With Obama backpedaling on the investigation of torture and other Bush crimes, his promised rollback of unconstitutional Executive Branch powers seems in peril. On the prosecution of Bush crimes, Joe Biden has already given the standard slimeball cop-out you would expect from Joe Biden: “We’re looking forward, we’re not looking backwards.” On Obama’s transition website change.gov, the question which outranked all other questions from the public was on the appointment of a special prosecutor, submitted by Bob Fertik of Democrats.com. The question was disregarded, even though it had the most votes, as having been “already answered.”
And today in the New York Times Obama signaled his reluctance to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate torture and warrantless wiretapping, until there was evidence. Bush admitted to approving torture, illegal surveillance, there is blood all over the floor and five bodies heaped in the corner. But we need evidence.
But the case can be made that if Obama refuses to do his duty to uphold the Constitution, then at some point when he has reasonably been given a chance, the focus of the Bush impeachment movement should transfer to him. By not explicitly renouncing the Executive Branch’s new powers to declare American citizens as “enemy combatants” indefinitely, to torture them as they did Jose Padilla, to engage in warrantless wiretapping, and to break the law with impunity, he implicitly accepts these unconstitutional powers. Absent an explicit renunciation of these and their accompanying, unconstitutional legislative counterparts like the Military Commissions Act, he will be acting outside the law, as George Bush was, and he will be passing these powers on to his successor.
The economic crisis will deepen into a Darwinian quagmire no matter what Obama does. In the end it will end as all depressions end: with the strongest fatter than ever and everyone else pretty much starting all over again. This is not about another temporary economic cycle. It’s about what form of government we will live under for the next one hundred years.
Obama is in a tenuous position, and it would behoove him to understand that there are those on his own left who take the constitutional form of government seriously. With powers in his own party already signaling that it will not be an easy ride, by balking at what should be an uncontroversial element in his tax plan, a $3000 tax credit for companies which hire or retrain workers, he is looking at hostility from both the right and the left. It’s starting to look like Jimmy Carter all over again.
As an outsider and relative newcomer it was planned by the Washington establishment to make Carter look like he could not do anything right. His excellent plan to start us on our way toward energy independence was torn to shreds by members of his own party, just as Obama’s tax-cut plan is getting picked apart by John Kerry and other Democrat blowhards. Contrast this to the discipline of the Republicans, who sing in unison to get things passed, and move anyone who steps out of line to an office in the basement where you can hear toilets flushing. The Democrats did it to Carter because he was not one of the Old Boys, and he was impinging on their own power and perogatives, and their buddies in the auto and oil industries.
There is already a vigorous impeach Obama movement afoot on the right, driven by right-wing radio. The problem for Obama is that this means 60 million people are listening to this day-in and day-out, and the power of right-wing radio to shape the debate should never be underestimated. This might be a good time for the Constitutionalist Left to make a strategic alliance with them. No, I don’t think expanded healthcare is socialism, one of the main beefs of the movement on the right, but I am ready to make common cause, for my own reasons, if it will save my beloved Constitution.
The Constitutionalist Left can use the momentum already set into motion by the Impeach Obama Right, to make sure that Obama hears them. We can be Obama’s best friend or his worse nightmare. If he does the right thing, we can sit in the offices of the John Kerry’s of the world and ask them to shut their traps so Obama can get something done. If Obama does not restore the Constitution and prosecute Bush crimes, then he is just as bad as the rest.
If history follows the pattern that it did with Jimmy Carter, Obama will be a one-term president with many idealistic pronouncements but few accomplishments. He can stave off this fate with a bold restoration of democracy, by repealing the Military Commissions Act, renouncing enemy combatant status for Americans, and prosecuting illegal wiretapping and torture. Then we’ll be happy to ride herd on these Democratic congressmen when they start throwing monkey wrenches at his agenda, as they surely will.
