===================== Published on Thursday, May 6, 2004 by CommonDreams.org March Orders
by Bill C. Davis
In March 2002 Bush interrupted a meeting between three senators and Dr. Rice as they discussed strategies for Iraq in relationship to the U.N. According to Time magazine the commander-in-chief stopped all the talk and said - "F*** Saddam - we're taking him out."
The order with its gangster sexual aggression - came from Bush - perceived by most people in the world to be our president but speaking as if he were Sonny Corleone or Tony Soprano. "F*** Saddam." Meaning what? Penetrate, humiliate, feminize?
That order - its tone - its twist - its thrust - trickled down to Abu Ghraib - to that man with the gloves - his arms folded -smiling over the anonymous cluster of hooded humanity in front of him. It trickled down to that androgynous creature with the perky damaged smile whose life is now as ruined as the moment she has been caught in forever.
That command oozes into the consciousness of the enlisted and the hired like a gas - like anthrax. It works its way into the cells and the nervous system of those who do the president's bidding. It was not depose, impeach or defeat - it was "F***." Whatever else he may have said from a podium or an aircraft carrier or the oval office - beneath it all was that order he announced in passing to Dr. Rice and the three senators - beneath it all are those pictures, which look like and are dark gothic dreams.
As Christ said - what you whisper in corners will be shouted from rooftops. Bush's whisper is now a full screen. The pathetic scapegoats are not the point - as much as they will be used as such. The president will say he could not have any idea that something like this could go on - the same way Dr. Rice could never imagine planes going into buildings. But in fact, the seed was planted in March 2002 and Abu Ghraib is the harvest.
He can't apologize because he moves forward with a certain color blindness. He'll speak when spoken to - i.e. caught - but to originate redemptive concepts is not what he was hired for.
What I hope we and the Iraqi people will remember are those Americans - dubbed as crackpot and treasonous at the time - who stopped their lives here and went to Baghdad to be human shields - and the protestors who crowded Washington, New York, San Francisco, Chicago - who knew that Abu Ghraib would be part of the sickening tapestry that war weaves. We have to remember those Americans who had no aspirations of approval or heroism but acted heroically on behalf of common humanity.
The Americans who were considered focus groups and marginal are now the only faces that have a chance of replacing the faces of the smiling sadists, which sadly for now stands as the real face of America to the world at large and who in some way got their marching orders in March 2002.
======================
The Bush Lies: "When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
======================== Published on Tuesday, April 6, 2004 by the Associated Press Nader Calls for Bush to Be Impeached
by Maura Kelly
CHICAGO - Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader called Tuesday for President Bush to be impeached for "deceiving the American people night after night after night" about U.S. involvement in Iraq.
"When you plunge our country into war on a platform of fabrications and deceptions, and you bring back thousands of American soldiers who are sick, injured or dead, and that war is unconstitutionally authorized to begin with, Mr. Bush's behavior qualifies for the high crimes and misdemeanor impeachment clause of the Constitution," the 2000 Green Party presidential nominee said to applause from about 200 students at Columbia College Chicago.
Nader said President Clinton was impeached for "far less of an offense."
"Lying under oath is not a trivial offense, but it cannot compare with deceiving the American people night after night after night on national television, staging untruths and rejecting the advice of his advisers," he said.
Merrill Smith, a spokeswoman for Bush's re-election campaign, declined to comment.
Nader previously called for Bush's impeachment during an anti-war rally March 20 in the president's hometown of Crawford, Texas, to mark the first anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Nader, a longtime consumer advocate, was in Illinois to gather the 25,000 signatures he needs before June 21 to qualify for the state ballot. He failed Monday to qualify for Oregon's ballot, but said he would try again under another option there.
Many Democrats blame Nader for Democrat Al Gore's loss to Republican George W. Bush in 2000, and have urged him not to run this time. They cite the vote Nader captured in close contests in New Hampshire and Florida and argue that Gore would have won if either state had gone to the then-vice president.
But Nader says Gore is to blame for his misfortune, and he rejected the idea that he could draw support away from Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
In Portland, Ore., on Monday, former Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean warned that "a vote for Ralph Nader is the same as a vote for George Bush."
An audience member in Chicago was booed for suggesting something similar.
Nader responded: "What we have to tell the two parties in unmistakable terms is that this country does not belong to two parties."
============================
The Bush Lies: "When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Has our nation abided by the Constitution regarding declaring war on Iraq? Read this.
