Impeachment Warranted
Posted by James O'Rourke on August 24, 2008
?by Sandra Clark | CityNews Ohio
In doggedly pursuing impeachment of members of the Bush administration, U.S. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich is one of few in Congress willing to speak truth to power.
Kucinich (D-Ohio) recently proposed 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush charging that he manufactured a false case for going to war against Iraq. The measure also claims Bush failed to provide troops with vehicle armor; illegally detained both foreign nationals and Americans; condoned torture; mishandled the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina; and undermined efforts to address global warning. Quickly, the articles were relegated to the Judiciary Committee where they most likely will die.
That’s unfortunate because the Bush presidency has been marred by miscalculations, mistakes and misinformation often shrouded in national security. Yet Congress consistently failed to put him in check. Legislature missed a grand opportunity to put its collective foot down in October 2002 when the Senate and the House authorized the use of force against Iraq.
Congress now knows what it should have discerned then — the administration’s claims for war were unfounded.?Since then, one after another, revelations of Bushs miscalculations and disregard for the U.S. Constitution and international law have been coming fast and furious:
In 2005, the administration challenged criticism by the NAACP and other non-profit organizations by investigating their non-profit status.
Bush officials gave no-bid contracts, and very loose reins, to mercenaries of Blackwater, who allegedly committed a so called “criminal event” by gunning down 17 Iraqi civilians in Bagdad.
The administration has tried to corrupt the Justice Department by harassing and eliminating prosecutors seen as non-partisan. Earlier, on March 10, 2004, then White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., interrupted former Attorney General John D. Ashcroft in his intensive care hospital bed to persuade Ashcroft to reauthorize Bush’s domestic surveillance program, which the Justice Department had just determined was illegal.
And those are just the highlights of this administration’s failures.
Yet it seems that Kucinich is the only legislator sufficiently angered by these attempts to subvert the democratic process.
To be fair, legislators and the public were struck dumb by the Sept. 11 attacks. In this fragile state, Congress granted Bush rare freedoms for national security’s sake. And now, in the twilight of his tenure, impeachment talks arise leading some to ask,
“What’s the point?”
The point is someone has to say, at least for posterity’s sake, that this is not the American way. We stand for the rule of law, honesty, clarity and transparency in government. Intelligence and reason is paramount. And anything other that will not be tolerated.