It’s not that I don’t trust Obama with the new Executive powers toolkit being handed to him by Bush. It’s that I don’t want him to pass it on to the next guy. God forbid a fascist swine like Jeb Bush, who’ll make his brother look moderate, take hold where George left off, and take it from there. A couple of terror attacks and he’ll have a grip on the country Hitler could only dream of. He’ll have the technology, and be all of Bush’s amorality plus some brains. Now that’s scary.
By allying with the Impeach Obama Right for our own reasons, it can be the not the right, not the left, but the American people who win.
National Impeachment Network has created this ad for television, which was inspired by Billy Vegas’s Youtube hit “How to Create an Angry American.” A version of this ad has already run in Vermont on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN Headlines, and other stations. In the closing months of this administration we are going over the heads of congressmen and appealing directly to their constituents in order to generate pressure for impeachment. Impeachment can be accomplished in three days with a single article like refusing to obey congressional subpoenas, which is clearly impeachable. Call all members of the Judiciary Committee In an up-or-down vote before the entire Congress, Republicans dismayed at what Bush has done to their party will call.
Impeachment votes have never been on the major crimes. They have always been on a smaller side issue, like obstruction of justice (Nixon) or perjury (Clinton.) We all know why Bush needs to be impeached. If not, GO HERE. But for it to happen your congressmen and senators need to hear from you!
What Else You Can Do:
- Tell your congressperson you will be looking for a primary challenger to start campaigning against him next year to replace him or her in 2010, if he does not do his Constitutional duty to impeach Bush. As the economic crisis deepens, and even Obama says it will get worse, we’ll remember that it was Bush’s $3 trillion war which drained the economy of any safety cushion to get through this bubble. Even the most basic math tells you that $3 trillion is FOUR $700 billion bail-outs.
- Help spread this impeachment TV ad across the country. ImpeachTime.org is buying airtime in as many congressional districts as we can. You can run this TV ad in your town many times for as little as $1000. We are also running this radio ad, which we will provide to you free of charge if you would like to out it on the radio in your community.
Email ralphlopez AT hotmail DOT com if you would like an ad made to target your own congressmember. LET IT NEVER BE SAID THAT THIS GENERATION REMAINED SILENT.
Donate here for airtime to run this TV ad, tailored to individual congressional districts.
Fact: Congress was not looking at the same intelligence
The all-important conclusion by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that, EVEN IF HE HAD WMD, Saddam would not attack, or pass them to someone who would, unless we attacked first WAS DELETED! Many countries have WMD, Pakistan, North Korea, the Russian republics, and we aren’t attacking them, because we know they would never use them against us. They would be obliterated. US intelligence was saying the same thing about Saddam. And this was deleted from the intelligence given to Congress in October 2002, days before the war vote.
Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger cause for making war. Iraq probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the US Homeland if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge.
Version of 2002 NIE given to Congress days before the vote on war, called the “White Paper,” was significantly the same as the classified version. But the words above are missing. No reference to the vital conclusion that, even if Saddam had WMD, he would not use them, or give them to someone who would, because it would be suicidal for him. The hardest thing to understand, because the focus has been on whether Saddam had WMD, is that the issue is not whether he had them, but whether he would use them. U.S. intelligence was telling Bush a resounding NO! — as Bush was telling us “Iraq could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as forty-five minutes” (September 26, 2002.) Combined with the links Bush made between Saddam and 9/11, soldiers were led to believe they were fighting for the imminent security of the United States. This despite the fact that Hans Blix said the weapons inspections were working, Saddam had no WMD programs in place, and Saddam had agreed to give weapons inspectors unrestricted access indefinitely.
Linking Saddam to 9/11:
“Al Qaeda hides, Saddam doesn’t, but the danger is, is that they work in concert. The danger is, is that al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam’s madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world.” - Bush on September 25, 2002, days before the vote on the Iraq War Resolution.
“We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade,” and that “Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases,” Bush in his speech to the nation on October 7, 2002.