(my emphasis)
========================= John Bonifaz, Author of "Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush"
April 29, 2004
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
If you’re like BuzzFlash, you’ve probably found yourself wondering how in the world could George W. Bush preemptively invade and occupy another country that was not an imminent threat to the United States, based on a heap of lies. Shouldn’t such an action that has killed and injured thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians be an impeachable offense and treated as a high crime? Why isn’t anybody talking about impeaching George W. Bush? Well help is on the way. John C. Bonifaz has written a new book, "Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush," with a foreword by Rep. John Conyers Jr. that is a stinging indictment and a call for a grassroots movement to hold George W. Bush accountable for his illegal war in Iraq.
Mr. Bonifaz is also the founder and general counsel of the National Voting Rights Institute, a prominent legal center in the campaign finance reform field. Mr. Bonifaz is a 1999 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He is a 1992 graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1987 graduate of Brown University.
In February and March 2003, Mr. Bonifaz served as lead counsel for a coalition of US soldiers, parents of US soldiers, and Members of Congress (led by Representatives Conyers and Kucinich) in a federal lawsuit challenging the authority of President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld to launch a war against Iraq absent a congressional declaration of war or equivalent action. His book, "Warrior-King," is accounting of that case and its meaning for the United States Constitution.
* * *
BuzzFlash: Your new book is titled, "Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush." Let me just play devil’s advocate for a second and ask you since Tom DeLay, the House Majority Leader, would never permit Articles of Impeachment to be drawn, why did you write this book when the outcome is fairly certain that George W. Bush will likely never be impeached?
John Bonifaz: I wrote the book to ensure that there would be a broader public debate about the illegality of this war. A President is not a king. He does not have the power to launch a first-strike invasion against another nation without a congressional declaration of war or equivalent congressional action. And this President has sent this nation into a war without any congressional authorization – a war that we now know is based on lies – and Bush ought to be scrutinized for the impeachable offenses that he’s committed. So the question of whether or not the President has committed impeachable offense is, in fact, a legitimate question to raise, and must be raised from the grassroots.
BuzzFlash: Explain to our readers your analysis and the substance of the Congressional resolution in the fall of 2002 that gave the President, as I remember, the authority to pursue means to enforce inspections in Iraq, and how the President took that resolution as an authorization to invade Iraq.
John Bonifaz: Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia was quite eloquent about this point. The October 2002 Congressional resolution sought to unlawfully transfer to the President the power to declare war, a power held by the United States Congress. When the framers drafted the war powers clause of the United States Constitution, they did so to ensure that this country would not be like the European monarchs of the past -- the European monarchs of the past who could send their subjects off into battle on their own personal whim. In this country, the President would not have that kind of power. Only the people, through the United States Congress, would have the power to make that awesome decision of sending our soldiers into battle.
BuzzFlash: How do you respond to people who say, well, there wasn’t a declaration of war with Korea or Vietnam. There wasn’t a formal declaration of war in the first Iraq war. What is your response when people bring up those arguments and say, well, why should there have been a declaration of war in this case?
John Bonifaz: Well, first the question of whether in Iraq there was a declaration of war needs to (be) expanded to determine whether there was even any equivalent Congressional action. This is not a magic words test. This is not the requirement that Congress must utter specific words in order for the nation to descend into war. But Congress must, in some way or another, authorize the President to go into war before the President may order military forces to engage in a war.
The President is the Commander in Chief. He has the power to determine how to prosecute a war, but it is not his power to determine whether to prosecute a war. That’s solely a power of the U.S. Congress. So while it is true that there’s been erosion of the war powers clause since World War II, it is also true that in these other wars, there had been other instances in which Congress had expressed its view. Congress had appropriated money for some of these military operations. Congress had passed a mandatory draft.
At the start of this war against Iraq, there was nothing except the resolution in October 2002, which sought to cede the power of declaring war to the President. There had been no appropriations for this military invasion. There had been no military draft implemented. And so this President had no authority to send this nation into war. And we now know that he tried to gain that alleged authority based on lies and deception, which is a separate impeachable offense.
BuzzFlash: As a constitutional question, you’re saying that the Congress cannot shift its own constitutional responsibility to another branch of government, even if it desired to. In other words, the Senate could not shift the authority to the President to levy taxes or confirm members of the Cabinet. The House of Representatives couldn’t shift the responsibility of drawing articles of impeachment to the Senate.
