Minutes ago the U.S. Senate AGAIN failed to exercise meaningful oversight for the national suicide which is our policy in Iraq. It is by now abundantly clear that the Republican caucus is determined to go down with the Bush presidency, and take our military and our country with them while they do nothing. Instead, a bipartisan cattle stampede of senators approved two "we don't hate the troops" resolutions, nothing but vain puffery, swearing to take "no action" about this or that. We don't in the slightest care about what action Congress is NOT going to take, we want to know is what they ARE going to do to reverse the insanity of current policy.
And what was Bush's response when called out on this monumental affront not just to the checks in our government, but also to the independency of our very justice system? "What was mishandled was the explanation of the cases to the Congress," he said. In Bush's mind there are no policy mistakes, let alone policy crimes. In his world there are only SPIN mistakes, when we the people aren't quite stupid enough to buy their criminal hypocrisies. We hear admissions that "mistakes were made," as if mistakes somehow made themselves. But even where there is verbal responsibility taken, there is NEVER actual accountability. The sacrificial fall guys will reluctantly resign, but NEVER is there a price paid by the core perpetrators for their conduct.
The Bush presidency is one of false appearances, phony and disingenuous words of compassion and democracy, while the true underlying agenda is the embezzlement of our national treasury, and even those of other sovereign countries, on behalf of their biggest campaign contributors, who then remorselessly relocate to evade taxes on their ill-gotten profits. The Bush presidency is to create wars out of whole cloth, to demonize not only their critics but entire innocent populations, first Iraq, then Lebanon, now Iran. It is a mission to exacerbate terrorism to the maximum extent possible, while ignoring its actual roots causes and laying off pursuing its ringleaders, at the mortal peril of our true national security. And it is not going to STOP in any respect until the day that Bush is lawfully removed from office.
It was not enough that president Bush should pack our courts with radical ideologue judges, one of whom just this week presumed to overturn two centuries of 2nd amendment case law, to let the NRA rewrite our very Constitution. No, even the choice of cases to bring to court they must warp so that only Democrats could ever be prosecuted for any crime, despite the fact that most of the wrongdoing they were actually finding was by Republicans. How their talking head cronies howled after the Libby verdicts that it was just a political prosecution. Their new rule of law is that it's against the law to prosecute Republicans, no matter what the crime, and that any attempt to do so is by definition a political vendetta. And if the Libby trial exposed anything, it was that Cheney was the king culprit.
And hanging over everything is the preemptively declared threat of a presidential veto of any attempt, no matter how timid, to confront these high crimes. And that is why we have concluded that Dennis Kucinich is speaking the essential truth. We have long known that Bush was planning an illegal war of aggression against Iran. Shame on the leadership of the House for the sudden demise, without even a vote, of the provision in the war supplemental appropriations bill to preclude an attack on Iran without express congressional consent. Let there be a vote so we can know which members of Congress think it's OK for the president to launch horrific and disastrous new wars without even a peep from them.
What Kucinich so clearly understands in his call for impeachment is that all these things are mere symptoms of the foundational problem, the cowardice of members of Congress as they run away from actually restraining the abuse of executive power. What are non-binding resolutions except avoidance of actually challenging the policy issue? What are bills that write into themselves exceptions if the president takes "responsibility" for them? Is the role of Congress to be relegated to courteously writing the president's signing statements for him?
Bush loves to lecture the American people on the lessons of 9/11. There was only one lesson to be learned from 9/11 . . . that we had the WRONG president.
And in five years since there are still too many who have not learned that critical lesson, which failure is the reason New Orleans was left to sink by a guitar strumming photo-op president, which failure is the reason even the administration drafted Patriot Act has been abused to conduct massive illegal surveillance of innocent American citizens. That failure is the reason torture of those even suspected of being our enemies has become official U.S. policy, in utter defiance of all norms of international law and civilized decency.
That failure is the reason our entire intelligence operation against weapons of mass destruction, the life long specialty of Valerie Plame, was sabotaged and jeopardized to try to gain cheap political advantage. Or was it to keep concealed even more heinous acts of treason. That failure is the reason our military is still pursuing a fool's mission in Iraq, chasing an enemy who is not there in any significant numbers. We face nothing but two more years of such disasters and outrages every minute that George Bush, Dick Cheney and their pod people remain in any office of authority.
So what if Gonzales bites the dust. He is just one more water-carrier. He would already have been long gone had not Bush PERSONALLY intervened to quash investigation into the abuse of administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, when that first came to partial light. We have a president and vice president for whom obstruction of justice is just another burglar tool in their black bag, as they rob the balance of powers in our Constitution. Let the subpoenas now issuing in the U.S. attorney scandal lead to door of the oval office, where the trail surely does directly lead.
And let us renew again and again our call for Congress to impeach ALL those who have harmed we the people so grievously, and to prosecute those impeachments at the most mercifully swift speed.
internet activist with the mission of generating as many policy messages to Congress as possible
We didn't just have the wrong President. We had the wrong congress, Kucinich included. Where have they been. It's not just the war that needs to be ended. What needs to end is having elected officials in Congress who are more loyal to their own careers than they are to the Constitution. These crimes have been coming one on top of another, day after day for a very long time now. And these people have betrayed us. Articles of impeachment should have been entered a long time ago. A very long time ago. We shouldn't have to call our members of Congress to tell them to keep their oath of office. We need to tell them to get out of town.
by
Mark A. Goldman (81 articles, 2 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 243 comments)
on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 1:55:30 PM
If you believe in a system of particpatory democracy then we DO have to call our members of Congress, ceaselessly. They are our representatives, and if they do not hear from us, it is OUR shame and failure much more than theirs.
by
thepen (109 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 11 comments)
on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 2:07:04 PM
Dennis will help to put the TRUTH in the spotlight. The issue has to be pushed and eventually the exuses used reveal the other side of our Corporate Sponsored Congress. Reps. like Dennis are rare and the wolves from both parties will be waiting to trip him up.
by
Sleeper (1 articles, 1 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 276 comments)
on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 4:20:21 PM
3 comments
How would you rate this?
You must be logged in (if signed up) to do ratings.
It's free to signup! And easy. And takes just a minute or two....
Must Read (
Well Said (
News (
Touching (
Funny (
Supported (
Interesting (
Inspiring (
Valuable (
