SHOULD BUSH AND CHENEY BE IMPEACHED

SHOULD BUSH AND CHENEY BE IMPEACHED?

 

Should President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney be impeached?  The short answer is yes. The long answer is also yes, but needs further explaining, which I will provide.

But first a little background on the Impeachment process

Removing an official from office requires two steps: (1) a formal accusation, or impeachment by the House of Representatives and (2) a trial and conviction by the Senate. Impeachment requires a majority vote of the House; conviction is more difficult, requiring a two-thirds vote by the Senate. The vice president presides over the Senate proceedings in the case of all officials except for the president, whose trial is presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. This is because the vice president can hardly be considered a disinterested party; if his or her boss is forced out of office, he or she is next in line for the top job!

High crimes and misdemeanors is a phrase from the United States Constitution, Article II, Section 4: "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

"High" in the legal parlance of the 18th century means "against the State." A high crime is one which seeks the overthrow of the country, which gives aid or comfort to its enemies, or which injures the country to the profit of an individual or group (Halliburton). In democracies and similar societies it also includes crimes, which attempt to alter the outcome of elections.

Okay, so now you know what it takes to Impeach Bush and Cheney, but there is one key element missing from the above description and that element is a spine, or a backbone from the Democratic Party in Congress.

 

Bush’s Folly into Iraq

 

We know that Cheney was cherry picking Intelligence, then twisting it to fit the Whitehouse claims of a nuclear program in Iraq. We know that Bush lied in his 2003 State of the Union speech by saying that Saddam Hussein bought Yellow Cake (Uranium) from Niger, and he knew that the Intelligence for his Niger claim was false.

Lies: Bush insisted that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction but his "evidence" consisted mostly of forged documents, plagiarized student papers, and vague satellite photos. The United Nations was on the ground in Iraq and could find nothing. After extensive searches Bush was finally forced to admit that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

Lies: Bush, Cheney, Rice and Powell said that the aluminum tubes Iraq attempted to purchase were for use in a uranium centrifuge to create nuclear weapons. These were the only physical evidence he had against Iraq. But it turns out this evidence had been rejected by the Department of Energy and other intelligence agencies long before Bush used them in his speeches

Lies: Bush led people to believe that Iraq was involved with 9/11 by repeatedly linking them in his speeches. This was so effective that at one point 70 percent of Americans actually believed Saddam was behind 9/11. Bush has since admitted that this was not true.

Lies: Bush has stated that Congress had access to all the same information that the White House had. Thus he should not be blamed for making the mistake of going to war. But Bush was briefed many times about the falsehood of various stories and this information never reached Congress.

Before the start of the War, the Whitehouse said the War in Iraq would only cost the American Tax payer 1.5 billion dollars, and that the Iraqi oil would pay for the reconstruction in Iraq.

Dick Cheney, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Richard Armitage and Karl Rove all conspired to leak the name of a Covert CIA agent. All four of these men should be tried for Treason.

 

Bush’s Support for the Troops:

 

  1. He sent the troops to war, with no body armor.
  2. He sent the troops to war with no armor for trucks or humvees.
  3. He has outsourced logistical support.
  4. He has outsourced medical support.
  5. He has slashed funding for the VA while giving speeches with our troops as backdrops.
  6. He has proposed VA cuts for 2009 and 2010 in his latest budget proposal.
  7. He has extended tours in Iraq and Afghanistan from 12 to 18 months.
  8. He has stretched the Armed Forces to the breaking point.
  9. He has politicized the troops at every opportunity.

 

 

The Katrina Fiasco

 

Here is another example of the ineffectual leadership from Bush and Cheney, and because of their direction, thousands suffered needlessly. And thousands are still displaced because Insurance companies were allowed to only pay 10 cents on the dollar if they paid at all.

Here’s a little trivia for you, a company called IAP Worldwide Services was contracted to supply water and ice to Katrina victims. IAP Worldwide Service is also the company that Bush contracted to privatize the support staff at Walter Reed Hospital. IAP slashed the support staff from its original 300 employees down to 50.

 

American Civil Liberties

 

·        Telephone Wiretaps: Bush and Cheney have been wiretapping American citizens without warrants.

·        E-Mail: The NSA has been data mining e-mails from millions of Americans, without a Warrant.

·        Mail: President Bush has said that he has the right to read the mail of American citizens, without warrants.

·        Financial Records: Bush and Cheney have data mined the financial records of millions of Americans without warrants.

·        Medical Records: The NSA has built a database using the medical records of millions of American citizens, without a warrant.

·        Data Mining: The NSA and the Pentagon have been building a database on every American, all without warrants.

 

Under the cover of a bill called The Military Commissions Act, Bush has authorized kidnappings by the CIA, called “Extraordinary Rendition.” Bush has suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus; and Bush has authorized “secret prisons,” as well as “torture.”

Under the incompetent leadership of Bush and Cheney we now have the largest deficit in the history of our country. These two have also given us the largest trade deficit in the history of our country.

Bush has been in office about six and a half years, and he has been very ineffective in almost all of his decisions, I only wish I had more space to list them. But I have given you several examples where Bush and Cheney have misused their power, or just flat out lied.

Should they both be impeached?  Hell yes…

 

 

David Phillips is a Vietnam Era Veteran, a Democratic Party Activist, and David is also the Publisher and Editor of the online political magazine YodasWorld.org

 E-Mail Questions or Comments: oneyoda@aol.com