QUESTION FROM REPORTER KEN HERMAN OF COX NEWS: The attack on the World Trade Center.
BUSH: Nothing. Except it’s part of — and nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody’s ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.
Note Bush changes the question to whether Saddam “ordered” the 9/11 attacks, when the question was did he have anything to do with them. Now Bush is violating his own doctrine, to “make no distinction” between terrorists and those who harbor or in any way assist them. Either Saddam had something to do with the attacks or he didn’t, no one said anything about “ordering” them. Bush repeating before the war that “they work in concert” clearly attempts to convey some involvement. The final proof that Bush lied about Saddam’s involvement was his taking his fall-back position after all purported links between Al Qaeda and Saddam had been thoroughly debunked. Acknowledgment that Saddam was not in any way responsible for 9/11, Bush said in 2006 on the anniversary of the attacks:
“I am often asked why we are in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat. My administration, the Congress, and the United Nations saw the threat - and after 9/11, Saddam’s regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take.”
Zogby poll, Feb 28, 2006:90 percent of US troops in Iraq think they are there in “retaliation for Saddams role in 9-11.”
Sometimes I wonder if I’m speaking English. What seems so crystal clear to me, and always did, is not reaching the man or woman on the street, going about shopping, going to work, taking the kids to soccer practice, whatever. George Bush has declared wartime powers in a war he says has “no end.” What is it that folks aren’t getting about this?
I know I’m a political junkie, and follow the game more closely than the average Joe. But you don’t need to be a sports nut to know when you’ve witnessed a history-making grand slam. You don’t need to know the game at the level of body language. You know you’ve just seen something breathtaking. Radical. Record-breaking. Never-before-witnessed-by-human-beings.
What Bush has done changes the relationship between government and the people once and for all, no matter who’s in charge. Could be a Democrat. Could be a Republican. Could be none of the above.
Never again will you have what Thomas Jefferson called the “inalienable right” to a “speedy and public trial” by a jury of your peers. Never again will you have the freedom from “unreasonable search and seizure.” The law of the land, the Constitution, is not the law of the land anymore. [Read more →]
The biggest obstacle to America becoming America again is the show “24.” It revolves around hypothetical situations that the administration takes pains to keep alive, by saying “attacks have been foiled” and “lives have been saved.” They never tell us WHICH plots were foiled, or WHAT attacks stopped. But it does keep them from being impeached for something Americans would never tolerate otherwise. It encourages a climate of fear in which anything will be tolerated, even though the reality is rather different. But far more Americans watch TV than read magazines like the National Journal, which reported even way back in 2006:
The largest single group at Guantanamo Bay today consists of men caught in indiscriminate sweeps for Arabs in Pakistan. Once arrested, these men passed through several captors before being given to the U.S. military. Some of the men say they were arrested after asking for help getting to their embassies; a few say the Pakistanis asked them for bribes to avoid being turned over to America.
…”The one thing we were never clear of was where they came from,” [Michael] Scheuer said of the Guantanamo detainees. “DOD picked them up somewhere.” When National Journal told Scheuer that the largest group came from Pakistani custody, he chuckled. “Then they were probably people the Pakistanis thought were dangerous to Pakistan,” he said. “We absolutely got the wrong people.”
It’s not the “24″ scenario where they have someone who knows something and then torture him to find out what it is. It’s more the habit of nations like China and North Korea, who sweep up suspects at random, then torture them to find out IF they know anything. The bi-partisan Senate panel has laid responsibility for this monstrousness squarely at the feet of Bush, Rumsfeld, and Rice. From AP summary of report:
The true genesis of the decision to use coercive techniques, the report said, was a memo signed by President Bush on Feb. 7, 2002, declaring that the Geneva Convention’s standards for humane treatment did not apply to captured al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. As early as that spring, the panel said, top administration officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, participated in meetings in which the use of coercive measures was discussed. The panel drew on a written statement by Rice, released earlier this year, to support that conclusion.
