There is such a thing as moral right and moral wrong

and I won't to take a clear position on what I see as the most important moral question of our time.

In my opinion, if Bush is not impeached for the invasion of Iraq, then terrorism against citizens of the United States explicitly linked to that most eggregious failure is morally justified.  I could add some qualifications to that statement but as a generalisation I hold it to be true.

I have absolutely no doubt that there are many truly decent people amongst the population of the United States citizenry and I feel that I have met some of them in forums such as this. However moral questions including moral questions about when normally immoral acts become moral are sometimes forced upon us if we are to be rational moral beings. It is my considered opinion, an opinion I am prepared to defend rationally, that if Bush is not impeached for the invasion of Iraq then, it is better for humanity in the aggregate, it is more progressive, that terrorism against the citizens of the United States does take place.

by Brett Paatsch (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 17 diaries, 784 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 4:37:54 PM
 

Freudian slip? "won't" should read "want"

The discussion about when terrorism is the lesser evil needs to be had.

by Brett Paatsch (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 17 diaries, 784 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 4:43:51 PM
 

Promises, Promises

The beauty of Conyers' threat is that it is totally empty of possibility and (as the first comment so correct noted) void of moral value.

Bush should be impeached for what HE HAS ALREADY DONE, and just by saying that attacking ANOTHER innocent country would be grounds for impeachment makes you look that much more stupid for not impeaching already.

And, excuse me, but there were all the excuses why impeachment wouldn't be a good idea:

If we impeach, it will help the Republicans politically.  And that will change with an invasion of Iran?

If we impeach, it will slow the work of Congress.  And that will change with an invasion of Iran?

And, not to mention, that we would then be in the middle of THREE wars, a total ecomonic meltdown, hostilities on our own shores, and world-wide Jihad against Americans, and possibly even U.N. General Assemby votes against the USA every day.  We would do an impeachment and trial during THAT?  Sure.  When pigs frigging fly.

Personally, I hope that Bush DOES attack Iran.  We will get to see just how spineless the Democrats are and just how craven the Rethuglicans are.  It will be the act that forces Americans to take sides and decide whether they are WITH these Fascist monsters or AGAINST them.  And every back-covering, spineless, DNC, DCCC, Democrat who has not had the balls to protect the American People and the Constitution they pledged to uphold will need triple their Secret Service protection to avoid their constituents wrath.  They might as well just stay in the capital and lock down, because they won't be safe anywhere else.

BRING IT ON!!!  Come on Cheney, show us you've got the balls.  Drop those nukes.  Make enemies of 1 BILLION people.  You're not a GIRLY GIRL, are you?  Show some of that PNAC muscle!  Show you really MEAN it about global domination, and you're NOT just in it for the money.  MAKE THE WORLD A LIVING HELL!  That's the role of a monster like you anyway, isn't it?

by Charlie L (2 articles, 2 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 614 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 4:46:59 PM
 

PNAC or AIPAC?

Did you mean "PNAC" or "AIPAC" - the American Israeli Public Affaris Committee?

AIPAC really seems to be the driving force behind the burning desire to nuke Iran.

And yes, there are plenty of NeoCons and PNAC hardliners who are "Israel firsters" with DUAL citizenship, so it's easy to blur the two camps.

The games being played: "Let's You and Him Fight" and
"Provocation & Retaliation" are Israel's favorite strategies.

As for Conyers "making threats"...Foolish. One should never make threats. Just go on and DO what you're going to do without revealing your hand to the opposing side. Surprise is a tactical advantage. 

In a sane world, everyone associated Bushco would have faced criminal charges AND been convicted years ago. Cheney in an orange jumpsuit! Hoo Raw THAT!

 

by mrk * (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 294 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 8:24:22 PM
 

PEOPLE WILL BLAME YOU AND NOT THE CAPITALISTS

It is counterproductive to try and make things worse in the hope that that will force people to make things better.  And that includes hoping or advocating that Cheney nukes Iran.

You are acting like the false stereotype many people had oF Marxists.  When we pointed out that capitalism would inevitably lead to an economic collapse and that capitalism produces imperialist wars, racism and sexism, abolition of civil liberties, etc and that this would inevitably cause a revolution, we were accused of being for war, racism, sexism and the abolition of civil liberties because we needed it to cause the revolution.  Of course, any Marxist who tried to cause these evils would be behaving incredibly stupidly.  Capitalism will inevitably cause a revolution against itself by bringing about these evils.  But if you should succeed in causing them yourself, people are likely to blame you rather than the capitalists.

It is likely that an invasion of Iran will spark a mass movement that will lead to Bush-Cheney and the neo cons' downfall.  But we are against an invasion of Iran, not hoping for or advocating it.  Besides that would be playing with fire.  You can never be sure that the invasion of Iran is the evil that would provoke the resorative revolution.  Should you succeed, you might end up with the greater evil without the revolution.

Robert Halfhill

by rhalfhill (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 254 comments) on Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 9:01:10 AM
 

CONYERS MIGHT BE PUSHING THE ENVELOPE

AND THERE MIGHT BE SOME ANTRAX IN THE AIR, GET MY DRIFT.

by RICHARD SHADE (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 459 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 4:56:15 PM
 

If we attack Iran ...

it will be too late. Impeachment would be closing the barn door after the horse is loose.

