In Pakistan, Impeachment! in U.S., No! Pelosi/Conyers Squirm, Bush/Cheney/Rice laugh

"Committee members and witnesses, including Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr, spoke for almost six hours on allegations the Bush administration, among other things, misled the public into the Iraq War, manipulated intelligence and selectively prosecuted Democrats. Northwestern University professor Stephen Presser offered expert analysis.

The session was not an impeachment hearing, because the House of Representatives had not given authorization for such proceedings. ...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said impeachment is "off the table."

"The dramatic and long delayed session chaired by Judiciary Chair John Conyers (D-MI) was both a staged farce...

As Conyers made clear more than once during the six-hour session, this was “not an impeachment hearing, however much many in the audience might wish it to be...

... the hearing was strictly limited to the most superficial airing of Bush administration crimes and misdemeanors ...

... witness Vincent Bugliosi. A former Los Angeles deputy district attorney, accusing Bush of being guilty of the murder of over 4000 American soldiers and of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians because he had “lied” the country into an illegal and unnecessary war...

"It was clear that this was to be a tightly controlled and strictly limited hearing."

    It was also clear that it was intended to go nowhere.

    In the end, the hearing petered out, taking no action of any kind—exactly the result that Pelosi, Hoyer and Conyers cynically intended."