The report, released by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., and based on a nearly two-year investigation, said that both the policies and resulting controversies tarnished the reputation of the United States and undermined national security. “Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority,” it said.
I read in another diary that ImpeachTime.org is cranking up a 3-day impeachment push, centered on a single clearly impeachable artice, defying congressional subpoenas, sent to the House floor for an immediate up-or-down vote. The hearings would be scheduled to last no more than 3 days. Even the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee will have a hard time arguing that Bush, by ordering Rove not to comply, has defied a congressional subpoena.
It doesn’t matter if it passes, as much as it matters that the American people have stated to the world their clear break with the men (and Rice) who did this in their names. Don’t worry about whether it can pass or not. Don’t worry if you think time is short. Pick up the phone and say “impeach” just so you can tell your grandchildren that you did it. It’s your Christmas present to them, someday in the future.
From Military.com Disabled Sent Back To War
Tom Philpott | June 19, 2008
One day last August, while manning the .50-caliber gun atop his a Humvee on a dirt road in northern Iraq, Army Spc. Daniel “Joey” Haun suddenly lost consciousness. His vehicle had struck by a buried bomb, an “improvised explosive device.” Haun was ejected, his vehicle flipped over.
On impact with the ground, Haun’s left hand was driven up toward his forearm, crushing his wrist. The surgeon who rebuilt the wrist, using a metal plate and screws, told Haun last year that his infantry days were over…MORE
In the hullaballoo over whether Bush really said whether or not there was a link between Saddam and 9/11, in the run-up to the Iraq War, an impeachable offense, we can all stop arguing.
The Authorization to Use Force Against Iraq REQUIRED Bush to certify a link between Saddam and 9/11:
–”I have also determined that the use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” -George Bush, certification to Congress to authorize the use of force in Iraq, March 23, 2003
“Armed force against Iraq is consistent with”…actions against…nations…who…aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11,” is what that sentence reads, with the lawyerly gobbledygook stripped out. In other words, Saddam “aided” 9/11.
Did he lie? Forgery or no forgery, on Sept. 18, 2003, on Meet the Press, Bush said:
–”No, we’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th.
Stop the presses. Do not pass go. Either Saddam “aided” the attacks on 9/11, or he didn’t. That requires impeachment proceedings, for something a heck of a lot more important than lipstick on underwear. No “plausible deniability” here.
Congress and Fox newscasters may not be paying attention to these plain, simple facts, but historians certainly will. And historians will label us The Dumbest Generation for our grandchildren. Ron Suskind’s alleged forgery may be ADDITIONAL evidence that Bush lied us into war, but it isn’t by a looong shot the only evidence.
One of the most commonly-heard refrains from naysayers on impeachment is: It’s already August. There is no time.
This is flatly wrong. Yes, it is late in the term, and unusual at this point to punish a president’s crimes. What is more unusual is the sheer magnitude and number of the crimes of this president, which demands impeachment if not war crimes trials later. It took Nixon less than a week-and-a-half to resign after the House Judiciary Committee adopted a single article of impeachment, on obstruction of justice. Bush ordering members of his administration, like Karl Rove, to defy subpoenas is obstruction of justice, and is alone enough to impeach. There is time aplenty. The missing ingredient is political will.
Were the Judiciary to convene hearings on two articles related to the above, and be forced to take a vote, the phones would start ringing off the hooks from Republican voters, Democratic voters, and everyone in between. If you don’t believe it go to a few conservative websites like those concerned with illegal immigration, and search “impeachment.” The dynamics of the “votes aren’t there” will change once people find out that something is in the works.
