Impeachment Now Or Apocalypse Later?

By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers

The political noose seems to be tightening on the key members of the
remaining miscreants down in the White House bunker -- mainly Bush, Cheney, Rice,
Addington and Mukasey. (Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Powell and Tenet were pushed
out the door earlier.) But will the Democrats, having been provided with
smoking gun-type evidence of these officials' high crimes and misdemeanors, take
the next logical step to end this continuing nightmare of law-breaking at the
highest levels? Consider:

TORTURE AUTHORIZED FROM ON HIGH

After eight years, the multiple examples of ethical and felonious crimes of
the Bush Administration are now abundantly clear and beyond rational dispute.
Most compelling among them is the crime of authorizing torture as state policy.

In recent days, we've learned that Geoge W. Bush signed orders
authorizing torture, ( http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3187.shtml )
and admitted that he approved of ( www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/blog/2008/04/14/BL2008041401428.html ) the deliberations by his National Security
Council's Principals Committee on the torture regime being set up for a few
high-value prisoners. (Which, of course, filtered down to how thousands of
suspected terrorists were maltreated.)

Bush has conceded that his Principals (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft,
Powell, Tenet) kept him apprised of their deliberations on which suspected
terrorists would undergo which forms of torture, according to ABC News' recent
blockbuster story. (
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4635175&page=1 )

The meetings of the Principals, according to ABC, took place in early 2002 at
least four months before the Administration's famous Bybee/Yoo memos were
issued that retroactively sought to provide legal justification for the torture.
(Short version of those memoranda: The President is above all U.S. laws and
international treaties.)

During those Principals' meetings, Dick Cheney was a driving force
behind the use of "harsh interrogations" of the prisoners in U.S. care. Other
members were more worried about what they were doing. In the ABC story, according
to a top official, John Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why
are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this
kindly."

Condoleezza Rice, then National Security Advisor, aggressively chaired
the Principals' torture meetings. Despite some occasional misgivings voiced
by Ashcroft and Colin Powell about the "enhanced interrogation"
techniques being employed, Rice told the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it." (
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/todays_must_read_315.p... )

TRYING TO MAKE TORTURE "LEGAL"

Torture, as commonly understood and defined, is illegal under both U.S. law
and international treaties that American governments have ratified over the
decades. Bush&Co. had to come up with a way to torture suspects but not to appear
to be doing so. Here's how it worked: Officials felt they could honestly
assert that the Administration didn't approve of or authorize torture because
under the new definition supplied in the Bybee/Yoo memos, it was torture only if
the prisoners were near-death or their internal organs were about to fail as a
result of their treatment. In other words, the Administration simply made
everything else legal: beatings, near-drownings, electroshocks to the genitals,
stress positions, sexual abuse, etc. Only if the interrogators killed the
prisoners or were thisclose to doing so would they have crossed over the line. See
my "Control the Dictionary, Control the World." (
www.crisispapers.org/essays6w/dictionary.htm )

It turns out that David Addington, Cheney's then-Legal Counsel who has
since replaced Scooter Libby as Cheney's chief of staff, was at the locus of
the cockamamie reasoning behind both the Bybee/Yoo torture memos and the
"unitary executive" theory of governance. The latter asserts that the President is
in charge of basically everything governmental and can't be touched; further,
the Bybee/Yoo memos assert, the President cannot be second-guessed when he
claims to be acting as "commander in chief" during "wartime."

Of course, there has been no Congressional Declaration of War, as the
Constitution requires; the "war" -- at an estimated cost of several trillions(!) of
dollars -- is the "War on Terror," which, since it's being waged against a
tactic, can never be completely won and thus is never-ending. In short, the
President, under this asserted legal cover, can act more or less as a dictator
forever, including declaring martial law whenever he deems an "emergency" situation
prevails. (Suppose, for example, the ballot-counting books are cooked in
November and the Democratic candidate once again has a victory stolen away. There
could be mass protests, perhaps even riots, in the streets. A potential "civic
emergency" right there.)

