OMNI IMPEACHMENT
NEWSLETTER # 1: REPORTS, OPINION, COMMENT
DECEMBER 7, 2006, BUILDING A CULTURE OF PEACE
AND JUSTICE
Editor:
Dick Bennett
SPECIAL
NUMBER ON IMPEACHING PRESIDENT BUSH
Crime is
contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law.
-Louis D. Brandeis, lawyer, judge, and writer (1856-1941)
"There have been serious crimes committed. People
have been killed because of those crimes. They need to be pursued. I
would like Democrats, or whoever’s in the winning catbird seat here to realize
that they have a responsibility under The Constitution of the United States to
pursue violations of the Constitution and violations of criminal
law..." Ray McGovern-
27- year CIA analyst.
Things are moving slowly in the US on
Impeachment. It's embarrassing that Germany has to do our job for us. Perhaps
that will convince our legislators to do a little more housecleaning…. Amy
Goodman highlighted the German initiative on her program yesterday. A video version is available online for
anyone who missed it:: “War Crimes Suit Filed in Germany Against Rumsfeld,
Other Top U.S.” http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/14/1517243
* “Torture Suit Star Witness, Fmr. Abu Ghraib Head Janis Karpinski
Points to Signed Rumsfeld Memo Listing Harsh Interrogation Techniques” *http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/14/1517249
BOOKS
THE TWO MOST RECENT BOOKS PUB. THIS DEC.
John Nichols’ The Genius of Impeachment.
Free Press, 2006.
Nichols
authored the critically-acclaimed analysis of the Florida recount fight of
2000, Jews for Buchanan, and a
best-selling biography of Vice President Dick Cheney, Dick: The Man Who is President,.
With Robert W. McChesney. Nichols has co-authored the books, It's the Media, Stupid!, Our Media, Not
Theirs and Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin
Elections, and Destroy Democracy. McChesney and Nichols are the co-founders of
Free Press, the nation's media-reform network, which organized the
2003, 2005, and upcoming 2007 National Conferences on Media Reform.
Nichols lays out impeachment from a historical perspective and the
importance of impeachment to the
founding fathers. He argues that impeachment was
provided in the US Constitution to depose elected despots and, rather than
fearing the idea of impeachment, that it is the duty of Americans
(and their elected representatives) to impeach elected officials
who violate the US Constitution.
Elizabeth de la Vega. U.S.
v. George W.
Bush et al. Seven Stories, Dec. 2006. http://www.amazon.com/United-States-George-Bush-al/dp/1583227563/sr=1-1/qid164224113/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-3676802-6048838?ie=UTF8&s=books>
US v. Bush, et al. By
William Fisher , t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Vega is a retired government lawyer with more than 20 years
of
experience. She
served as an Assistant US Attorney in Minneapolis, and a member of the
Organized Crime Strike Force and Branch Chief in San Jose,
California. Why did Ms. de la Vega write this book? She
says, "The
President will not be held accountable for misrepresenting the
pre-war intelligence
unless and until Congress conducts hearings similar to the Watergate
hearings.” She adds, "Although the
evidence of wrongdoing
is overwhelming, the
facts are so complicated that it's impossible to
have a productive
debate about them in the political sphere. One forum where
that's not true is the courtroom."
Does she believe
that her book will lead to
making her
hypothetical case real? She writes, "Consider this my 911 call. I'm
calling on Democrats
and Republicans to do the right thing ... and convince
Congress to do the
right thing. I am not talking about bringing people to
justice in the
vengeful sense that President Bush employs. I am talking
about effecting
justice ... holding out highest government officials accountable for ... a
criminal betrayal of trust that is strikingly similar to, yet far worse, than
the fraud committed by Enron's top officials…."
(I deleted most of the review.)
EARLIER 2006 BOOKS ON IMPEACHING BUSH
www.bushscrewedamerica.com
--Peter Phillips is
co-editor with Dennis Loo from Cal Poly Pomona of the The Case for Impeachment of Bush and Cheney . Seven Stories, 2006. Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at
Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored. Opens WITH “12 Reasons Why George W. Bush and
Richard Cheney Must Be Impeached,” backing them up with 16 chapters that cover
the impeachable crimes. Pref. and Afterword. Index, contributors’ bios, resources. Ch. 13, on the overthrow of the legal Haitian
gov’t. of Aristide, violated international laws, the US Constitution, and laws of the land
(see below). Chap. 16, “What Can Be
Done?” At end lists orgs. working to
impeach.