John Bonifaz: Absolutely. There are certain powers held by the United States Congress that are exclusively held by Congress. They are not shared with the President. Congress has the power to levy taxes, and only Congress does. Congress has the power to confirm appointments to the federal bench, and only Congress does. Congress cannot, all of a sudden, decide that it’s going to abdicate its Constitutional responsibility and hand over to the President powers that the framers never intended the President to have.
There’s a reason why we don’t want the President to have the kind of awesome power of determining whether or not to send the nation into war, or whether or not to levy taxes on the American people. We have a different system than the European monarchies of the past. And no one individual should have the awesome power to determine whether to send American soldiers off into battle, and off possibly to their deaths. That is a decision solely to be made by the United States Congress, representing the people as a whole.
BuzzFlash: Let’s imagine this scenario, that God forbid, Bush is reelected. But the House of Representatives miraculously goes back to Democratic control. What then? Can you still prosecute a case of impeachment against a President? Or would a reelection trump a President’s actions in the first term?
John Bonifaz: We, of course, have to remember that the Watergate break-in occurred in an election year, in 1972. And President Nixon was reelected. And it wasn’t until 1973 that there was a series of impeachment proceedings leading ultimately to the President’s resignation in 1974. It would be very unfortunate for this country to go through a process by which it reelects a President without any consideration of whether he’s committed impeachable offenses, only to then, assuming after that election, begin that process.
This process ought to begin now. There ought to be scrutiny engaged by the U.S. Congress today on whether the President has committed impeachable offenses. The Constitution lays out a specific process for addressing unlawful conduct committed by the President of the United States, and that’s called the impeachment process. These are high crimes that the President has committed, and he ought to be impeached for that reason. And this investigation ought to deal with the question of those high crimes. Elections are for questioning whether or not there’s popular support for the person in office or the person seeking office. But the impeachment process is for addressing the matter of high crimes. And it’s critical now for this nation and for the integrity of the Constitution that we engage in that process.
BuzzFlash: You filed a lawsuit in February of 2003 on behalf of members of Congress and military families to stop the war because it was unconstitutional and illegal. And the courts barred deciding the case on the grounds that it raised political questions that they did not feel they had the right to decide. In your legal opinion, how were the courts wrong?
John Bonifaz: First it’s important to recognize that the lead plaintiffs in this case were United States soldiers who were facing potential injury and death as a result of the President’s illegal actions. They had the courage to stand up and challenge this President’s authority to send them off into battle. Parents of U.S. soldiers and courageous members of Congress in fact, joined them. And the courts stood on the sidelines and refused to stop this President’s illegal march into war. And the courts used a barrier that should not have been placed in the plaintiffs’ way to prevent any kind of judicial intervention. They argued that Congress and the President were not in conflict, and therefore, there was no ability for the judiciary to intervene. Only if Congress and the President, on a matter of war, refused or were in conflict, then the judiciary could intervene and deal with that conflict.
Of course, that means that Congress can collude with the President to violate the Constitution and have the President send the nation into an illegal war, and the courts would have no ability to act. In fact, the courts have a specific duty to act to protect and uphold the Constitution, even if the other two political branches are colluding together to violate it.
So here is a story of all three democratic institutions failing us – the executive branch, the United States Congress, and the federal judiciary. And the book is really sounding an alarm for our future, for the Constitution, and for the nation. We now have a new preemptive war doctrine articulated by this Bush Administration and if combined with what’s happened with the Iraq war, will impact the future of our country. We now have a precedent that any future Administration can effectively tell us that whenever they see a threat that perhaps the rest of the country doesn’t see, the rest of the Congress doesn’t see, the President alone can make the decision to wage war. These are powers held only by monarchs and tyrants, and it cannot be allowed that these powers should be held by the president of a democratic nation.
BuzzFlash: I mentioned Korea and Vietnam earlier, but we’re seeing the complete erosion of Congressional authority over going to war especially after Bush’s preemptive invasion of Iraq. And as you stated, future presidents can and probably will use the preemptive strike doctrine to "protect" America. What does the future hold? What needs to happen for Congress to reassert its authority over matters of war?
John Bonifaz: I think this has to come from the people. I think the people have to demand that their Constitution be followed and that this social contract that exists between the people and the government be abided by. And, in fact, that the question of whether or not impeachable offenses have occurred needs to be addressed by the United States Congress.
There needs to be an investigation as to whether or not this President has committed high crimes. And the people have a responsibility – all of us – to demand that our nation be followed in terms of its principles. We seek to export the vision of democracy around the world, and yet here in this country, the vision of democracy is under attack. The Constitution is under attack – attack by an Administration that sees no interest in following its own Constitutional responsibilities, but rather extending powers beyond anywhere the framers intended, into powers held only by monarchs of the past. And so I think it’s important at this moment in history that we as a people stand up and demand our country back. This President has sought to exercise the powers of a king in sending this nation into illegal war, and he ought to be held accountable for it.
