Ray McGovern in Detroit Free Press Asks Conyers to Impeach to Avoid Attack on Iran
Impeach Bush now?
Congressional proceedings would help prevent another mistaken war
BY RAY McGOVERN • Detroit Free Press
United States Rep. John Conyers, the Detroit Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has a rendezvous with destiny. He is uniquely placed to thrust a rod through the wheels of a White House juggernaut to war with Iran by commencing impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush.
A move to impeach would bolster the resistance to Bush among our senior military leaders who know that attacking Iran at this time would be the strategic equivalent of the marches into Russia by Napoleon and Hitler.
Since Conyers took the helm of Judiciary in January 2007, the train of abuses and usurpations by the Bush administration has gotten even longer. But oddly, Conyers has lost his earlier appetite for impeachment and begun offering all manner of transparent excuses not to proceed. On July 23, 2007, for example, Conyers told Cindy Sheehan, the Rev. Lennox Yearwood and me that he would need 218 votes in the House, and vociferously claimed the votes were not there.
Well, they are now. Last week, 251 members of the House voted to refer to Conyers' committee the 35 Articles of Impeachment offered by U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. Conyers should take them up.
When bombs are falling on Iran, it will be too late -- and our commander in chief is likely to give that order within the next couple of months. As former White House press secretary Scott McClellan reminds us, when the president sets his mind on something, he is not going to let anything stop him.
What seems to be driving Bush comes through best when he ad-libs at press conferences. On June 10, in Slovenia, he was asked about the intensifying debate in Israel about a military option against the nuclear installations in Iran. Bush responded: "If you go to Israel and listen carefully, you'll hear the urgency in their voice."
What's so urgent? Israel's ambassador to the United States, speaking at an American Jewish Committee luncheon last Oct. 22, said the Iranians must not be permitted to conclude that, "come January '09 (after Bush leaves office), they have it their own way."
Vice President Dick Cheney last summer pushed for air strikes on Revolutionary Guards bases in Iran, but was thwarted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to J. Scott Carpenter, a senior State Department official working on the Middle East at the time.
The Joint Chiefs also have strongly opposed attacking Iran's nuclear sites, according to a former Iran specialist at the National Security Council, Hillary Mann, who has wide contacts among senior Pentagon officials. Mann reports that Admiral William Fallon, the former CENTCOM commander, joined the Joint Chiefs in opposing such an attack and made his views known to the White House. Fallon was forced to resign in March and will be replaced as CENTCOM commander by Gen. David Petraeus.
A "political general," Petraeus has already demonstrated his willingness to do Cheney's bidding -- by, for example, making demonstrably false claims about Iranian weaponry in Iraq. Nonetheless, the U.S. military in Baghdad apparently remains under orders to blame any serious violence on "special groups" -- code for those said to be supported by Iran.
Before the smoke had cleared after Tuesday's bombing in Baghdad that left at least 63 dead and 78 wounded, U.S. spokesman Lt. Col. Steven Stover announced that the U.S. command believed one of those "special groups" was behind the bombing.
The corporate media are already launched in their pre-attack mode, providing stenographic services for the White House to indoctrinate Americans on a synthetic "threat" from Iran. So far, though, we have been spared the "mushroom cloud" imagery. Neither Bush nor Cheney want to risk drawing attention to the fact that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last November that Iran stopped nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 and has not restarted it.
Conyers may say there's not enough time to begin impeachment, with only seven months left to this administration. But how could Conyers say this one day, and on the next say that if Bush attacks Iran, well then the House may move toward impeachment? His nonchalance regarding what an attack on Iran would mean is mind-boggling. You impeach the scoundrels before they start another war.
At a similarly critical juncture in our nation's history, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was characteristically direct: "There is such a thing as being too late. ... Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity. ... Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: 'Too late.'"
RAY MCGOVERN, an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then CIA analyst for 27 years, is on the Steering Group of VIPS -- Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Contact him at rrmcgovern@aol.com.
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Conyers is enabling tyranny
Two years ago John Conyers wrote a book called Constitution in Crisis that impeccably details the crimes and impeachable offenses of the Bush administration.
Since January 2007, he has been House Judiciary Chairman. THE person responsible for initiating impeachment hearings for the most impeachable administration in the history of this country.
It was an encouraging time. The man who wrote the book on Bushco's crimes and knows the evidence better than anybody else in Washington (except for the criminals themselves, perhaps) was finally in THE position to start the wheels of accountability and justice in motion.
18 months later, we're still waitng for Mr. Conyers to do his job.
There is no acceptable excuse for his failure to act.
He is not bound by the malfeasance of Queen Nancy.
He did not swear to do only what the Democratic party sees as politically advantageous.
He held up his hand and swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
In fact, he has done this 21 times.
John Conyers knows better. For as long as he refuses to honor his oath and actually start defending our Constitution against the crimes of the Bush administration, he will be an enabler of tyranny.
Unfiltered Video Commentary:
JOHN CONYERS IS STILL FAILING AMERICA.
DEMAND IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS NOW:
johnconyersjr@gmail.com / john.conyers@mail.house.gov
Phone:202-225-5126 Fax:202-225-0072
The need increases
The need for impeachment just jumped up another notch. With my own ears I heard Mr Obama begin the saber-rattling against Iran. The "military industrial complex" president Eisenhower warned us about has him right where they want him. He sounded just like Bush! God help where this country is going!
Al k.
Inaction on the part of Conyers has very severe consequences
Ray McGovern is correct. If no impeachment takes place, there will absolutely, positively be an illegal attack on the nation of Iran by the out-of-control, quite 'illegitimate' cabal that has hijacked this nations government by election tampering and the use of the Supreme Court to render a decision as to who won in the year 2000 election.
Clearly, the consequences are thus:
1.) within 24 hours of the attack on Iran, the substantial loss of American life in the U.S. Carrier task forces deployed in the region will be quite 'high' and hence, this retaliatory blowback on the heels of the attack, will provide the 'excuse' Bushco needs to declare Martial Law and then 'suspend' the election in November, or if the attack takes place after the election, effectively 'nullifies' the results of an Obama win.
2.) the United States will, by necessity, as a 'rogue' nation, have to be 'contained' by the EU, so the next logical step by the entire world, would be to impose strict trade sanctions against the illegitimate government of the United States.
3.) Insurrection and strife in the U.S. as a result of insurgency here, means at the very least, four or five years of struggle, violence, and ultimately, the overthrow of the U.S. government, as it exists today, wholly 'illegitimate' and
out-of-control. This will result in the deaths of at the very least, several million citizens in the United States.
4.) World-wide instability, based upon a region wide conflict in the Middle East, triggered by the unification of the entire Muslim world, against the west. This will bring about the destruction of most of the State of Israel, irregardless of how many of her 250 nuclear weapons she uses in the struggle against her neighbors. Ultimately, she will fall.
5.) The United States becomes a 'blockaded / sanctioned' rogue state, and due to the financial and trade isolation, begins to fundamentally 'disintegrate' into internal strife even after the insurrection successfully dislodges the rogue government.
In any case, the ramifications of what Ray McGovern is trying to tell us about the imperative of Impeachment, is that, if we fail to impeach, we are assuring the 'demise' of the United States, and a world that will fall into pockets of conflict that radiate outwards from the Middle East, with most of the world plunged into poverty, disease, and war, as a result of the global impact of the world's economic engine, fed by fossil fuels, due to the financial disintegration triggered by what would, in essence, be another World War.
McGovern is correct. If we fail to impeach, it is over with.