Pres. Clinton told one lie about a
sexual peccadillo; Pres. Bush has smashed Constitution and international
law. If you want to be able to tell your
Congressional delegation why you want them to reverse the Bush assaults on
democracy and what they are, this one book provides a host of the details.
--Articles of Impeachment Against George W.
Bush. Center for Constitutional
Rights. Melville House, 2006. www.mhpbooks.com Presents the case
for impeachment exactly as it could be presented by the House of
Representatives to the U. S. Senate.
Clearly and concisely the Center delineates the four strongest charges
against the president. Also includes
what the Constitution says about impeachment, the rules of procedure, and
more. Only $10.
-- The Case for Impeachment:
The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office Dave Lindorff and
Barbara Olshansky. (St. Martin's
Press, May 2006). $24
http://www.booktv.org/General/index.asp?segID=7322&schedID=446
Four intro. chapters (Why Impeachment, etc.) lead to
discussion of 6 chapters on 6 Articles of Impeachment, followed by a chapter on
“Impeaching Other Bush Admin. Officials,” and 8 important appendices.
Dave Lindorff's “10 Reasons to Impeach” http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_dave_lin_060719_happy_impeachment_da.htm His writing is available at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
-- Holtzman, Elizabeth, with Cynthia Cooper. The
Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens. Nation Books, 2006. Probably the best general introduction. Holtzman was a Congresswoman member of the
Nixon impeachment committee.
-- George W. Bush versus the U.S.
Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture,
Retribution, and Cover-ups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying. U.
S. House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff.
Academy Chicago Pub., 2006.
-- Verdict and Findings of Fact. International
Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush
Administration. 2006.
-- Impeach Bush: A Funny Li’l
Graphical Novel about the Worstest Pres’dent in the History of Forevar. Blatant
Comics, 2006.
-- O’Huallachain, D. L. and J. Forrest Sharpe, eds. Neo-Conned! and Neo-conned! Again: Hypocrisy,
Lawlessness, and the Rape of Iraq. Vienna,
Va., Light in the Darkness Pub., 2005. Not
specifically about impeachment, but packed with justification. These
two huge volumes are from a Catholic publisher and the just war tradition. They offer encyclopedic knowledge and indictments.
Ask local book stores and
libraries to order these books, and buy them to support the stores, the
publishers, and the writers, all of whom have worked to enable us to be
informed citizens. Then write and call
Lincoln, Pryor, and Boozman; create petitions; speak over CAT. If we don’t raise our voices the Democrats
will do little, for remember that many Bush outrages were supported by some to
many Democrats.
Swanson, David. “Impeachment
Anyone? The Case for Taking the Tape Off
Our Mouths.” TomDispatch. Based on the earliest 7 books.
Lindorff, Dave. “Happy
Impeachment Day! 10 Reasons to Impeach,” OpEdNews.com, 7-19, 2006.
The following Wikipedia's page for the Movement to impeach
George W. Bush seems to be a useful guide to impeach Bush.
Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_to_impeach_George_W._Bush
Subject: [Project-Censored-L] Human Rights Denial Deserves
Impeachment
published November 8, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
“Human Rights Denial Deserves
Impeachment” by Peter Phillips
Human Rights belong to people
collectively. To believe in rights for some and not others is a denial of the
humanness of people worldwide. Yet, denial is exactly what Congress and George
W. Bush did with the signing of the Military Commission Act of 2006. The new
official U.S. policy is that torture and suspension of due process are
acceptable for anyone the president deems to be a terrorist or terrorist
supporter. This act is the overt denial of the inalienable rights of human
beings propagated in our Declaration of
Independence and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
Our famous words, "We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," did not declare that some men
(and women) are without unalienable rights. Our independence was founded on the
belief that all men and women are recognized by this nation as having innate
rights derived from their humanness.
Likewise, the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, created by the United Nations in 1948 and signed and ratified by
the U.S. Congress, specifies in its preamble that "recognition of the
inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the
human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the
world."
