ALAN BARNETT

HOW TO IMPEACH

THE COUP-CONSPIRATORS
Fri Jun 27 02:19:37 2003
208.152.73.183

IMPEACH THE COUP-CONSPIRATORS

BUSH & CHENEY

ALAN BARNETT
MARIN PEACE AND JUSTICE COALITION

JUNE, 2003

IMPEACHMENT IS POSSIBLE.
Until a few weeks ago the impeachment of President Bush and Vice-
President Cheney, as deserving as it was, seemed impossible because
of the Republican control of Congress. Today Senate and House
Committees are investigating whether the President was properly
informed by the intelligent agencies as to whether Saddam Hussein
presented an imminent threat to the U.S. because he possessed weapons
of mass destruction. This was the chief reason Bush gave for going to
war. The implicit question of these investigations is whether Bush
lied to the public and Americans and Iraqis died for a lie.

A closely related charge that Bush gave for going to war was that
Hussein and the Al Queda terrorist network had been working together,
implying that Iraq was involved in the attack of Sept. 11. The
President has also charged that Hussein's alleged weapons of mass
destruction could be targeted by Al Queda against the U.S. without
risk of retaliation since its forces are not confined to any state.

No evidence to support any of these allegations against Iraq have
stood scrutiny, but President Bush still makes them. Not only has all
the evidence his administration offered turned out to be bogus and
based on forged, outdated and plagiarized documents, the President
made charges that his staff knew were false.

The Congressional investigations are occurring because the press has
exposed these deceptions and because the public is increasingly
demanding to know the truth.

There is good reason to believe that the President was deliberately
lying, but even if he was deceived by his staff, he must take
responsibility for listening to them and sending thousands of
soldiers and civilians to their death. If he is found only to have
failed to exercise due diligence in securing correct information, the
charge is manslaughter, second-degree murder. Such neglect is a high
crime, grounds under the Constitution for impeachment.

For Bush to have been persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that
Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, convinced sufficiently
to justify an attack that he knew would take thousands of lives, he
would have had to know where the weapons were and that they were
poised for attack. He obviously did not or our troops would have made
them the first target of their attacks so as to disarm them. That was
the President's announced purpose. Having refused to permit the U.N.
inspectors the time they sought to determine if Iraq still possessed
weapons of mass destruction, Bush took our country to war and now
wants the time he refused to the U.N. inspectors for his own to
verify his accusations that Iraq possessed them.

The ease with which Hussein's forces were overcome by the U.S.
indicates that it posed no imminent threat to either Iraq's neighbors
nor our country. Indeed, it suggests that Bush attacked Iraq because
its forces were weak, expecting that the U.S. could thereby readily
gain control of Iraqi oil and secure permanent bases in a strategic
part of the world.

To have pursued this unilateral, arbitrary course of action the
President violated the United Nations' Charter, which specifically
forbids warfare except in self-defense during an attack by an
adversary and requires the victim to bring the issue of retaliation
to the Security Council before it is undertaken. The US violated its
treaty obligation to the U.N. which is against American law, and also
acted against the will of close allies, isolating this country as it
has not been for decades.

The President tries to legitimize this unilateral preventative
warfare by the National Security Strategy, which he promulgated in
Sept. 2002. It calls for the U.S. to establish its military and
economic supremacy around the world, a global empire. This flies in
the face of continually reaffirmed U.S. goals of peace and collective
security, goals, to be sure, frequently violated by our country in
the past. But never before has a president announced publicly the
abrogating of these goals and pursued a foreign policy explicitly
committed to world domination.

Meanwhile, under the pretext of terrorist threats to this country,
the President and his administration have undertaken police-state
measure to whip up fear throughout the public, suppress dissent and
persecute scapegoats. It has rushed through Congress the so-called
USA Patriot Act, issued decrees and pressed for further repressive
legislation, all of which assault the civil liberties of Americans.
It has arbitrarily detained, interrogated and held persons for
indefinite periods without charges, denied them legal counsel and
deported hundreds for minor violations or none at all. It has
embraced racial profiling contrary to law, which will not make
Americans more secure. All of these measures violate the U.S.
Constitution, especially its Bill of Rights.

IMPEACHMENT IS NECESSARY TO CUT SHORT THE BUSH REGIME'S HIJACKING OF
THE PRESIDENCY AND SEIZURE OF ILLEGAL POWER.
If we have not noticed, a coup against democracy, a seizure of
national power, was perpetrated by the so-called election of 2000
when over 90,000 African-Americans, most of them likely to have voted
Democrat, were purged from the rolls by Gov. Jebb Bush, brother to
the Republican candidate, after which the Supreme Court selected
George. The illegal appropriation of power in Washington is now
entrenched by the illegal war against Iraq and the prospect of more.
The attack of Sept. 11 generated the nationwide panic that made it
possible for the Bush regime to pursue its pre-existing goals. These
included invading Central Asia and the Middle East for their
resources and strategic value, building up the military, expanding
the power of US-based transnational corporations and hobbling
dissent. The military buildup has provided the excuse for cutting
social services, which the Republicans have always wanted to do so as
to reduce taxes on the wealthy while the military buildup increases
their dividends.

