""
it's really unfortunate that the--that the Democratic leadership in the House did
not support an impeachment effort to challenge the Bush administration, and Mr.
Bush and Mr. Cheney, on the lies that took us into war in Iraq. That was a
pivotal moment for this country. And instead of choosing the Constitution, our
leaders chose politics. Bad choice.
" The fact is that today, after a decade of war, we are looking at an eventual bill for that Iraq war of $5 trillion. We're looking at perhaps as many as a million innocent civilians perishing--for war that was based on lies. People have to remember this". you cannot forget about the past. We went to war based on lies."
On an equally potent constitutional issue, President Obama's unchallenged use of drones to kill people without due process of law, based on a list drawn up by his staff, Kucinich was less emphatic, though still more outspoken than the vast majority of Democrats at all levels:
""
this whole idea of drone wars being proliferated across the world, without
Congress having anything to say about it, without any accountability
whatsoever, is against the Constitution of the United States, and it's against
international law.
"
If any other nation sent a drone over the United States, they would have hell
to pay, because we'd see it as an act of war. Yet we're increasingly committing
acts of war against other nations--Yemen most recently--and we are--we're not
seeing any accountability at all. And Congress does have a role to play here,
both on the budget side and constitutionally".
""
we're actually strengthening al-Qaeda's hand with these attacks. We're making
it more difficult to meet the challenge of terrorism by creating more
terrorists. I mean, what is this about? We're increasingly dysfunctional as a
nation because of our unwillingness to challenge the military-industrial complex,
which Dwight Eisenhower warned about generations ago. And so, we really have to
look at America's role in the world."
Kucinich talked about the American economy being based on guns, with the political system so dysfunctional, even at edge of a fiscal "cliff," that it couldn't relate the war budget to deficits or the national debt. He observed that instead of addressing problems of a soft economy, continuing unemployment, growing wealth disparity, the only thing the Congress has accomplished recently is to extend the government's power to spy on its citizens.
He blamed this on "a breakdown in trust," without really explaining what that means -- or how it's different from the Palmer raids of the 1920s or the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. He expressed apparent bewilderment that the government organized systematic, national spying on the Occupy Wall Street movement:
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