Now Playing: Liar! Liar! Pants on Fire ... and why Impeachent is necessary
Topic: FAILURE by the GOVERNMENT
Do I need to explain this? Well if you have been following the Zebra 3 Reports I bet you already know it all ... but for the sake of the "record" (haha!) here it is in print:
What are the top reasons for impeaching Bush?
http://www.democrats.com/impeachment-reasons
Iraq
Invading Iraq without any threat to the U.S.
Lying about Iraqi WMD's to Congress and the American people
Causing the deaths of over 2,000 U.S. troops and the maiming of over 10,000 more
Failing to provide adequate equipment and armor to U.S. troops
Allowing illegal torture and murder of prisoners
Causing the deaths of 100,000 Iraqi civilians
Spending $300 billion in just two years for an occupation that could last for decades
Letting Halliburton steal billions through no-bid contracts
Using vast quantities of depleted uranium weapons that will poison Iraq now and for generations to come
September 11
Ignoring countless warnings of an attack in the U.S.
Reading "My Pet Goat" during the attack
Letting Osama Bin Laden escape from Afghanistan
Holding no bureaucrat accountable for ignoring warnings
Delaying and obstructing the 911 Commission investigation
Turning Afghanistan into the world's largest opium producer
Terrorism
Allowing international terrorism incidents to quadruple and trying to cover up the facts
Failing to secure our borders and ports to prevent terrorism
Creating a new generation of terrorists through the invasion of Iraq and the killing of 100,000 civilians
Letting terrorists buy high-powered weapons inside the U.S.
Letting North Korea build nuclear bombs and missiles that can cross the Pacific Ocean
Refusing to shut down Pakistan's nuclear weapons exports
Foreign relations
Turning the world against the United States
Preparing for another war with Iran
Signing treaties that cost America jobs and undermine American laws
Economy
Letting gasoline prices double at devastating cost to the economy while oil companies make record profits
Letting corrupt companies like Enron steal billions from consumers and employees
Cutting taxes for the rich and turning a $5 trillion budget surplus into a $5 trillion budget deficit
Adding trillions to the national debt, which our children and grandchildren will have to pay off with interest
Letting millions of American jobs go overseas
Freedom
Letting bureaucrats wiretap Americans without a court order
Locking up suspects for years without charges or trials
Arresting nonviolent protesters at Bush events
Packing the courts with right-wing judges to outlaw abortion
Ordering federal courts to interfere in the Terri Schiavo tragedy
Taking away our right to sue corporations through class actions
Taking away our right to declare bankruptcy under Chapter 7 and forcing middle-class Americans into debt slavery
Democracy
Stealing the Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004
Refusing to investigate the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of voters in Florida and Ohio
Promoting black-box electronic voting machines without paper trails
Embracing dictators in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia, and China
Overthrowing democratically-elected leaders in Haiti and Venezuela
Environment
Allowing global warming, which will cause massive environmental damage
Allowing more toxic mercury in the air and water
Allowing oil drilling in wilderness areas
Scandals
Illegally "outing" CIA agent Valerie Plame, an important anti-terrorism official
Letting a gay male prostitute (Jeff Gannon) roam free in the White House
Paying journalists to give favorable coverage to the administration
Relying on an earpiece for answers during debates and press conferences
Going AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard in 1972 and covering it up ever since
Defending the most corrupt Member of Congress (Tom DeLay)
MORE INFO & REASONING
FOLLOWS IN BLUE TEXT
1. Conspiring to out Valerie Plame and obstructing justice by commuting the sentence of Scooter Libby.
2. Refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas.
3. Illegally wiretapping the calls and emails of virtually every American citizen.
4. Issuing Signing statements that led to illegal actions as documented by GAO.
Since Speaker Pelosi is adamantly opposed to impeachment hearings for President Bush, which of these are the strongest grounds for impeaching Vice President Cheney?
Behind the scenes, Cheney and his Chief of Staff David Addington are key players in all of these battles. But because they operate behind the scenes, it is hard to indict them specifically - with the exception of #1, conspiring to out Valerie Plame and obstructing justice by commuting the sentence of Scooter Libby.
Cheney's role in the outing of Valerie Plame was partially revealed through the Libby trial. Just before Scooter Libby outed Plame to Judith Miller of the New York Times, Libby met with Cheney about disclosing classified information. Libby claims Cheney authorized him to disclose favorable parts of the pre-war National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, but that information was leaked to the press days earlier, and neither the Special Prosecutor nor the jurors believed Libby's story.
Beyond the trial record, there is testimony by Bush and Cheney that has not been published and can be subpoenaed. Also Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could be asked to prepare a report on these questions. After reviewing all available evidence, Congress could put both Libby and Cheney under oath and ask whether they discussed outing Valerie Plame or not.
After Scooter Libby was convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prison, Bush's commutation was widely viewed as intended to keep him from finally telling the truth to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and thereby protecting his boss, Dick Cheney. News reports said Cheney urged Bush to commute Libby's sentence. After collecting all available evidence, Congress could put Cheney and all other witnesses under oath to determine if Cheney urged Bush to commute Libby's sentence - and whether it was to protect himself.
Under this scenario, several things could happen:
- Libby and Cheney could refuse to testify, but since these would be impeachment hearings, Cheney's defiance of duly-issued subpoenas would itself be an impeachable Contempt of Congress. This was Article 3 of the Articles of Impeachment for President Nixon.
- Libby and Cheney could lie to Congress, but that would be very difficult because of all the testimony collected in the Libby trial and the exhaustive analysis of that evidence by bloggers like Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel).
- The White House could attack Congress for daring to hold such hearings, but public support for Bush (and especially Cheney) is so low that these attacks would have no political impact.
Of course the major obstacle to impeachment is the belief by Democratic leaders that any form of impeachment would backfire politically. Therefore there would have to be really powerful arguments for pursuing impeachment, and I would offer these:
- Outing Valerie Plame was a devastating blow to our essential efforts to stop terrorists from acquiring WMD's, which is the single most important lesson of 9/11
- Outing Valerie Plame may have cost the lives of Plame's spies
- Lying to the FBI, and grand jury, and a Special Prosecutor is intolerable by any elected or appointed government official
- No elected official, including the Vice President and the President, can be above the law
- We cannot allow the Vice President and the President to spend their final year in office destroying evidence of numerous official crimes and pardoning those who committed them
- As every primary poll shows, the American people still want change, just as they did in November 2006 when they swept Republicans out of power in Congress. Holding the Vice President accountable for one of his gravest crimes is a powerful way to begin real change.