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a treaty that legally
binds the United States government. Article
10 states that "everyone is entitled to full equality, to a fair and
public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination
of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him," and
Article 5 specifically prohibits
torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
For the U.S. government to unilaterally
declare that our country will not comply with international human rights laws,
nor uphold the core values of our nation's foundation is an indication of
extremism that supersedes the values and beliefs of the American people. When
such an extremism exists, we may need to take seriously the founders'
declaration that, " to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness."
The U.S. government is actively
torturing people to death. One need only read the 44 official U.S. military
autopsy reports on civilian detainees from Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 to 2004
posted on the American Civil Liberties website to see the horrendous details of
deaths by "strangulation," "asphyxiation" and "blunt
force injuries."
The Military Commission Act retroactively approved the use of torture
to the beginning of the 9/11 Wars. Congress's reaction to the ACLU report in
October of 2005 was to pass legislation banning further use of the Freedom of
Information Act to request documents on current military operations.
We are in a time of extremism,
permanent war, and the unilateral manifestation of ethnocentrism and power by
an openly public cabal of people in the U.S. government. Those in power are set
on the U.S. military domination of the world. They seem willing to defy the
foundational values of the American people to achieve their ends. We have no
choice but to declare openly our belief in universal human rights and demand
the immediate impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney and a full
accounting of those in their administration.
Peter Phillips is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University
and director of Project Censored. He is co-editor with Dennis Loo of the new
book "Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney,"
available at: http://www.projectcensored.org/impeach.htm
This from the Ark Times blog: " the L word" (liar)
"The Washington Post
nailed him on the secret prisons and torture there; CBS and the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh nailed him on
Abu Ghraib. Geoffrey Miller, torture at Bagram in Afghanistan was NYT - then the NYT (belatedly which was criminal) nailed him on spying ON
AMERICANS. He's been stripped of all cover, hanging out there for two years now
while the press WUSSES AROUND about what to do about it, and the former GOP
Congress blocked investigations and testimony under oath (thanks, Arlen
Specter, et. al.) . All four of the things
I mentioned above are separate, impeachable offenses. Yet the papers and TV
news, one at a time, darted forward to put one lance into the monster and then
scuttled backwards. "
(from Larry W)
From Dick’s Talk at the November 5,
2006 Rally
“Let us seek to defend law, our Constitution, and the people of the
United States and of the world, by urging a Congressional inquiry into the
possible impeachment of President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. Impeachment it must be, because our President
cannot be indicted for a felony (a V-P can be), and anyway he has declared and
behaved himself to be above the law; that is, like bin Laden, lawless.
Impeachment of a president
must prove a systematic undermining of the rule of law, of our Constitution,
and of the public trust. Here is a
partial list any one of which justifies impeachment:
--lying in order to launch an
unprovoked, illegal war of aggression upon Iraq;
--authorizing the use of illegal antipersonnel weapons in urban
settings in Iraq;
--sanctioning the illegal torture of thousands of captives;
--overthrowing Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand
Aristide;
-- issuing over 700 so-called “signing statements” negating
Congressional laws;
-- illegally spying on millions of citizens;
--obstructing investigations: stonewalling, coverup, false and misleading
statements and reports;
--and increasing presidential power to suppress public
protests by weakening restraints against martial law.
Today we defend international law, our Constitution, and our
freedoms. Sign our petition. Distribute the petition. Call and write our Congressional
delegation. And keep up the pressure
until these abuses of misplaced power are reversed, and we regain the decent
respect of the opinion of the peoples of the world.”
Before you oppose impeachment, read at least one of the books above. Cong. Pelosi has declared there will be no
impeachment. Examine the wisdom of that
decision. However, whatever the
Democrats do or don’t do about impeachment, there is no better way to know what
the Cong. committees should do to reverse the Bush assaults on Consltitution,
international law, and the public trust than to STUDY IMPEACHMENT.
(approx. 700 wds., pub. in Free
Weekly Nov. 2, 2006)
IMPEACHING PRESIDENT BUSH by Dick Bennett
The twenty contributors to Impeach the President edited by Loo and Phillips reached a consensus
of twelve indictments of High Crimes against President Bush and Vice-president
Richard Cheney. The essential charge is
their undermining of the rule of law
established by the U. S. Constitution, as illustrated by the following six (of
the twelve) indictments (reorganized and edited). A High Crime means a serious abuse of power
that undermines law and endangers our constitutional system of government.
