Dennis goes Constitutional!
There ARE still hero’s in Washington DC — and you’ll forgive me for noting that … the littlest guy on the Hill has the biggest balls!
Jude
Articles of Impeachment To Be Filed On Cheney
Jodin Morey, ImpeachForPeace
April 17, 2007
[open link for youtube video's]
Washington Post — Looks like he’s reached his boiling point.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the most liberal of the Democratic presidential candidates in the primary field, declared in a letter sent to his Democratic House colleagues this morning that he plans to file articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney.
Kucinich has made ending the war in Iraq the central theme of his campaign. He has even taken aim at the leading Democratic presidential candidates in the field for their votes on authorizing the war.
Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to impeach the president, vice president and “all civil Officers of the United States” for “treason, bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
Kucinich ALSO says he’s pursuing impeachment of Bush! Well let’s help him out. Sacks and sacks of mail are about to arrive in Dennis Kucinich’s office initiating impeachment via the House of Representative’s own rules. This legal document is as binding as if a State or if the House itself passed the impeachment resolution ( H.R. 635).
Kucinich says he is building his case for impeachment, and is working to build the support of his peers in Congress. He says he intends to impeach. He said he needs us to keep building the groundswell of support for impeachment all over the country. He asks that we send him copies of all the resolutions passed in various States, local Legislative Districts, County Districts and of any petitions with signatures, so that he can present them to the floor of the House. He said he felt that our framing the issue of impeachment in terms of the Constitution is a principled choice, and ultimately more effective than just acting on anger. Here’s video of Kucinich addressing the impeachment issue:
Let’s answer Kucinich’s call with a petition that has it’s precedent in history, and it’s legitimacy in the Rules of the House of Representatives.
There’s a little known and rarely used clause of the “Jefferson Manual” in the rules for the House of Representatives which sets forth the various ways in which a president can be impeached. Only the House Judiciary Committee puts together the Articles of Impeachment, but before that happens, someone has to initiate the process.
That’s where we come in. In addition to a House Resolution (635), or the State-by-State method, one of the ways to get impeachment going is for individual citizens like you and me to submit a memorial. ImpeachforPeace.org has created a new memorial based on one which was successful in impeaching a federal official in the past. You can find it on their website as a PDF.
You can initiate the impeachment process and simultaneously help Kucinich to follow through with the process. Do-It-Yourself by downloading the memorial, filling in the relevant information (your name, state, etc.), and sending it in. We’re not only having you send them to Dennis now, but also to Impeach for Peace. That way, we can collect them all in one place, and deliver them all simultaneously (with cameras rolling) in July. Be a part of history.
Cheney amps up pressure on critics of Iraq policy
Terrorism’s threat to American cities is “very real … every single day,” he says in TV interview.
Mark Silva, Chicago Tribune
Mon, Apr. 16, 2007
WASHINGTON | Vice President Dick Cheney is often called upon to deliver the administration’s toughest talk about the wars abroad.
He now says this about the threat of terrorists detonating a nuclear bomb in an American city: “It’s a very real threat … something that we have to worry about and defeat every single day.”
Cheney’s warning about what’s at stake for the U.S. in withdrawing from Iraq, delivered in a TV interview Sunday and coupled with a war statement that President Bush plans to make today, is part of an escalating chorus of pressure that the White House hopes to exert on Democrats to approve a new war-spending bill.
Vowing to veto any spending bill that includes a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, the Bush administration thinks it ultimately will win a “clean” bill — predicting that Democratic leaders will buckle after Bush vetoes their bill. “I’m willing to bet” the Democrats eventually will concede, Cheney said in a Sunday interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” recorded the day before.
Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said a veto would likely prompt Democratic lawmakers to come back with a second try that requires the Iraqi government to meet performance benchmarks or face consequences.
“We are very, very serious about what the American people said in November,” Levin said, referring to the election that put Democrats in charge of Congress. “They want a change of course.”
Cheney’s criticism drew harsh words from Levin.
