OP/ED: Impeach Bush Now!

Originally posted by seattlelaw

Originally posted by dperry4930

Of course, Iraq never complied, the invasion happened, and no WMD in any substantial amount have been found. What has always bothered me the most, why would Saddam, when faced with his own demise, not finally admit exactly what he had and where it went? Hans Blix himself (hardley a US apologist) stated that Iraq was not in compliance. If Saddam had destroyed his stocks of chem/bio and his nuke program, why act like he still had them?

The 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capability and, for the most part, Saddam Hussein did not try to rebuild it, according to an extensive report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that contradicts nearly every prewar assertion made by top administration officials about Iraq.

www.washingtonpost.com...


It's difficult for me to believe that there continues to exist those who choose to argue that the WMD argument was somehow valid, here ostensibly because Saddam was acting "like he still had them".

There were no WMD following the Gulf War I and everybody knew it. Everybody. We forced through that resolution on a pretext and ensured that Saddam could not satisfy it for how can one 'produce' that which does not exist? Saddam's defecting son-in-law provided details of how and where and when the remaining WMD were destroyed long before the 2003 invasion began. The inspectors knew there were none. Bush knew there were none. The cavalier manner in which Bush dropped the WMD nonesense (mushroom clouds, oh no!) after he got his way indicates how clearly they were fabrications. Similar to his disavowal of the search for bin Laden as soon as he/they got their way with Congress.

It's all so childish. Truly it is.

You may think it's childish, but I for one would like to discuss this seriously, and making statements that everyone KNEW this or that is false on its face. If everyone 'knew' this, why did the vast majority of intelligence agencies on the face of this planet believe Iraq retained some WMD capability? A vast world-wide conspiracy? Are you seriously saying that?

After receiving reports from individuals regarding the level of illegality in Iraq's WMD programs that apparently turned out to be false, I would find an individual's (even Saddam's son-in-law) with a grain of salt. Since you didn't post a specific link, I found one concerning what you talked about:
www.commondreams.org...

Of course buried in the article it plainly stated that 1. he hoped to become Iraq's leader and 2. Iraq retained blueprints etc. to resume the programs. He certainly wouldn't have told the US what he thought they wanted to hear, wouldn't he?

Interesting article, but him saying they destroyed their Chem/Bio isn't proof they did it in any reasonable sense.

And BTW, the article had at least one glaring inaccuracy, which may call into question the man's statement. He also apparently said that they had destroyed 'the missiles to deliver them'. Interesting, but wrong. Not all of the SCUDs were destroyed, and he retained various cruise missiles that could be utilized to carry a Chem/Bio agent.

dperry

Before I add my own opinion on whether Mr. Bush is impeachable or not. I think that Wikipedia's piece upon impeachment is rather interesting to read. Of course, for dperry, these reasons might not satisfy his quest for proof. But they might be a start for other people to read about some of the issues that go with why people would want Mr. Bush impeached:

Wikipedia.org

Wikipedia first says:

Reasons cited for seeking Bush's impeachment vary, such as questions about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. Those who have voiced support for impeachment include some members of the United States Congress, some public opinion polls and demonstrations, various other politicians and government officials, scholars, authors, organizations and members of the media. The political affiliation of those calling for impeachment is predominantly from the political left, and groups affiliated or supportive of anti-war causes, although some notable calls have come from members of the political right.

And then, it lists pretty good reasons why Mr. Bush should be impeached:

Main article: Rationales to impeach George W. Bush

Proponents of starting these proceedings advance several examples that could qualify as the "high crimes and misdemeanors" for which impeachment is possible. [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] [62] The Center for Constitutional Rights discusses some arguments in Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush.[63] The suggested reasons include the following:

* Wiretapping inside the United States without a warrant
* Misrepresenting the facts and failing to investigate the discrepancies leading up to the invasion of Iraq
* Refuting the Geneva Conventions
* Extraordinary rendition
* Responsibility as Commander-in-Chief for wrongful acts and illegal orders committed by officers and other staff under his command; in particular for encouraging, seeking justifications for, and failure to thoroughly investigate the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib and other prisons.
* The alleged responsibility of the George W. Bush administration in the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina
* Handling of the Yellowcake forgery and the subsequent Plame affair.
* Abuse of power

As for proof, I will continue to look for it. I will have my own thoughts about this aspect later. But I thought that I would bring this up for more information at the moment.









[edit on 24-4-2006 by ceci2006]

dperry, you asked for proof of one violation. I decided to take Mr. Bush's violations of the Geneva Convention as an article of impeachment.

