By Mickey Walker-June 21, 2009
For years now, the merits of Impeachment for the dark deeds
committed against America by the Bush/Cheney Thugs, has churned in my unconscious. We ask why did the events happen? Why did we, the people, enable Bush to
wreck America? Why Impeachment was
off the table seemed to go against all the Government 101 courses we ever took
in school. We know that
Impeachment has been viable and used historically, but the volume of
impeachable offenses committed by Bush/Cheney exceeds all the offenses of all
past administrations added up together. Other presidents have been impeached for lesser violations of the public
trust. Yet Articles of Impeachment
were not ever brought against Bush or Cheney. Funny thing, that, but not in the humorous sense.
At first glance, it appears that most of the historical
impeachment attempts on past presidents involved a main area of focus. For example, the Teapot Dome Scandal of
the early 1920s saw Albert Fall, President Warren Harding’s Secretary of the
Interior, taking over $400,000 dollars in bribes for favors he extended to oil
company giants like Sinclair and Mammoth Oil with illegal leases on government
property. Many black hat players,
including Fall, did some time in the hoosegow over it, too: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAteapot.htm
Then in the 1970s, Richard Nixon found himself an inch from
being impeached because of the infamous Watergate break-in where high-ranking
members of the Nixon staff and cabinet were dogged by two Washington Post
reporters who linked them to the illegal break-in of the Watergate Democratic
Headquarters. Haldemann,
Erlichmann, and G. Gorden Liddy were all convicted of culpability in the
illegal break-in and sentenced while Nixon refused to give up the notorious White
House tapes that would show that Nixon ordered the break-in from his own White
House. The Senate was about to
impeach Nixon, but Nixon resigned and was later pardoned by his appointee to
Vice President, Gerald Ford. The
following summary and numerous implications and convictions of top level Nixon
staffers shows that clearly Nixon was involved in the crime: http://www.bookrags.com/eb/watergate-scandal-eb/
Bill Clinton was actually impeached during his second term
of office as president, yet the Senate did not remove him from office as
president. The articles of
impeachment were based upon proof that Clinton lied to Special Prosecutor Ken
Starr’s grand jury and to Congress about his sexual involvement with Monica
Lewinski a White House staffer.
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/impeachments/clinton.htm
The country was as split as was Congress on the Impeachment
and trial of Bill Clinton for his private affairs. During this time Clinton’s approval ratings were over 70% in
spite of the Articles of Impeachment. It was apparent that few Americans believed that
impeachment and the expense of the investigations and trial justified the
impeachment proceedings that Ken Starr successfully brought against President
Clinton with endless GOP war chest of dollars with which to dog and persecute
Democrats. Clinton’s sins were
just not that germane to his being a good president who brought prosperity to
America, or so we thought. His
transgressions, impeachable or not, seemed to be the sordid vehicle of those
who would spend many millions in a vendetta against Clinton and the Democrats,
in a holier-than-thou payoff of pseudo- conscience about sexual morality which
many said, didn’t have shit to do with being an effective president. Many said Clinton should have just
refused to answer questions about his private business instead of getting
trapped into lying under oath. I
agree. It was nobody’s business
and certainly not the business of state. Until adultery becomes a crime punishable under the law, that is.
There were other impeachment successes such as the one that
slam-dunked President Andrew Johnson over bitter differences on Reconstruction
he had in the post Civil War period with radical Republicans who wanted to give
the South a complete makeover. Again, no conviction or removal from office occurred.
Enter George W. Bush 43rd president of the United
States. Omigod, this dude from
Texas (by way of Connecticut) had no fear! The list of viable impeachment offenses is enormously long
for this president and even for his Vice President, Dick Cheney who has been
referred to as Darth Vader in the flesh. Yet nobody but Dennis Kucinich even dared bring articles against the
Bushites. I tried to think of many
alleged offenses might have existed during this 8-year long presidency and the
darkness of the list lumbers on like a long runaway train. They are too numerous to list in this
short piece. Bush is impeachable
for:
1. Taking
America to war in Iraq over false pretenses and lies to the American people
about Weapons of Mass Destruction
pointed in our direction from Saddam Hussein’s own war room.
2. Manipulating
the National Budget so that the Trillions of dollars in war costs would be off
budget and well-hidden.
3. Wiretapping
American citizens by the millions without proper court authority.
4. Breaking
the law of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution (Right to Privacy). http://www.lectlaw.com/def/f081.htm
5. Breaking
the duly-signed Geneva Convention Treaty Articles that we as a country would
not engage in torture.