The combination of rampant nationalism, military aggression abroad,
police-state measures at home and collusion with big business for
global monopoly bears the mark of incipient fascism.

Neither the prospect of fascism nor the committing of the most
serious crimes can be dealt with by the election of 2004. Elections
are not a substitute for prosecution of crime and restoring
democracy. Would-be dictators in the past have sought to legitimize
their seizures of power by elections or plebiscites. The Bush
Administration has demonstrated that it has the will and the means to
manipulate elections. Another election, which there is every reason
to believe will be high-jacked like the last, offers little hope as a
means to taking back our government. The leverage of incumbency now
gives the Bush machine even greater access than before to the levers
of power, massive campaign contributions and the corporate-owned
media.

Electing a Democratic president in 2004 will not automatically put
the country back on the right track. The Democrats did not resist the
Republican coup of the 2000 election because they did not have the
will and there is not that much difference between the two parties.
Clinton by maintaining sanctions on Iraq that denied food, medicines,
water purification and sanitation equipment to its people for eight
years killed more Iraqi children than Bush Sr. and Jr. did together
in their wars. Both parties caved in to Bush's attack on Afghanistan
which sought to negotiate the release of Osama bin Laden. Both
granted the administration extraordinary police power at home and
gave away the constitutional power of Congress to declare war to Bush
to invade Iraq.

We cannot simply trust to an election that is certain to be
manipulated to set matters straight. Only impeachment can. There must
be no impunity for deceptively taking America to war. If the Bush
conspiracy goes unprosecuted, it will continue on its imperial
course, and it will be that much harder to stop it.

Impeachment will send a message to both parties that there are
millions of Americans who reject the Democrats' as well as
Republicans' willingness to kill civilians for political ends, that
is, their state terrorism. It will tell members of Congress that
their constituents are developing a new political consciousness that
rejects empire and imperial globalization, whether by military or
economic coercion. It will tell them that the two-party system,
perhaps even government by parties, in this country is in jeopardy
because there is a social movement of citizens that is forming to
restore constitutional government and strengthen the initiative of
the electorate.

HOW TO IMPEACH.
Although millions of Americans mobilized in organizations and marched
against the war on Iraq, when it came, they were dismayed and after
initial protests fell into disarray. We must not do as the Democrats
did after the election of 2000, mourn our loss and then continue
business as usual. The campaign for impeachment would be a means of
reviving and strengthening the peace and justice movement, giving it
new political power.

Although Congress has initiated investigations into the issue of
weapons of mass destruction and alleged Al Queda ties to Hussein,
much of these will be handled in secret and stymied because the Bush
regime wants to short-circuit them. These congressional hearings must
be forced open to the public. It is after all the public's safety
that is at stake, and so far the politicians have failed them. These
hearings are a key step to bringing articles of impeachment to the
House Judiciary Committee.

Public pressure is absolutely essential for a thorough-going
investigation by Congress' intelligence committees that can lead to
impeachment. So far a majority of the public is prepared to give the
President the benefit of the doubt because we "won" and removed a
brutal dictator. But it is important to remind them that the first
Bush administration provided him the means to gas the Iranians and
Kurds, never criticizing him for it. Also we must remind ourselves of
the danger of Presidents lying to citizens especially when it comes
to going to war. The most imminent threat to Americans is not foreign
terrorists but an administration that is bent on empire at home and
abroad, an empire that provokes terrorist reprisals.

To persuade a reluctant Congress to do a thorough investigation of
government intelligence and the President's Iraq policy, the anti-war
and justice movement must return to life. Local peace groups are
pressing for impeachment, and the big peace coalitions are beginning
to press forward by taking up impeachment as an umbrella for the
issues of recovering democracy, resisting U.S. imperialism and
restoring civil liberties. To succeed we must focus our activism on
the single target of impeachment, making clear these motives. Members
of Congress must be overwhelmed by pressure from their constituents
to impeach and know that their re-election is in jeopardy if they do
not. Writing, e-mailing, meeting with members of Congress, speaking
out on the airwaves and in marches all will be necessary and on a
larger scale than ever. The next big national demonstrations are in
September. These should be impeachment marches. They should now
include not only the old peace marchers but millions more outraged by
Bush's lying to lead us to war.

This is not only a matter of insuring that there can be no impunity
in leading the U.S. into war on fraudulent claims. It is a matter of
stopping fascism before it becomes inextricably entrenched. Every
time the people consent to being lied to by their government, it will
be that much harder to take it back.

• Re:

  HOW TO IMPEACH

  THE COUP-CONSPIRATORS — Anonymous, Sat Jun 28 01:14
• amen — weed man, Fri Jun 27 18:12
• Truth Never Dies — Jimbo, Fri Jun 27 17:26
• Bush — Adrian Krieg, Fri Jun 27 16:36