First of all, the Geneva Conventions are in summary:

Summary of the Geneva Conventions

Summary: Basic rules of international humanitarian law in armed conflicts

1. Persons hors de combat and those who do not take a direct part in hostilities are entitled to respect for their lives and their moral and physical integrity. They shall in all circumstances be protected and treated humanelywithout any adverse distinction.

2. It is forbidden to kill or injure an enemy who surrenders or who is hors de combat.

3. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for by the party to the conflict which has them in its power.Protection also covers medical personnel, establishments, transports and equipment. The emblem of the red cross or the red crescent is the sign of such protection and must be respected.

4. Captured combatants and civilians under the authority of an adverse party are entitled to respect for their lives,dignity, personal rights and convictions. They shall be protected against all acts of violence and reprisals. They shall have the right to correspond with their families and to receive relief.

5. Everyone shall be entitled to benefit from fundamental judicial guarantees. No one shall be held responsible for an act he has not committed. No one shall be subjected to physical or mental torture, corporal punishment or cruel or degrading treatment.

6. Parties to a conflict and members of their armed forces do not have an unlimited choice of methods and means of warfare. It is prohibited to employ weapons or methods of warfare of a nature to cause unnecessary losses or excessive suffering.

7. Parties to a conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants in order to spare civilian population and property. Neither the civilian population as such nor civilian persons shall be the object of attack. Attacks shall be directed solely against military objectives.

The Fourth Convention covers the "protection of civilians and populations in time of war". I chose this convention particularly because it deals with a range of abuses which Mr. Bush, as Commander-in-Chief did not stop by executive order to the troops. Furthermore, Mr. Bush refuses to work with the U.N. to curb such infractions on foreign soil.

For this post, I will deal with two sections that have especially interested me: 1) the willful destruction of cultural artifacts; and 2) the protection of women in a war zone.

Scope of the Fourth Convention

Article 4 of the Fourth Convention defines protected persons as follows: persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.[IV, 4]

Section I, part four represents the willful disregard of cultural property. In which, the U.S. Marines did not protect the cultural properties of Baghdad. As you well know, Iraq is in the seat of the fertile crescent. It housed the Sumerians, one of the first civilizations of the world. The precious artifacts were rendered asunder relentlessly:

4. Special protection of certain property

Cultural property(1) is entitled to special protection. Historical monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples must not be the objects of any acts of hostility, nor be used in support of the military effort.[P. I, 53]

Looting Destroys Prehistoric Iraqi Treasures
The Looting of Iraq Goes On
Precision weaponry destroys Museum in Baghdad
Looters plunder enormous museum,Archaeological officials heartsick over theft of historical treasures thousands of years old

Section I, part III, art.27 deals with "the protections of persons in armed conflict." I would like to highlight part c of that protection: women. There have been numerous violations of Iraqi women during the second Iraq war.

c) Protection of women

Women shall be the object of special respect and must be protected against any form of indecent assault. Pregnant women and mothers of dependent infants, who are arrested for reasons related to the armed conflict, shall have their cases considered in absolute priority and in the event of a death penalty being pronounced, it will not be carried out. [P. I, 76

[edit on 26-4-2006 by ceci2006]

Impeachment here, has to be of the president and vice president all the way down to ms. Condaleeza, otherwise it wont do any good.

He most certainly is impeachable, as BH pointed out, he (the president) doesnt have to rob a liquor store.

Republicans called wildly OUTLOUD, WITHOUT any persecussion to impeach CLINTON.....WELL...shoot...i'm calling like a raging lunatic, wildly outloud to impeach the REAL criminals.

What makes this president so freaking special that you cannot utter "impeachment" without looking over your shoulder??????????

Get rid of the bum(s) NOW.

Originally posted by dgtempe


Impeachment here, has to be of the president and vice president all the way down to ms. Condaleeza, otherwise it wont do any good.

He most certainly is impeachable, as BH pointed out, he (the president) doesnt have to rob a liquor store.

Republicans called wildly OUTLOUD, WITHOUT any persecussion to impeach CLINTON.....WELL...shoot...i'm calling like a raging lunatic, wildly outloud to impeach the REAL criminals.

What makes this president so freaking special that you cannot utter "impeachment" without looking over your shoulder??????????

Get rid of the bum(s) NOW.

True ..REpublicans did call for Clintons impeachement... not only for doing Monica in the Oval Office, but also for treason... nevertheless,.. as always ...nothing happened, so why on Earth should it happen now ? what makes the democrats think they are above anyone else ?