“He has misled the people consistently on Iraq,” Levin said. “He has misstated. He has exaggerated. And I don’t think he has any credibility left with the American people.”
The uncooperative tone comes just as Bush plans to meet bipartisan leaders of Congress this week at the White House.
The purpose of that session on Wednesday is to discuss how to get a war-funding bill done, yet no negotiation is expected. ++
Bush/Cheney Dig in to Win
Robert Parry , ConsortiumNews
April 17, 2007
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are determined to secure another $100 billion blank check for the Iraq War despite a growing consensus among intelligence and military analysts that the war strategy is in chaos and on course to gravely damage U.S. interests in the Middle East.
Having solidified support among congressional Republicans and still backed by a powerful right-wing news media, Bush and Cheney appear to have concluded that they can force congressional Democrats to back down over legislative language seeking a phased withdrawal from Iraq.
If the President does succeed in this test of wills and wrests the war funding from Congress without strings attached, Bush’s supporters will tout his success as a political rebound. Republican strategists also hope the expected Democratic humiliation will drive a wedge between the national Democrats and the party’s staunchly anti-war base.
Already, prominent Democrats, such as Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Barack Obama of Illinois, have drawn criticism from the base for showing a readiness to run up a white flag rather than face a continued barrage of accusations about undercutting the troops. Those signals have reinforced White House confidence than Bush can prevail.
Over the past week, Bush and Cheney have ratcheted up the rhetoric with the President declaring on April 16 that the Democrats were pushing legislation that “would undercut our troops” and accusing the Democrats of playing politics at a moment of crisis.
-
“America is not going to be safe until the terrorist threat has been defeated,” Bush said. “If we do not defeat the terrorists and extremists in Iraq, they won’t leave us alone – they will follow us to the United States of America. … We should not legislate defeat in this vital war.”
On April 13, in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, Vice President Cheney took an even tougher line calling the Democratic-backed war funding bill “irresponsible” and dressing down the Democratic congressional leadership in especially harsh terms.
“Although the current political environment in our country carries echoes of the hard left in the early ’70s, America will not again play out those old scenes of abandonment, and retreat, and regret,” Cheney said. “Not this time, not on our watch. … We will press on in this mission, and we will turn events towards victory.”
Political Victory
But military and intelligence analysts do not expect that a Republican political victory over Democrats in Washington will lead to a battlefield victory in Iraq.
In an Op-Ed article in The Washington Post, retired Marine Gen. John J. Sheehan explained that he rejected a White House overture to serve as a special coordinator for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – the so-called “war czar” – because he found the administration confused about what strategy should be pursued.
“There is no agreed-upon strategic view of the Iraq problem or the region,” Sheehan wrote.
-
“Activities such as the current surge operations should fit into an overall strategic framework. There has to be linkage between short-term operations and strategic objectives that represent long-term U.S. and regional interests, such as assured access to energy resources.
“We cannot ’shorthand’ this issue with concepts such as the ‘democratization of the region’ or the constant refrain by a small but powerful group that we are going to ‘win,’ even as ‘victory’ is not defined or is frequently redefined. …
“I concluded that the current Washington decision-making process lacks a linkage to a broader view of the region and how the parts fit together strategically. We got it right during the early days of Afghanistan – and then lost focus. We have never gotten it right in Iraq. … These huge shortcomings are not going to be resolved by the assignment of an additional individual to the White House staff.” [Washington Post, April 16, 2007]
Sheehan’s account of policy chaos at senior levels of the administration fits with the view of many analysts that Bush and Cheney have put political goals – splitting the Democrats and retaining White House swagger on the war – ahead of a sensible strategy for salvaging the best possible outcome in Iraq.
A revamped strategy that involved redeploying U.S. troops either away from Iraqi cities or outside Iraq altogether would require recognition that Bush had botched his ballyhooed role as “war president” and Cheney had bungled his vaunted work as “crisis manager.”