MUKASEY'S FALSE TESTIMONY

Michael Mukasey, who promised he would be an independent Attorney
General, has turned out to be just as much of a lackey for the Administration as
his predecessor Alberto Gonzales. Mukasey seems to feel, as Gonzales did, that
he doesn't work for the public but is there to ensure that his bosses stay out
of jail. (Interesting side-note: Barack Obama says that, if elected, he would
ask his attorney general to investigate whether Bush and Cheney might have
committed indictable crimes ( www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041508B.shtml ) while
in office.)

But what really got Mukasey into hot water in recent days was his assertion
that the U.S. knew that a terrorist in Afghanistan was calling someone inside
the U.S. prior to the 9/11 attack but the supposedly "outdated" FISA laws
wouldn't permit the Administration to tap that phone call and thus prevent the 9/11
events from happening. Mukasey was using that fallacious argument in 2008 as
a scare reason for why the Bush Administration needed Congressional
re-authorization immediately of the NSA's domestic-spying program, complete with
built-in amnesty for the big telecom companies working in cahoots with the
Administration.

But Mukasey's explanation is total B.S.

As Glenn Greenwald (
www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/18/mukasey/print.html ) and others have made clear, under then-existing FISA law the Bush
Administration could have eavesdropped on the pre-9/11 call and didn't really need
any more draconian spying programs. (Mukasey has since tried to tapdance away
from having misled Congress.)

The whole object of the Bush Administration, in this and every other matter,
has been to amass total control of information and intelligence in the White
House, cutting out the courts (in this case, specifically the FISA Court) and
Congress. They want full freedom to operate outside the law, with nobody -- no
judges, no legislators, no media reporters -- looking over their shoulders at
what they might be up to, and telling them what they can or cannot do. It's
possible that at least one aim of the domestic-spying programs is to learn from
secret phone-taps and emails what their political enemies are thinking.

THINGS ON AND OFF THE TABLE

OK, so Cheney, Bush, Rice, Mukasey, Addington (and no doubt others not quite
as prominent) are dirty, involved in activities beyond and outside the law. In
other words, they have engaged, and are still engaged, in high crimes and
misdemeanors. What's to be done? (www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1485/135 )

There's more than enough documented evidence to justify, at the very least,
an impeachment hearing in the House. Potentially, if the committee voted to go
forward, there could well be enough support to convict in the Senate from both
Democrats and Republicans worried about their electoral chances in 2008.

But nothing can happen unless or until the majority Democratic leaders in
both the House and Senate make the collective decision to begin the impeachment
process with hearings in the House Judiciary Committee.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House
Judiciary Chairman John Conyers are sticking to their guns that impeachment is
"off the table."

THEIR REASONS FOR AVOIDING ACTION

Let's examine the main reasons why the Congressional Democratic leaders
refuse to budge from this policy, and how they might be made to change their minds.
Their arguments appear to rest on four basic premises:

1. Breaking the impeachment cycle. The Democrats moved to impeach
Republican President Richard Nixon (who resigned before the Senate could try him),
then the Republicans impeached Democratic President Bill Clinton and tried
him in the Senate (not for treason or malfeasance in office but for lying about
a sexual dalliance. He was acquitted). Putting Cheney and Bush on trial in the
Senate, according to this reasoning, might be seen as tit-for-tat partisan
vengeance.

In this argument, the impeachment option is being over-used for political
reasons and risks becoming cyclical each time one party controls Congress and the
other controls the White House.

A Democrat may win the Presidency in 2008. Unless the impeachment cycle is
broken now, this reasoning goes, a future Democratic President might become the
object of a vendetta by forces of the Republican rightwing, anxious for some
payback.

2. Impeachment would hamper getting essential Congressional business
done. The Democratic leadership says that preparing and conducting impeachment
hearings would use up all the political oxygen and energy in Congress, making
it virtually impossible to deal legislatively with important matters.