Bush did what the Congress and Senate agreed on.. DEAL WITH IT , once and for all.

all the hypocrits that are calling for Bush's impeachement were right there signing under.

oooppsss... double post .. soweeyyyy

[edit on 24-4-2006 by BaastetNoir]

Originally posted by dgtempe

Impeachment here, has to be of the president and vice president all the What makes this president so freaking special that you cannot utter "impeachment" without looking over your shoulder??????????

Get rid of the bum(s) NOW.

Because now - post 9/11 - speaking against the president makes you part of a radical protest group which has the possibility of being terrorist driven, and you then become an issue of GRAVE national security!!!!!

Hmm...there are other forms of government which consider the populus voicing opposition to the government leaders a concern of national security.... oh yeah - a dictatorship.

Good times...good times. Never give up your right to speak your mind - once that's gone - we're done.

-Ry

Originally posted by rdube02
Because now - post 9/11 - speaking against the president makes you part of a radical protest group which has the possibility of being terrorist driven, and you then become an issue of GRAVE national security!!!!!

Hmm...there are other forms of government which consider the populus voicing opposition to the government leaders a concern of national security.... oh yeah - a dictatorship.

Good times...good times. Never give up your right to speak your mind - once that's gone - we're done.

-Ry

thats what amazes me about the ppl in this country... they are all absolutly free to voice their opinions, yet they scream they live in a dictatorship ??? that they have no rights ??? HELLOOOOOO

really... go tell the Iranian President, or Puttin, or our chinese buddy that you disagree with them and see where you end !

Go be a woman where genital mutilation happens and tell them you dont want to do it, and see what happens.... LOL...

" these Americans are nuts " ... can't remember who said that ,...

[edit on 24-4-2006 by BaastetNoir]

You most certainly are entitled to your opinion, insignificant and irrational as it may be.

I think the state rests on this one. More than enough evidence has been logged over the past years. Its not a case of na-na, you did it to Clinton, now we're going to do it to you. Its something that concerns every man, woman and child in this nation. To preserve the Constitution and our rights.
I even worry for you.

Originally posted by dgtempe


You most certainly are entitled to your opinion, insignificant and irrational as it may be.

I think the state rests on this one. More than enough evidence has been logged over the past years. Its not a case of na-na, you did it to Clinton, now we're going to do it to you.

Its something that concerns every man, woman and child in this nation. To preserve the Constitution and our rights.
I even worry for you.

Yup - there are so many reasons to impeach it's almost rediculous NOT to do it.

Impeach the brat and let's move this country forward again...

i look at two things right now....our economy and our schools education system. neither one have gone up, and we have a huge deficit...i say we gotta get rid of him. and stop the war on information so we can actually start getting some truth to our ears again. You really think bush could have gotten re-elected if we had truth instead of pentagon fabricated lies?

Originally posted by BaastetNoir

True ..REpublicans did call for Clintons impeachement... not only for doing Monica in the Oval Office, but also for treason...

No, there is nothing illegal about "doing" Monica in the Oval Office. The articles of impeachment were in response to Clinton's perjury when he stated under oath that he did not do her. The majority of Americans thought this witch hunt was the nonesense that it indeed was. Others latched onto it as proof that Clinton was and is Satan.

Bush did what the Congress and Senate agreed on.. DEAL WITH IT , once and for all.

Bush presented to Congress the image of the impending mushroom cloud with false reports and faked intelligence that Saddam sought yellow cake from Niger and that he had mobile weapons labs, etc. He made statements as the Executive and Commander in Chief upon which Congress was entitled to - and did - rely in providing the authorization to use military force. My recollection, though, is that the authorization was narrowly tailored and that now Bush has been flogging it as an excuse for torture, murder and wiretapping of US citizens.

all the hypocrits that are calling for Bush's impeachement were right there signing under.

Just because, under the cloud of 911, Bush was able to maneuver the Republican majority Congress through lies and deceptions to do his bidding does not make the members complicit. For a party to be a member of a conspiracy that party must have the requisite criminal intent to advance the illegal act. They believed his lies and acted from that false 'intelligence'.

Seems to me the only reason Bush and his administration have not been impeached yet is because they can't decide which impeachable offense to start with.

I got a hint, pick from a hat

It amazes me when former top govt. officials are willing to publicly air their disgust with this group of paste heads.

(CBS) When no weapons of mass destruction surfaced in Iraq, President Bush insisted that all those WMD claims before the war were the result of faulty intelligence. But a former top CIA official, Tyler Drumheller — a 26-year veteran of the agency — has decided to do something CIA officials at his level almost never do: Speak out.

He tells correspondent Ed Bradley the real failure was not in the intelligence community but in the White House. He says he saw how the Bush administration, time and again, welcomed intelligence that fit the president's determination to go to war and turned a blind eye to intelligence that did not.

