The authors believe that just as the president's many impeachable crimes are political in nature, they demand a political response. What is required is that the public rise up this November, throw off years of lethargy and cynicism, and elect to Congress representatives who are committed to standing up for the Constitution, for the tradition of three co-equal branches of government, and for the civil liberties that hundreds of thousands of Americans have died defending...
Chapter V: Deadly Lies and an Illegal War
Within hours of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Bush administration began behind-the-scenes planning to launch a war against Iraq. Their true objective had nothing to do with tracking down and killing the terrorists responsible for the attacks; instead it was aimed at "regime change"--the overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein.
...As despicable and devious as Bush's lying was before the war, and as terrible as have been the consequences of those lies, this was not the only, or perhaps even the most egregious, of the presidential crimes relating to the Iraq War. The very act of invading Iraq itself takes that honor. For in deciding to invade Iraq in March 2003, the president may well have engaged in a constitutional abuse of power and a violation of the War Powers Act of 1993.
Chapter VI: Dark Questions About a Dark Day
The mounting doubts and growing questions about the veracity of administration explanations concerning what was known and what was done leading up to, during, and after the 9/11 attacks on the United States, and the growing disenchantment with the wars started in retaliation for those attacks, have created a new crisis of legitimacy for the American government. This kind of crisis, which resembles the one that followed the Kennedy assassination and the subsequent Warren Commission Report (another commission whose conclusions were widely disputed, disbelieved and discredited), breeds a cynicism about American government that is itself dangerous to democracy.
....The proper solution is an aggressive demand for honest answers from the White House and key federal agencies--the kind of demand that could probably only be made by a House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry. For this reason, the president should be impeached on charges of obstruction of justice, violation of his oath of office, and jeopardizing national security in relation to the 9/11 attacks and the administration's response to those attacks.
Chapter VII: Taking Liberties
Combine the government's unconstitutional and draconian treatment of Arab and other Islamic immigrants and the president's assertion of both a right to spy at will on anyone, and to declare anyone to be an "enemy combatant." Now strip away all constitutional rights so that someone so accused has no recourse to the courts, and you get a terrifying picture of government run amok. This is a constitutional crisis crying out for the remedy of impeachment. Anyone who believes he or she is immune from such treatment has little understanding of history. Imagine this nightmare: An overeager NSA Internet monitor detects an unsolicited e-mail to your computer from a suspected terrorist-linked organization. This is reported to the FBI. Agents have you declared an "enemy combatant" and you're packed off, without your family's knowledge, to a military base in a remote state, or perhaps to Guantanamo. You're not permitted to call your lawyer. You're not even allowed your "one phone call." There you could sit indefinitely, without knowledge of the charge against you, while you are subjected to presidentially approved "extreme methods" of interrogation aimed at finding out who you know and how you're linked to international terror organizations.
Chapter VIII: Vengeance and Betrayal
As for President Bush, it is difficult to imagine that he is telling the truth about what he knew at the time of the [Plame] outing, and what he knows now. Novak himself, the reporter who blew Plame's cover, has said that he believes Bush knew the identity of Novak's "two senior administration official" sources from the beginning, despite the president's feigning of ignorance. "I'm confident the president knows who the source is," he told a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina, "so I say, 'Don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is.'"
It is important to note here that Bush, in early June 2004, acknowledged that he had consulted with a criminal attorney in the Plame outing case, saying, "This is a criminal matter, it's a serious matter."
Chapter IX: Breaking Things: Bush's Way of War
As we will see, the policy permitting torture was soon instituted in Afghanistan. Evidence of this came in a memo to the president from his White House legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who warned his boss that the American treatment of detainees captured in that conflict might be criminally prosecutable under the War Crimes Act, a measure passed in 1996, which made violation of the Third Geneva Convention punishable as a violation not just of international law, but of U.S. law. At that point, the president had two options: he could have ordered all mistreatment and torture of captured fighters to cease, or he could ignore the law and the abuses. Bush chose the latter option, attempting to keep the policy quiet, and issuing an executive order on torture (See Appendix E--FBI Report.) This secret document "opted the U.S. out" of the Geneva Conventions, in hopes of shielding American soldiers (and, Gonzales hoped, the president himself) from prosecution, and simultaneously authorized the continued use of internationally banned tactics. Indeed, in a memo to the president in January 2002, Gonzales actually adviced the president that "high officials," the president included, could eventually be prosecuted for war crimes, and suggested that by declaring torture victims not to be POWs, he might insulate himself and subordinates from such an eventuality.
Chapter X: Abuse of Power, Criminal Negligence, and Other Crimes
It is one of the more bizarre peculiarities of the Bush-Cheney administration that as aggressive as it has been at seeking to expand the power of the executive branch and the president, at the expense of the other branches of the federal government, the president himself has displayed a stunning contempt for the actual job of governing--as have many of his appointees to top administrative posts. Even as the Bush administration tries to expropriate or usurp, it has repeatedly failed to make use of executive powers it clearly does have when the health, safety, and welfare of the public are at stake. On the one hand, President Bush has declared it his unfettered prerogative to strip Americans of their citizenship rights at his own whim, to declare war at a time and place of his own choosing, to violate international laws banning torture, and even to interpret acts of Congress as he sees fit. On the other hand, this self-styled imperial leader has allowed American soldiers to go to war inadequately armed and whout body armor. He ignored the plight of a storm-hammered city for many critical days--in fact, even after he had been informed the New Orleans levees had broken he went golfing--resulting in needless death and suffering, and the near loss of a great metropolis. Perhaps most inexcusably of all, the president has failed to take any significant action to combat the threat to life on the planet posed by accelerating global warming, despite near unanimity among the scientific commmunity that it is almost too late. Indeed, he and his administration have actively obstructed efforts domestically and globally to combat climate change.
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