BuzzFlash: One of the most appalling responses when people suggest that Bush should be impeached, is that this is just payback for the Clinton impeachment, which is just utterly ridiculous. Deception about two consenting adults over sex and the impact on a civil case, versus the lies and distortions over the reasons and evidence for invading and occupying a country in a preemptive strike doctrine is just absurd to even mention the two incidents in the same sentence. And yet, that’s what the right-wing does. What’s your response?
John Bonifaz: I think it’s clear that if a President can be impeached for alleged charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, then a President surely should be impeached for sending this nation into an illegal war based on lies. No one died in the Monica Lewinsky affair. Here we have over 700 U.S. soldiers dead, thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, thousands more injured on both sides. And yet this President has yet to be held accountable for sending this nation into an illegal war based on lies.
You know, the questions of falsehoods and lies and deception that have been emanating from this Administration regarding this war, and the reasons for going into this war, are directly tied to the issue of whether the process of sending the nation into war was followed. Because if Congress had properly done its job to vet the information, to challenge the Administration to come forward with the evidence it claimed it had, then, in fact, we may not have gone off into war.
But beyond that, it shows how dangerous it is to rely upon one individual to tell us that we are in need of sending the nation to war based on some threat that that one individual sees. This is an awesome power held by this country, with the strongest and most forceful military in the world, and we cannot send this nation into war based on one individual’s perception, no matter how right or wrong he may be. And now that this has happened, we need to stand up for the Constitution and demand accountability for all the soldiers who have died, and those who have been injured, for all those on the Iraqi side who’ve died and been injured. We need accountability here. We cannot let this question of high crimes be unanswered.
BuzzFlash: John, thank you so much for speaking with us.
The Bush Lies: "When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
You are always touting the idea that we need to abide by the Constitution. What's your take on the Constitutionality of the war with Iraq, BillyBob?
The Bush Lies: "When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Ha-ha-ha oh man did we ever get smacked on that one. Conned big time. Punk'd like dogs. Just gotta shake your head, laugh it off. They reamed us but good, baby! Damn.
Turns out it really was all a big joke after all. The war, that is. All a big fat nasty murderous oil-licking lie, a sneaky little power-mad game with you as the sucker and the world as the pawn and BushCo as the slithery war thug, the dungeon master, the prison daddy. You really have to laugh. Because it's just so wonderfully ridiculous. In a rather disgusting, soul-draining sort of way.
See, there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. No WMDs at all. Isn't that great? What's more: There never were. Ha-ha-ha. Gotcha!
No warehouses teeming with nuclear warheads, no underground bunkers packed with vats of boiling biotoxins, no drums of crazy-@ss chemical agents that will melt your skin and turn us all into drooling flesh-eating zombies -- unless, of course, you count the sneering vat of conservative biotoxin that is, say, Fox News, in which case, hell yeah baby, we gotcher WMDs right here beeyatch.
Go figure. Those lowly U.N. inspectors were right after all. Who knew? It was all a ruse. We've been sucker-punched and ideologically molested and patriotically sodomized and hey, what the hell, who cares anyway, we "liberated" an oppressed people most Americans secretly loathe and fear and don't understand in the slightest, even though that was never the point, or the justification, or the goal. Go team.
But wait, is liberation of a brutalized and tormented people now the reason? The justification for our thuggery? That is so cool! So that means we're going to blow the living crap out of Sri Lanka and Sudan and Tibet and North Korea and about 47 others, right? Right? Maybe Saudi Arabia, too, second only to the Taliban itself in its abuse of women? Cool! As if.
Ah, but screw the liberal whiny peacenik U.N. inspectors, you know? Let's ask the U.S. search teams themselves, ShrubCo's own squadrons of biologists, chemists, arms-treaty enforcers, nuclear operators, computer and document experts and Special Forces troops who've been in Iraq for weeks now, searching frantically.
Surely they've found something, right? Surely we can now prove that Saddam was fully intending to fillet our babies and annihilate Florida and poke the eyes out of really cute kittens on national TV for sadistic pleasure, right? Gimme a hell yeah!
