legal aides Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Harriet Myers and John Bellinger
III, were counselling the CIA as late as 2005 to destroy video tapes depicting
torture by the CIA, even after several federal courts had ordered the production
of such tapes.
-
- As well, we have learned from former White House Press
Secretary Scott McClellan that Bush and Cheney and their top aides also
orchestrated a cover-up of the Cheney conspiracy to out a key CIA undercover
operative specializing in the monitoring of nuclear proliferation, Valerie
Plame.
-
- These are both clear cases of conspiracy to obstruct
justice and of actual obstruction of justice, but aside from Reps. Robert
Wexler, Luis Gutierrez and Tammy Baxter, there has been no Congressional
call for impeachment hearings for these grave crimes.
-
- The president continues to willfully refuse to enact
and enforce laws passed by the Congress, and willfully violates others,
most recently asserting that he has the power to take money authorized
by Congress for one military purpose and shift it to another (something
he already did to terrible effect illegally back in 2001 when he withdrew
money voted to fund the assault on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and shifted
it to a future war he was planning against Iraq).
-
- Although the president's assertion of a heretofore unheard-of,
non-existent, and purely un-Constitutional "unitary executive"
authority to ignore both Congress and the Courts fatally undermines the
whole founding principle of checks and balances built into the government
as constructed by the authors of the Constitution, and although his actions
turn Congress into nothing more than a debating club, there has been no
call from Congress for the president's impeachment.
-
- And as the President and Vice President and their key
staffmembers have simply thumbed their nose at investigation after investigation
by committees in the House and Senate, even when those committees issue
subpoenas, with the president going so far as to say he would instruct
his attorney general not to allow the US attorney in Washington to enforce
those subpoenas against his staff, thus proving the impotence of Congress
and the futility of a policy of "investigations," there has been
no cry from Congress for impeachment--the only way to effectively conduct
those investigations.
-
- In the face of all these, and of other frontal assaults
on American democracy and the Constitution, Congress is behaving as if
everything is normal, aided by a national corporate media which simply
do not report on the constitutional damage that is being done by this inaction
and by the White House's behavior.
-
- Instead, we have the pathetic spectacle of the Congress
calling for a major investigation into, what? Steroid use by American professional
athletes! That does get media coverage!
-
- I will pause here to give the dear reader a chance to
either laugh uproariously or to retch uncontrollably--your, or your body's,
choice.
-
- Done? Okay, so what do we do?
-
- Clearly the Democrats are a bunch of gutless buffoons
unworthy of anyone's vote next fall. They have demonstrated that they haven't
the political sense of a donkey or the will of a jellyfish, and if left
in control of the House and Senate, will continue to allow the growth of
unfettered executive power next year, whether under a Democratic or Republican
president. My own representative, two-term Democrat Allyson Schwartz, doesn't
even talk about the administration's constitutional crimes. She's on about
"tax relief for the middle class" without even mentioning the
president's collossal waste of $500 billion--actually several trillion
dollars counting interest and future costs for care of the injured--caused
by the illegal and disastrous Iraq war.
-
- The only answer left to us is to throw them all out.
-
- This year, only candidates who are committed to impeachment,
and to a reassertion of the Constitution as the law of the land deserve
to be returned to or elected to Congress. If that means voting for a Republican,
vote for the Republican. If it means voting third party or write-in in
your district, then do that. If we do not stop the dictatorship that is
growing in Washington now, we well end up having to restore popular government
by force later, under much worse circumstances.
-
-
- http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
-
- Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counterpunch, is author
of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration
of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into
the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored
with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument
for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press,
May 2006). His writing is available at
- http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
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