"It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it’s an intelligence failure. It’s an intelligence failure. This was a policy failure," Drumheller tells Bradley.

Drumheller was the CIA's top man in Europe, the head of covert operations there, until he retired a year ago. He says he saw firsthand how the White House promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn’t:

"The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen one way or the other," says Drumheller.

www.cbsnews.com...

Just so you understand the depth Bush was willing to plumb in denying intelligence to go to war in Iraq here's more from the article for you apologists to choke down.

According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level meeting at the White House, including the president, the vice president and Secretary of State Rice.

At that meeting, Drumheller says, "They were enthusiastic because they said, they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis."

What did this high-level source tell him?

"He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program," says Drumheller.

"So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?" Bradley asked.

"Yes," Drumheller replied. He says there was doubt in his mind at all.

"It directly contradicts, though, what the president and his staff were telling us," Bradley remarked.

"The policy was set," Drumheller says. "The war in Iraq was coming. And they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."

Drumheller expected the White House to ask for more information from the Iraqi foreign minister.

But he says he was taken aback by what happened. "The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they're no longer interested," Drumheller recalls. "And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"

"And if I understand you correctly, when the White House learned that you had this source from the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, they were thrilled with that," Bradley asked.

"The first we heard, they were. Yes," Drumheller replied.

Once they learned what it was the source had to say — that Saddam Hussein did not have the capability to wage nuclear war or have an active WMD program, Drumheller says, "They stopped being interested in the intelligence."

We all know now that Bush fixed the "intelliegnce" to suit his needs and ignored information that contradicted the drumbeat of war. We also know that Congress was not made privy to this information when they decided to believe Bush's lies and misinformation. But I'm sure dperry and the others will find a reason to disregard the Iraqi Foreign Minister's intelligence. I mean, how could he know what they were doing? Forget that the CIA believed him. Better just to go in and kill tens of thousands of people. I wonder whether Saddam would have done as much damage to the Iraqis in the same period as we did?

BTW, I see Saddam posted another public service announcement today.

Dead or alive, huh? My arse.

[edit on 24-4-2006 by seattlelaw]

[edit on 24-4-2006 by seattlelaw]

[edit on 24-4-2006 by seattlelaw]

ill be waiting for drumhellers obituary....only a matter of time probably. regardless of how bad it is, you simply arent suppose to come out with this information after being in the government. For us its great, but the government isnt going to have him spreading all this for long.

I knew the call to impeach would lead to big trouble.

Egypt got bombed. By "Al Qaeda", of course.

Look for more mayhem.

Yeah, they might kill Drumheller. But he was the top guy in Europe so he must know what the score is. IMO it's a CIA (retired) vs. Bush-Cheney thing now. I believe the "retired" CIA is providing fuel for the Bush bonfire because Bush painted a target on the CIA as his scapegoat for 'bad intel' leading to his poor decision to go into Iraq. Of course most of the old guard at Langley has been largely ousted, so it's anybody's guess on who is loyal to whom of the current staff. My thinking is that these "retired" CIA people aren't going to go quietly off to Martha's Vinyard to rock on a porch. And there's evidence to support that as more agents spill to the media. I hope they're doing more than that!

If the CIA refuses to hit Drumheller (which I believe) and Bush has some Special Forces do it that would not be appreciated by the CIA. And the plot will thicken. But backstabbers always get theirs in the end. I wouldn't want to be Dubya for all the tea in China.

Originally posted by dgtempe


You most certainly are entitled to your opinion, insignificant and irrational as it may be.

I think the state rests on this one. More than enough evidence has been logged over the past years. Its not a case of na-na, you did it to Clinton, now we're going to do it to you.

Its something that concerns every man, woman and child in this nation. To preserve the Constitution and our rights.
I even worry for you.

hmmmm... thank you for worrying... but like the old saying says... "Sad is the blind man (in this case woman) who thinks she sees all"

as to your rights, that you so much scream about ? whre have they been removed? what right has Bush removed from you ? I have asked you this in 3 other threads...with no answer... but im not surprised... you cant really answer because NO RIGHTS have been removed from you. And you're probably (for what ive seen) one of those ppl who is always right... just like Bush... tho you think you're so much better than him...thast te funny part ...

BN,

You give me a headache.

To each his own, eh?

I've been wrong before and admitted it. In this case, the wind is at my back.

Originally posted by dgtempe


BN,

You give me a headache.

To each his own, eh?

I've been wrong before and admitted it. In this case, the wind is at my back.

lol... well at least i give you something... I can't say the same for you

Have you found out wich of your roights has been removed yet ? off course not. maybe the headacke comes for all that paranoia you have... think about it.