Bush and Cheney would have to face up to how their grand schemes for remaking the Middle East and their alarmist rhetoric about al-Qaeda creating a global empire from Spain to Indonesia no more match up with reality than did their earlier assertions about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program and his supposed stockpiles of WMD.
Instead, Bush and Cheney continue to justify the Iraq War by citing provocative public comments from Osama bin Laden about how he would relish an American defeat in Iraq. But Bush and Cheney keep ignoring intercepted communiqués from al-Qaeda leaders that indicate they actually want the United States to remain bogged down in Iraq.
For instance, a letter attributed to al-Qaeda leader Zayman al-Zawahiri worried that a rapid U.S. military withdrawal could precipitate a collapse of al-Qaeda’s position in Iraq, fretting that “the mujahaddin must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal.”
Another intercepted letter, written by a senior al-Qaeda operative known as “Atiyah,” cited the need for more time so the terrorist network could sink down roots in Iraq. “Prolonging the war is in our interest,” Atiyah wrote.
Yet, the political battle in Washington is taking place in a kind of parallel universe from the military conflict in Iraq. So, Bush may yet achieve his triumph of the will over the Democrats but that likely will do nothing to alter the unfolding disaster in Iraq. ++
Is Cheney Right About the Democrats?
Ray McGovern
April 17, 2007
The rhetoric over recent days and this morning makes it clear that Vice President Dick Cheney is still in charge of Iraq policy. He seems supremely confident that the Democrats can be intimidated into giving the White House the only thing it really wants – enough money to stave off defeat until President George W. Bush and Cheney are safely out of office. That, of course, is also what lies behind the “temporary surge” in troop strength.
Was Defense Secretary Robert Gates being naive or disingenuous on Jan. 11, when he appeared before the Senate Armed Forces Committee and addressed the “surge?”
“I don’t think anybody has a definite idea about how long the surge would last. I think for most of us, in our minds, we’re thinking of it as a matter of months, not 18 months or two years.”
I know Gates; he is not naive. And whatever the relative merits of positions on a policy issue, neither he nor anyone else in the small coterie of presidential advisers is likely to stand up to Cheney. The $64 question is whether the Democrats will. To me, that appears a long shot.
On CBS’ Face the Nation yesterday, Cheney could barely suppress a smirk in expressing confidence that the Democrats in the end will cave in and, as he put it, “not leave America’s fighting forces in harm’s way without the resources they need to defend themselves.” And yes, the vice president went on to reassure viewers – against all evidence to the contrary – “We are making progress.”
While our corporate media remains allergic to analyzing the administration’s true intentions, Democrats cannot fail to see the White House game for what it is. Will they be frightened into acquiescing in the certain deaths of 1,000 to 1,500 more American troops already “in harm’s way,” and the wounding of several times that number – not to mention the mounting casualties among Iraqis?
It appears they will.
While some Democrats in Congress have shown backbone since becoming the majority, key members like Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin of Michigan seem willing to acquiesce in giving Cheney and Bush funding to continue the war, no matter what. On April 8, right after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would cosponsor legislation cutting off all funding for combat troops next March, Levin undercut Reid by telling ABC’s This Week, “We’re not going to vote to cut the funding, period. … We’re not going to cut off funding for the troops. We shouldn’t cut off funding for the troops. … We’re going to vote for a bill that funds the troops, period. We’re going to fund the troops. We always have.”
Do you want me to repeat that?
Levin is a smart fellow, but his progressive credentials have been tarnished by his caving in on funding for an unworkable National Missile Defense project, by his working out an unsavory compromise with Sen. Lindsey Graham ( R-S.C.) on depriving detainees of rights formerly guaranteed them by the U.S. Constitution, and now this.
What would prompt Levin to preempt his own majority leader? One possible explanation might be found in the chutzpah-laden admonitions coming from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) cheerleaders for Cheney, who do not disguise their fervor for the U.S. continuing the war in Iraq. Their gratuitous warnings at last month’s AIPAC meeting in Washington that U.S. politicians not show “weakness” on Iraq spring from their conviction that withdrawal of U.S. troops would make the neighborhood more dangerous for Israel. (Israeli politicians should have thought of that before goading Bush and Cheney into attacking Iraq in the first place.)