The truth is, the Congress has no clothes on impeachment. This is one of those cases in which the biggest obstacle to understanding how something can happen is…it’s too easy. What isn’t easy is putting the fear of God into congressmen who want to keep their jobs, in order to force them to do the right thing. But it can be done. One real effective way is to go through their corporate campaign contributors and email them that you will not be buying whatever they are selling as long as they give money to this treasonous congressman who won’t do his duty to impeach. Then copy the email to your treasonous congress-critter. These people are nothing without the money behind them, so we’re going after the money. The language everyone understands.
Some have the impression that these kinds of historic events are a long, drawn out process. They are not always. Remember when the Berlin Wall fell? The fall of tyrants tends to unfold quickly. One minute the news is inflation and gas prices, then suddenly you are watching people with pieces of the Wall dancing and cheering on television. The Wall was the one stone cold reality in the world that would never change, and suddenly, it’s down. It all happened so fast it made your head spin! That’s what impeachment will be like, if we keep up the pressure, and double it, and double it again, now.
With the Judge Bates ruling against immunity for Harriet Meirs, and ruling that “executive privilege” claims are invalid against orders to produce certain documents, it is clear that congress has no business going into recess in the middle of a constitutional crisis. They have just been handed a major victory, by a Bush appointee, no less. Republicans of integrity are emerging from the shadows, most dramatically with the nine who broke with the party to vote for having the hearings which took place on July 25. Judge Bates said: Even if you’re my friend, George, you still have to, um, obey the law.
The next order of business is to prevail upon congress to cancel its summer recess, to complete the unfinished business of restoring the Republic over the New Executive Branch Monarchy, through impeachment. The most common argument by the well-meaning American for why impeachment is a “waste of time” is that they will be out soon. This is like saying, while a gang is robbing a bank and down to carting away the furniture, they’ll be done soon.
You don’t wait until they’re done. You intervene.
The damage to the Constitution and the rule of law cannot be allowed to stand, as the partisans in any party which holds a majority in the future will be able to say, “well Bush did it.” Start a disastrous war based on lies? Well Bush did it. Trample the rights of even born-and-bred American citizens? Well Bush did it. Torture prisoners of war who later turned out to be innocent, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? Well Bush did it. All because Americans have forgotten who they are and have begun acting like sheep every time Bush plays the Fear Button. Our forefathers on the nation’s battlefields of generations past would disown us, to see how soft and cowardly 60 years of prosperity have made us.
The only warning we needed that these people were out of control was when Bush declared the radical doctrine of wartime powers which over-ruled the Fourth (search and seizure) and Sixth (jury trial) Amendments of the Constitution, forever. He took powers which existed in previous wars then applied them to “a new kind of war,” meaning: The permanent kind. The power to throw someone in a dungeon to rot or to ransack his home, without a warrant, are the powers of a monarch. And in America, we don’t do monarchs.
If congress does not cancel summer recess, referred to in the official calendar as their “District Work Period,” we must be clear that we will be camped on their front lawns with signs. They will come out and talk to us and explain why they aren’t in Washington doing their jobs. There will be no fiddling while Rome burns.
What Price Freedom, and the Way of Life We Have Enjoyed? Of the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence:
-Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died.
-Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.
-Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured.
-Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.
-Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
-Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him.
-Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
-Legend has it when Thomas Nelson Jr was told the British General Cornwallis had taken over his home for British headquarters, he replied, “Blow the damn thing down.” Nelson’s house is still standing at Yorktown and there are cannonballs embedded in its east wall.
-Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.
-John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished.
We’ve had a lot of requests for easy contact information for the Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee. The future of this democracy rests in very few hands, and the Democrats, with few exceptions , show interest only in partisan intrigue. The most commonly heard excuse on the Hill for them not doing their duty is “the Republicans will say it’s retribution for Clinton.” God help us. I am out of pejorative adjectives for the hapless cowardice of these creatures who talk like men, walk like men, and yet are missing something which is supposed to run up through your back from your hips to the base of the cranium. History will be their judge.
In this struggle there are no Democrats, no Republicans, only Americans fighting to save the Constitution. Full House Judiciary Committee.
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