And what's with this "threaten"? This is ludicrous .. Conyers has lowered the bar so low that we're supposed to be satisfied with "threaten"? When we should be beating him with sticks for not actually impeaching! Jesus-H-@#$%^&*! Christ!!! I'm sorry - I've had it up to my hair-line with this wimp.

Impeach NOW!!! Make sure they don't attack, you sorry-@#$ piece of @#$!

by Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 1059 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 5:29:33 PM
 

Conyers Own Words on Impeachment

by Cheryl Biren-Wright (16 articles, 13 quicklinks, 8 diaries, 258 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 5:39:55 PM
 

Looks like Conyers lost his moral compass

Thanks for the Conyers quotes.  Wish the 45 year old version of Conyers was still around, he might have more courage to do the right thing and be less jaded by too many years in the ivory tower.

by August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 387 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 6:42:36 PM
 

It's just more disingenuous posturing.

That ba$tard Conyers knows it's just a meaningless gesture. He knows damn well that by the time Bush attacks Iran, the irrevocable damage will have already been done. He also knows that the consequences of an attack on Iran may include martial law and the subsequent dissolution of Congress.

by Harold Smith (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 384 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 5:49:37 PM
 

Re: Conyers Threatens Impeachment if Iran Attacked

by Munich (0 articles, 47 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 676 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 6:44:19 PM
 

Lame Excuse #34

Its actually worse than all that: It is a cynical lie and excuse to NOT impeach at all. Using the supposed threat to attack Iran, Conyers and Pelosi are now "covered" in that they are now "keeping a sword over bush's head"...

In this twisted double-think, we are expected to thank them for saving us from an Iran war. Meanwhile, they now have a plausible excuse to do nothing "for the sake of world peace". Good God... 

So, the "serious" thinker is then left to imagine that Bush and Cheney are threatening an Iran war, that they probably did not intend on anyway, to keep from getting Impeached!

Lol, this is sooo absurd its actually funny....

But lets get back to reality here: There is only one answer, one moral response, one action that makes any sense:

Impeach them now, soonest.   

Allowing anything to stop this, up to and including space alien invasions, is clearly  

FAILING IN YOUR DUTY TO THE CONSTITUTION AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

by Steve Windisch (jibbguy) (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 131 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 7:24:06 PM
 

Conyers....

opportunist, closet neolib, no morals, no stones.....

A pox on 'im. 

by richard (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 664 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 8:57:27 PM
 

Space Alien Invasion?

For that, I would put off impeachment.  Hopefully, the space aliens would kill them as an example.

by Charlie L (2 articles, 2 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 614 comments) on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:30:40 AM
 

The great defender of the Constitution

I feel safer now that I know Conyers has threatened a murderer that he will be punished if he does it again.

by Mark A. Goldman (80 articles, 2 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 240 comments) on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 10:38:22 PM
 

OK.......Mr. David......

you see what you've started............and BTW, Thank You.........for a while there I was thinking people have forgotten what the most important issue our "our times" is..............I keep hoping there is some strategy in all of this........For example: the DNC is waiting for just the right time to put impeachment back on the table...........where is Nancy Pelosi and the 60,000 troop pullout or else?...........

by Ernest (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 130 comments) on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 4:07:33 AM
 

okay. So I cried all night about the decision to leave

Conyers office.

I couldn't sleep and got up and wrote yet another ESSAY.

 See, things like saying "nuke Iran" make me really really sick.

Why should any more people in the Middle East have to suffer?

 How many more DETAINEES get picked up and tortured - and go through humliating and UNFAIR military tribunals?

HOw long do their families suffer?  Is it not enough that the CIA and the FBI have picked up CHILDREN and tortured them (yes) to get information on a man (their father) who now resides in Guantanamo - unjustly framed by Pakistani ISI ?

How many more 9-year girls will be working in brothels in Syria to be breadwinners for their Iraqi widowed mothers?  Taking drugs each night to handle the prositution that they must perform simply to stay alive?

How many more Middle Easterners are going to have drink water with SHIT in it - in Gaza, Iraq?  How far are we going to let Iraq's cholera epidemic spread?

How many more Down's syndrome-affected Iraqi's are going to carry bombs planted on them by the CIA are we going to allow to be called "suicide bombers" when that is clearly not the case ?  How long are we going to allow destablization efforts of this kind to perpetrated against all Iraqis.

How many more Kurds fighting back against aggression and the takeover of their oil fields will have to endure SCABIES ?

COLLATERAL DAMAGE.

Does anyone at all get that phrase? What it REALLY MEANS?

The World's Biggest Crybaby of them ALL is John Conyers.

Men, women and children in the Middle East and elsewhere are all greiving tonight, they will be grieving tomorrow, they will be grieving the next day and the next .. 

Where is the LINE DRAWN? When do the sadists, the THEOCONS, PNAC, and all the rest FINALLY get a leash put on them?  When do the blacksites close? When are the Blackwater employees who kill with impunity face justice?  When do US citizens (and that includes Canucks, too) quit paying for the highly profitable GWOT? 