6. Destroying
Americans’ right of Habeas Corpus.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15220450/
7. Stealing
one, maybe two elections (this entanglement of paid lies and liars might be
hard to prove). Bush’s engaging in
massive voter registration fraud in Ohio to secure a second term is in direct
violation of the Voter Registration Act of 1965. Purging of the voter
registration lists in Florida in 2000 resulted in expunging over 50,000 voters
from the roles, more than enough for Gore to have carried Florida and hence the
General Election of 2000.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen
8. Overriding
the courts and circumventing the justice system by commuting Scooter Libby’s
sentence after conviction by a federal court in the Valerie Plame trial.
Sealing the Energy Department minutes of meetings between
Cheney and high level convicted crooks like Ken Lay (what are they trying to
hide and why would the GAO file a lawsuit against the president to give up the
minutes?). http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20020201.html
10. In
the Downing Street Memo and further substantiated by former Secretary of
Treasury Paul O’Neil that Bush pre-planned to invade Iraq based upon fantasy
evidence and no proof of provocation. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/international/europe/27memo.html
11. Bush’s
deciding to dig up dirt on UN General Assembly members when they were still
considering Bush’s ill-fated war resolution against Iraq.
12. Authorizing
the kidnapping of terror suspects and airlifting them to foreign countries that
torture and render the prisoners without rights to counsel or to communicate
with family.
13. Bush/Cheney
deliberately exposing the secret identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA undercover
operative in the service of the United States against terrorists and other
enemies of America.
14. Bush/Cheney
deliberately conspiring with Ken Lay of Enron, to rip off the people of
California to pay electricity rates artificially run up in excess of 43 Billion
dollars.
http://www.yuricareport.com/PoliticalAnalysis/FraudinWhiteHouse.htm
15. Illegally
transferring $700 million from the budget for the war in Afghanistan for war
preparations in Iraq in July 2002, without Congressional Approval. This is a
Constitutional violation.
16. Illegally
hiring and paying secret contractor militias such as Blackwater to act as an
arm of the Bush police force at Bush’s secret command to perform whatever,
whenever, and wherever the Decider decided.
17. Changing
the very structure of our form of government established under the
Constitution. By attaching a
“signing statement” to a law duly passed by Congress, Bush usurped and
nullified our system of laws and tried to destroy our checks and balances of
the three separate branches of government. In many instances where funding was necessary for the bill
to go onto the books as a law, the GAO refused to allocate and acknowledge the
duly-passed law because of Bush’s attaching a signing statement that changed the
nature of the intended bill and rendered it impotent as a law. Many such bills passed into law
languish in Bush’s “Signing Statement Purgatory” with no funding provided that
is necessary to make the law work as intended. That Congress did not take immediate and severe action on
this high level of contemptuous arrogance shown by George W. Bush, is
baffling. Congress no longer is
the legislative branch that passes laws, get it? Now the president is. You would think that Congress would
care enough that their own powers were rendered impotent, that they would be
outraged and take action. Not to
happen, though. Go figure. The “Unitary Executive” president now
calls all the shots and with a signing statement can change or nullify any
duly-passed law as he sees fit. One of the more noteworthy signing statements Bush affixed to a law was
the McCain No Torture Bill. Bush
signed “As president, if I deem it necessary to torture in the name of National
Security, I, as president, will torture if I see fit.” Amazing. Impeachable. The Founding Fathers must have all turned over in their graves!
Many more impeachable offenses sprang up eternal under the
Bush administration’s reign of terror. Stacking the US Attorney rosters with only those who would pursue political
dictates of the Neocons in power, was simply, splendidly Mussolini with an
Orwellian twist, don’t you agree? Alberto Gonzales should have been tried and convicted for his part in
that little gambit as well as his attempt to get Attorney General Ashcroft to
sign off on illegal wiretapping from his own hospital sickbed. And we all know who Gonzo worked for as
a personal attack dog and dirty-dealing scoundrel, don’t we? Yet nobody got impeached. Gonzo didn’t even have to withstand any
serious consequences, e.g., having to testify under oath. American justice turned to crap during
the Bush years. Raped and
battered, the American people just wanted the buggers gone. I guess we were
just worn out from the 8-year-long bonking we took and our jobs, homes, and the
US dollar all in a shambles. No
criminals, despite the preponderance of evidence, were brought to justice or
impeached. And that could very
well be the biggest mistake we Americans ever made. 