Whoops. Bad news. As The Washington Post reports, the 75th Exploitation Task Force, the very serious-minded group heading up all U.S. inspections in Iraq, the group absolutely certain it would immediately find steaming neon-lit stockpiles of WMDs piled right next to Saddam's personal stash of gay porn and Britney Spears posters and opium pipes, is coming home with its tail between its legs. Found nothing. Nada.
Psychopatriots are a little nonplussed. Bush is merely "embarrassed." Peace advocates are sighing and drinking heavily. We have done this ghastly horrible inane hate-filled entirely unprovoked thing in the name of power and petroleum and military contracts and strategic empire building, our nation is numb and more bitterly divisive than ever and our leaders are not the slightest bit ashamed.
But of course you're not the slightest bit shocked. You knew it all along. The WMD line was just a ploy that, tragically, much of the nation bought into like a sucker pyramid scheme after being pounded into submission with hammers of fear and Ashcroftian threats and bogus Orange Alerts and having their tweezers confiscated at the airport.
And of course the capacity to be outraged and appalled has been entirely drained out of you, out of this nation, replaced by raging ennui and sad resentment and the new fall season on NBC. This is what they're counting on. Your short attention span. WMDs? That's so, like, last February. Hey look, the swimsuit model won "Survivor"!
Because now it's all done. Like a bad trip to the dentist where your routine cleaning turned out to be a bloody excruciating root canal and 50 hours of high-pitched drilling and $100 billion in god-awful cosmetic surgery, now the bandages come off. Smile, sucker. We're at peace once again. Sort of. But not really. Don't you feel better now? No? Too bad. No one cares what you think.
It's all over but the shouting. And the screaming. And the endless years of U.S. occupation in the Middle East, the quiet building of U.S. military bases in Iraq so we can keep those uppity bitches Syria and Egypt and Lebanon in line, forge ahead with the long-standing plan to strong-arm those damn Islamic nuts into brutal compliance with Bushco's bleak blueprint for World Inc. What, too bitter? Hardly.
Should we care that Osama, the actual perp of 9/11, is still running around free? That terrorism hasn't been quelled in the slightest? That the Mideast is more of a U.S.-hating powder keg than ever, thanks to BushCo? That the economy is in the worst shape it's been in decades?
Should we care that we just massacred tens of thousands of Iraqi (and Afghan) civilians and soldiers and suffered a little more than 100 U.S. casualties and have absolutely nothing to show for it except bogus force-fed pride and this weird, sickening sense that we just executed something irreparable and ungodly and karmically poisonous?
Nah. Just laugh it off. Have a glass of wine, make love, go play Frisbee with the dog. Breathe deep and focus on what's truly important and try to assimilate this latest atrocity into your backstabbed worldview, add it to the list of this lifetime's spiritual humiliations, as you wait for the next barrage, the imminent announcement that we're about to do it all again.
Steel yourself. Protect your soul. Because man, they reamed us good. Slammed this nation like a bad joke. Gotcha! Ha-ha-ha.
========================
The Bush Lies: "When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Location: A spacious corner office overlooking the River Phlegethon
Rep Power: 50251
Atheist
More right than left
Slogan/motto:
"Do what thou wilt" shall be the hole in the floor.
Reputation:
May 11th, 2004, 04:43 PM
From the referenced article:
Quote:
It's all over but the shouting. And the screaming. And the endless years of U.S. occupation in the Middle East, the quiet building of U.S. military bases in Iraq so we can keep those uppity bitches Syria and Egypt and Lebanon in line, forge ahead with the long-standing plan to strong-arm those damn Islamic nuts into brutal compliance with Bushco's bleak blueprint for World Inc.
[BillyBob]
Raaaaahhhh!!!
Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, WHO'S YOUR DADDY?!
Now all we need to do is make being a nutbar towelhead (that's all of 'em, BTW) punishable by summary execution.
[/BillyBob]
"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."
Seems like Pres.Bush started to beat the hornet's nest with a weed-whacker. He would not listen to anyone else in the US or the rest of the world. Thats trouble when you believe you are carrying out the word of God. People can do awful things even behedding people!
Location: The greatest country man has ever known.
Rep Power: 0
Other
Right Winger
Slogan/motto:
Reputation:
May 14th, 2004, 06:18 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by Skeptic
You are always touting the idea that we need to abide by the Constitution. What's your take on the Constitutionality of the war with Iraq, BillyBob?
Our Constitution is a 'limiter' of US power over it's citizens. It is the law of the US, not the law of the world.
The President of the US has every obligation to maintain the safety of US citizens and if that means he has to use the awesome force of the US military to squash terrorists and rogue leaders, so be it.
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