The question is whether the Democrats are having any success right now
dealing with these important legislative matters. Looking at the situation
realistically, it's obvious that not much essential business is being conducted, let
alone completed.

The Republicans filibuster, or threaten to, at which point the Dems back off
their legislation; if a bill by the Democratic majority does manage to sneak
through, Bush either vetoes it or issues a "signing statement" saying he won't
obey the new law. Virtually all matters of import are being postponed until
after the new President is installed next January.

3. Why rock the boat? Why risk the opprobium of Independent and
moderate-Republican voters in November, who might think the Democrats are "piling
on" for partisan, electoral reasons, and thus decide to vote for the Republican
nominee?

The Democratic leadership's argument goes: "Look, the Republicans are on the
ropes as a result of this incompetent, corrupt, greedy, war-mongering
Administration. As a result, we're well positioned to enlarge our electoral gains in
the House and the Senate, maybe to the point of being able to prevent
obstructionist Republicans from filibustering needed legislation. And we may well take
back the White House. So why rock the boat?

"Let's just last out CheneyBush's final months in office [the Dem argument
continues]. Since we know that this unpopular pair will continue to earn the
disdain and anger of the American public by continuing their extremist ways until
Inauguration Day in January, it's better they remain in office rather than
risk firing-up GOP-base passions during the election campaign by putting Bush
and Cheney in the impeachment dock. Besides, if we impeached them, the public's
focus would fasten on Bush and Cheney rather than on the Republican nominee
and the dangers of a possible McCain presidency."

In short, the American people, this reasoning goes, want to quickly move away
from thinking about the godawful CheneyBush Administration of the past eight
years and head to a more optimistic, hopeful future.

4. The fear of being slimed. The Democrats don't want to be accused of
being "unpatriotic" by putting a "wartime" President into the impeachment
dock. Even though Bush is the most unpopular president in history, and though
more than three-quarters of American citizens think under his leadership the
country is "on the wrong track," the Democrats, anxious for a re-election sweep in
the House and Senate, remain terrified of Rovian-type Swiftboating smears
that could possibly cost them some votes in November and in the 2010 midterm
election.

Realizing that the Bushistas still control the mainstream, corporate-owned
media, and thus have all sorts of TV/radio/newspaper organizations that could
dump on them big time, the Democrats continue to roll over and make nice to the
shrinking but noisy Republican base and their TV/radio pundits. In other
words, the Dems are perennial wimps and haven't yet figured out how best to
confront the smash-mouth, take-no-prisoners politics of Rove & Co.

I strongly disagree with these four rationales for inaction, but at least I
can understand where they're coming from. But the Democrats, especially their
leaders, are simply ignoring some essential arguments.

REBUTTAL: WHY NOT IMPEACHMENT?

1. Nine months is a longnnnnnnnnnnnnng time. Between now and January
2009, a full nine months from now, CheneyBush are capable of doing a hell of a
lot of further damage to the body politic, to the economy, to the
Constitution, to the reputation of the U.S. abroad, to the armed forces, to the "enemy"
countries in their crosshairs. The propaganda campaign being catapulted against
Iran, for example, is nearly a carbon copy of what took place before the U.S.
bombed, invaded and occupied Iraq. The neo-cons in the Administration,
especially Cheney and Bush, are salivating at the prospect of an enormous air assault
on Iran's military establishment and laboratories, have positioned attack
forces near and around Iran, and are ready to rumble. All they need is an
acceptable causus belli.

A cornered CheneyBush&Co. down in the bunker may decide, what the hell, to
unleash the dogs of war again, even though their two previous unleashings have
been disasters. Iraq is a catastrophic quagmire of epic proportions, and a
somewhat ignored Afghanistan is heating up again with the Taliban re-asserting
control of larger and larger portions of the country.