A. Foreign
1. Lying to the public and Congress in order to
launch an unprovoked, illegal, unconstitutional war of aggression upon Iraq.
2. Ordering free fire zones and authorizing the
use of antipersonnel weapons in urban settings in Iraq, contributing to the
deaths of some 600,000 Iraqi civilians—war crimes under international law.
3. Authorizing the torture of thousands of
captives, out-sourcing hundreds of prisoners to secret sites for torture,
hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and indefinitely detaining people without
protection of habeas corpus—all in violation of Geneva Conventions.
4. Overthrowing Haiti’s democratically elected
president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and installing an illegal, highly repressive
regime.
B. Domestic
5. Stealing the White House in 2000 and 2004
elections through outright voter fraud.
6. Subverting the Constitutional balance of
powers by issuing over 700 “signing statements” negating Congressional laws, by
weakening the Freedom of Information Act, and by illegally spying on millions
of citizens, to mention only three of many violations.
“Regime Change” in Haiti (from the essay by Duff and Bernstein)
I will elaborate on the
ousting of Haiti’s President Aristide, not because it is more heinous than some
other Bush/Cheney offenses, but because, although it illustrates emphatically
the High Crimes of subversion of law and of our Constitution, it has received
much less attention than others.
George W. Bush, in violation
of international law chose to undermine and then overthrow Haiti’s democratic
government (its president was elected with 91 percent of the popular vote to
serve a second term in the year 2000) and to fund and militarily support the
political opposition.
Under the supremacy clause
of the United States Constitution the president has the responsibility to
faithfully abide by all sanctioned international treaties. Among these, is the United Nations
Charter.
Violating the U. N. Charter is a direct breach of the president’s oath
“to faithfully carry out the laws of the land.” Article Two of the U. N. Charter requires the leaders of all member states to
refrain “from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or
political independence of any state.”
The actions of President
Bush and members of his administration
in overthrowing the government of
Haiti--by violating the integrity, sovereignty, and self-determination
of the Haitian people, by lying about the events, by embargoes and arming the
opposition, by a bloody two-year coup in which 4000 U. S. marines were deployed
to suppress popular protest, and untold thousands of pro-democracy activists,
union leaders, and members of peasant organizations were arbitrarily detained,
tortured, killed, women raped, and other
thousands disappeared at the hands of death squads, by kidnapping President
Aristide in February 2004, and by
replacing him and his government with a government with no constitutional or
electoral legitimacy--are grounds for impeachment.
OMNI SEEKS A WORLD FREE OF WAR AND THE THREAT OF WAR, A SOCIETY WITH
LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL, A COMMUNITY WHERE EVERY PERSON’S POTENTIAL MAY BE
FULFILLED, AN EARTH RESTORED. GRASSROOTS NONVIOLENCE, WORLD PEACE, HUMAN
RIGHTS, SOCIAL and ECONOMIC JUSTICE, ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP PROTECTING
SPECIES AND THE EARTH.
MATERIALS ADDED AFTER NEWSLETTER MAILED
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/12/08/why_impeachment_is_crucial.php
|
|
|
|||
Why Impeachment Is Crucial
|
javascript:ol('http://www.tompaine.com/print/why_impeachment_is_crucial.php'); |
javascript:ol('http://www.tompaine.com/action/sendtofriend/'); |
||
|
Jennifer Van Bergen is a journalist with a law degree. Her book
The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America has been called a
“primer for citizenship.” She can be reached at jvbxyz@earthlink.net. With the
Democrats in the majority in Congress for the first time in 12 years, and
after six years of executive overreach and civil liberties incursions by the
Republican administration and Congress, one would think impeachment would be
in the air. But many progressives and Democrats—even some who have been on
the front lines demanding investigations and prosecutions—view impeachment as
the wrong approach and a waste of effort. They say that impeachment can’t
take place without Republican backing, which will never happen. They say
that impeachment will take time and energy away from more important business,
such as getting out of Iraq, lowering taxes, congressional ethics and pulling
our budget back into line. Impeachment groups have formed across the
country; at least one major city council, San Francisco’s, passed an
impeachment resolution; the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,
Rep. John Conyers, has issued a 200-plus page report; and there has even a
citizens’ impeachment trial, complete with indictment, hearing and verdict. |
||||
No comments:
Post a Comment