Levin has received more money from AIPAC than any other senator. It seems an open question whether he is influenced more by the money or by a penchant – akin to that of Republican “neoconservatives” – to see little or no daylight between what they perceive to be Israel’s interests and those of the United States.
Perhaps there is a simpler explanation. If there is, Levin owes it to us. Yesterday he waffled some more, telling Fox News Sunday that, if the president vetoes a troop withdrawal date, Congress will try to approve a bill with “some very strong, clear, statement about the Iraqis needing to meet our benchmarks, and consequences if they don’t.”
Right. That is sure to work with Bush, Cheney, and Iraqi leaders, who continue to play senior U.S. officials like a violin. If that is the kind of cowardly “compromise” Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accommodate to after talking with the president on Wednesday, let everyone know that they do so over the dead bodies of countless thousands more Americans and Iraqis.
No Give From Bush
President Bush was well-scripted for his White House East Room performance this morning, at which he used the bereaved spouses and children of fallen troops as a backdrop to repeat his familiar bromides for continued war in Iraq. The well-worn rhetorical flourishes were all there, relevant or not: two shameless allusions to Sept. 11 (as if that had anything to do with Iraq); the need to fight over there, “so that we don’t have to face [the terrorists] where you live;” refusal to countenance “arbitrary dates” or an “artificial timetable” for “precipitous withdrawal.”
There was no sign in the East Room of any White House intention to compromise on key points; rather, the lines are now clearly drawn.
Immediately after the president’s presentation, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and two retired U.S. Army generals responded. The generals went on the offensive, showing the military strategy and tactics on Iraq, particularly the surge, to be misguided and counterproductive. Reid, however, was perceptively on the defensive. He gave pride of place to repeated assurances that “Congress is committed to fully funding the troops,” adding that draft legislation gives the president $4.3 billion more than he even asked for. He then suggested, in a plaintive tone, said that the president “should listen to us.” Fat chance.
Asked about Levin’s unusual behavior, Reid finessed his answer, referring to the possibility of benchmarks and stressing that the president “is not going to get a bill that has nothing on it,” even if he vetoes the first one. Reid added, “Senator Levin is one of my strong allies, one of my generals; I look to him for guidance and leadership.
A harbinger of Democratic cave-in on Wednesday, absent an immediate backbone transplant for Reid. ++
When Will The RNC, Cheney, And Boehner Smear Great Britain?
ThinkProgress
4/17/07
Two weeks ago, the Military Times reported that the House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) had decided to stop using the phrase “global war on terror” in committee budget documents.
The decision should not have been controversial: President Bush, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers have all stated that the “global war on terror” is misnamed.
But conservatives saw a chance to smear their political opponents and couldn’t resist. Vice President Cheney said that Skelton exhibited “flawed thinking” and was “dead wrong on this.” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) decried the “absurd effort to deny the fact that America is battling terrorism on a global scale.” The Republican National Committee claimed that Skelton was “taking policy advice from Rosie O’Donnell.”
-
Yesterday, the British Government announced that it would no longer use the phrase “war on terror”
The British government has decided it will no longer use the phrase “War on Terror” because it gives militant groups a shared identity.
International Development Secretary Hilary Benn said the phrase strengthens militant groups by making them feel part of something “bigger,” Sky News reported Monday.
“In the U.K., we do not use the phrase ‘War on Terror’ because we can’t win by military means alone, and because this isn’t us against one organized enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives,” he said.
So when will Cheney, Boehner, and the RNC turn their attacks on the British? Despite multiple calls, we’ve received no response from Boehner’s office or the RNC. Maybe our readers will have better luck. Here’s their contact info:
House Minority Leader Boehner
Capitol switchboard: (800) 828-0498
Direct line: (202) 225-6205
Republican National Committee
Direct line: (202) 863-8500 ++
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Add comment April 17th, 2007