In addition, John McCain is making it clear that he will be continuing the
Administration's foreign and domestic policies if he were to win in November.
He's said it would be fine for America to stay in Iraq for a hundred years or
more, he's indicated that he's quite amenable (maybe even eager) to "bomb, bomb,
bomb" Iran, he won't do much to help deal with the consequences of global
warming, he has little to offer in the way of solutions for the financial mess
the country is in -- we're talking a possible foreign
policy/economic/environmental apocalypse here!

2. The danger of a green light. Impeachment is an important and
necessary step Americans can take to rein in an out-of-control administration that
is endangering the country's national security with its reckless, extreme
misadventures.

Taking the possibility of impeachment "off the table" is to fight the
CheneyBush Administration with one hand tied behind the back. Bush&Co. have demons
trated over the past eight years that they understand, and respond to, only one
thing: countervailing power that refuses to give in. The ultimate effective
weapon in the Legislative Branch's arsenal is the fear of impeachment and
conviction and removal from power, to be followed either by "war crimes" charges
internationally and felony and civil-suit prosecutions inside the U.S.

Absent the possibility of impeachment, Cheney and Bush feel they have a green
light to do whatever they wish in the time remaining of their tenure. Waxman
and Leahy can try to humiliate and embarrass them in their Congresssional
one-day hearings, but they will face no real accountability or punishment for
their actions. So why not continue the corruption, attack Iran, appoint more
ideologues to the courts and into high administrative positions, postpone any
global-warming solutions, etc. etc.?

3. The precedent of respecting the law. Whenever leaders are not
punished for their unethical policies or criminal misdeeds, the rule of law
suffers. Impeachment is mentioned numerous times in the Constitution as the legal and
required remedy for extreme misrule. It's the last option for citizens,
through their legislators, to discipline errant leaders.

If the Congress does not impeach this president and vice president, who have
nearly taken the country down as a result of their reckless, dangerous,
incompetent, authoritarian behavior, then the rule of law stands for nothing. And
future elected leaders can legitimately believe that they more or less can also
get away with anything they wish to do.

Putting Cheney and Bush into the impeachment dock is to assert the primacy of
the rule of law under our system of governance, and would serve as a clear
warning shot across the bow of future presidents.

4. Force CheneyBush to play defense. There is one other advantage to
initiating impeachment hearings ASAP for Bush and Cheney. The Bush&Co.
juggernaut is most effective when on the offensive and their opponents are put on the
defensive. The Bushistas don't like, and don't do well, when they're forced to
play defense. Tying them up in defending themselves in impeachment hearings
and/or impeachment trials might well prevent them from doing more mischief
before they give up the reins of power. (Many Republicans were convinced they
would never convict Bill Clinton in the Senate but figured the trial was worth
doing anyway because it would hog-tie Clinton's agenda for the rest of his
presidency -- and they were correct.)

A final side-benefit ( www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/32869 ) of impeaching
Bush and Cheney: John McCain would find himself on the campaign trail being
forced to take positions on torture and signing statements at the heart of the
impeachment hearings, and, more often than not, would wind up either defending
those unpopular policies or promising never to repeat them.

WILL THE DEMS SURPRISE US ALL?

Will the Congressional Democratic leaders change their attitude toward
impeachment?

I think the answer is a clear No unless their constituencies loudly and
unwaveringly tell them they have to or risk the consequences at the ballot box, or
in the possible establishment of a new, grassroots-engendered party after the
November election that will demonstrate the courage and passion for ethical
and reality-based government that is so lacking in today's timid, Bush-enabling
Democratic Party.

That, unfortunately, is where we are politically in the Spring of 2008. It
doesn't have to be that way.#

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught government & international relations at
universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor at the
San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and currently serves as co-editor of
The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment: crisispapers@comcast.net
.

First published by The Crisis Papers and Democratic Underground 4/22/08.

Copyright 2008 by Bernard Weiner. **************Need a new
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