The I-Word is Gaining Ground
Yahoo News/The Nation
Katrina vanden Heuvel
December 27, 2005
The Nation -- In 1998, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, currently under
indictment on corruption charges, proclaimed: "This nation sits at a
crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law...The
other road is the path of least resistance" in which "we pitch the law
completely overboard when the mood fits us...[and] close our eyes to the
potential lawbreaking...and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system." That
arbiter of moral politics was incensed about the possibility of Bill Clinton
escaping unpunished for his "crimes."
Fast forward to December 2005. Not one official in the entire Bush
Administration has been fired or indicted, not to mention impeached, for the
shedding of American blood in Iraq or for the shredding of our Constitution at
home. As Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter put it--hours after the New York
Times reported that Bush had authorized NSA wiretapping of US citizens without
judicial warrants--this President has committed a real transgression that "goes
beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security
versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power."
In the last months, several organizations, including AfterDowningStreet,
Impeach Central and ImpeachPAC.org, have formed to urge Bush's impeachment. But
until very recently, their views were virtually absent in the so-called
"liberal" MSM, and could only be found on the Internet and in street
protests.
But the times they are a' changin'. The I-word has moved from the marginal
to the mainstream--although columnists like Charles "torture-is-fine-by-me"
Krauthammer would like us to believe that "only the most brazen and reckless
and partisan" could support the idea. In fact, as Michelle Goldberg reports in
Salon, "in the past few days, impeachment "has become a topic of considered
discussion among constitutional scholars and experts (including a few
Republicans), former intelligence officers, and even a few politicians." Even a
moderately liberal columnist like Newsweek's Alter sounds like The Nation,
observing: "We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to
act like a dictator."
As Editor & Publisher recently reported, the idea of impeaching Bush has
entered the mainstream media's circulatory system--with each day producing more
op-eds and articles on the subject. Joining the chorus on Christmas Eve,
conservative business magazine Barron's published a lengthy editorial
excoriating the president for committing a potentially impeachable offense. "If
we don't discuss the program and lack of authority of it," wrote Barron's
editorial page editor Thomas Donlan, "we are meeting the enemy--in the
mirror."
Public opinion is also growing more comfortable with the idea of impeaching
this president. A Zogby International poll conducted this summer found that 42
percent of Americans felt that impeaching Bush would be justified if it was
shown that he had manipulated intelligence in going to war in Iraq. (John Zogby
admitted that "it was much higher than I expected.") By November, the number of
those who favored impeaching Bush stood at 53 percent--if it was in fact proven
that Bush had lied about the basis for invading Iraq. (And these polls were
taken before the revelations of Bush's domestic spying.)
For those interested in some of the most compelling charges against the
president, I offer a brief summary:
* Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean argued in his aptly-named book
Worse than Watergate that Bush's false statements about WMDs in Iraq--used to
drum up support for an invasion--deceived the American people and Congress.
This constituted "an impeachable offense," Dean told PBS' Bill Moyers in 2004.
"I think the case is overwhelming that these people presented false information
to the Congress and to the American people." Bush's actions were actually far
worse than Watergate, Dean contends, because "no one died for Nixon's so-called
Watergate abuses."
Lending credence to Dean's arguments, the Downing Street Memo revealed that
Britain's MI-6 Director Richard Dearlove had told Tony Blair that "the
intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush
Administration. John Bonifaz, a Boston-based attorney and constitutional law
expert, said that Bush seemingly "concealed important intelligence which he
ought to have communicated," and "must certainly be punished for giving false
information to the Senate." Bush deceived "the American people as to the basis
for taking the nation into war against Iraq," Bonifaz argued--an impeachable
offense.
* Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) argued as well that the
president committed impeachable offenses" because he and senior administration
officials "countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in
Iraq" at Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere, including Guantanamo Bay and the
now-notorious "black sites" around the world.
* The most compelling evidence of Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors is the
revelation that he repeatedly authorized NSA spying on US citizens without
obtaining the required warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
court. Constitutional experts, politicians and ex-intelligence experts agree
that Bush "committed a federal crime by wiretapping Americans." Rep. John Lewis
(news, bio, voting record)--"the first major House figure to suggest impeaching
Bush," said the AP--argued that the president "deliberately, systematically
violated the law" in authorizing the wiretapping. Lewis added: "He is not King,
he is president."
Meanwhile, Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University School
of Law--a specialist in surveillance law--told Knight Ridder that Bush's
actions "violated federal law" and raised "serious constitutional questions of
high crimes and misdemeanors." It is worth remembering that an abuse of power
similar to Bush's NSA wiretapping decision was part of the impeachment charge
brought against Richard Nixon in 1974. [This comparison was brought home in the
ACLU's powerful full page ad in the NYT of December 22nd.]
There are many reasons why it is crucial that the Democrats regain control
of Congress in '06, but consider this one: If they do, there may be articles of
impeachment introduced and the estimable John Conyers, who has led the fight to
defend our constitution, would become Chair of the House Judiciary Committee.
Wouldn't that be a truly just response to the real high crimes and misdemeanors
that this lawbreaking president has so clearly committed?
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