WHEN?

If not me, who?  If not NOW, when?

Today was totally disgusting on all counts.

Why the occupiers in Conyers office walked away, I will never be able to reckon.

Not ever.

If I had never read Alice Miller, I just woudn't have a clue ..  

"Thou shalt not be aware"

And no one spoke for the Iraqi children AGAIN today in the US press - even notices about today's visit to Conyers' office.  No one.

 Let's wait for the shock and awe tactics in Iran, shall we? And THEN you wake up??

 

by ladybroadoak (37 articles, 20 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 390 comments) on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 8:49:44 AM
 

I'm a third generation Democratic

I have voted in every election..since I was old enough to vote...I vote straight Democratic..as does evey one in my family and extended family.....I have been thinking that maybe I will skip voting this election. I am very upset with the Democratic leaders.....I see no difference any more between the evil of the GOP and the liars on the Democratic side....the Democratic party no longer represents the people, no longer cares for the rule of Law or protecting the Constitution or their oath of office..they are weak and just as evil in their complicity as the GOP is in their lawlessness.....we are doomed

by Susan Nelsen (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 227 comments) on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:05:08 PM
 

VOTE GREEN

Do even better than just not voting for the Democrats.  Vote Green!

Robert Halfhill   rhalfhill@juno.com

by rhalfhill (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 254 comments) on Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 9:14:02 AM
 

John Conyer's is a sellout

"... in a democracy every citizen, regardless of his interest in politics, holds office. Every one of us is in a position of responsibility, and in the final analysis, the kind of Government we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibilities. We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve" - John F. Kennedy

The contrast with America today couldn't be greater.

The nation under George Bush is ruled by an institutionalized imperial system of militarized savages, and craven congressional sycophants, such as John Conyers. A state of permanent war exists, civil liberties are disappearing, and human rights are a nonstarter. Dissent is a punishable crime, social decay is growing, and a culture of secrecy and ubiquitous fear prevail daily.

Torture is practically sanctified by promulgation, injustice is tolerated and encouraged, and the dominant media functions as virtual national thought-control police gatekeepers.

And the law is what a boy-emperor president decries by petulant decree. Aside from the privileged it serves, democracy in America is only in the minds of the nonplussed and last of the true believers who sooner or later will discover the truth – that impeachment will NEVER happen, John McCain WILL be the next Commander-in-Chief (we don't elect presidents anymore) and war with Iran IS inevitable.

John Conyer's is a sellout, a cowardly, opportunistic puppet of Nancy Pelosi who was appointed to be the "Cordon of Congress" and obstruct not only the will of the people but also the demands of the Constitution. Chiefly, that the rule of law must prevail over the determination of venal, pernicious or timorous men.

Every act of subjugation, every transgression, the enumerable usurpations committed – which are perpetrated with impunity – is a de facto re-write of precedence for future president, either Democratic or Republican, to continue the erosion of egalitarianism and hasten the accretion of a monarch as the ruling body for America.

Conyer's transparent betrayal of the once-sovereign people he was given the privilege to serve is a stark reminder that the Constitution is not in crisis; it has been rescinded. We have entered a new era of government in America and you and I are not invited to participate.

John Conyer's has forsaken his solemn oath of office by and through his seditious behavior, refusal to prosecute those that seek to destroy the peoples' democratic system and has abdicated every duty the Constitution demands he pursue in the face of enmity.

For that, John Conyer's should be removed from office and tried for treason in the people's court.

by Frank J. Ranelli (59 articles, 141 quicklinks, 27 diaries, 331 comments) on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 2:00:47 PM
 

Empty Threat!

Boy, if that isn't an empty threat.  It would be way too late to impeach after Iran has already been attacked.  Not that I think Conyers is being truthful now after all of his empty promises and failures to follow through on them.  It is Conyers and Pelosi that need to be impeached now in order to get the ball rolling toward impeaching Cheney and Bush.  How do these "cretins" in DC expect us to ever believe anything they say when they have lied to us for so long now?  There is absolutely no integrity or honor in DC whatsoever and it is time to remove the lot of them.  The only patriot in DC is the missile system and the wrong people have their hands on the trigger.

by Hayesml47 (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 287 comments) on Saturday, April 5, 2008 at 5:49:42 PM
 

PRESENT AT THE BEGINNING OF CONYERS' TENURE IN OFFICE

I was present at at the inception of Conyers first campaign and the beginning of his long tenure in Congress.  In the 1960's I was a member of the Socialist Workers Party.  The SWP hoped that the Freedom Now Party would lead to the African American community abandoning the Democratic Party and, since others would no longer have reason to support the Democrats as the lesser evil if they were no longer able to win elections, that would result in other movements leaving the Democratic Party and coalescing to form a third party.  Some us us came from Chicago to attend a conference in Detroit where Milton Henry of the Freedom Now Party, John Conyers who had entered the Democratic primary, and a third candidate debated.  Given John Conyers current sell out in the Democratic Party, I now have even more reason to regret that Milton Henry did not win.

Robert Halfhill

by rhalfhill (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 254 comments) on Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 6:54:22 PM