OMNI's War and Warming Anthologies: October 2007

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Video Underground schedules November series

Schedule for Video Underground

November 11: Ghosts of Abu Ghraib

November 25: The Corporation

December 9: Who Shot My Brother? (about Colombia)

December 23: Joyeux Noel (the WWI battlefield Christmas truce among French, German, and British troops)

Newsletter on nuclear weapons

OMNI NEWSLETTER ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS‏
From: Omnicenter Communications (omninews@listserv.uark.edu) on behalf of Dick Bennett (jbennet@uark.edu)
Sent:Wed 10/31/07 9:18 AM
Reply-to:Dick Bennett (jbennet@uark.edu)
To: OMNINEWS@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU

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OMNI NEWSLETTER: 2nd SPECIAL NUMBER ON NUCLEAR WAR GENOCIDE , OCTOBER 31, 2007, OMNI Building a Culture of PEACE, Seeking Truth and Taking Action

Dick Bennett, Editor for Special Issues

US THREATENING TO ATTACK IRAN FOR SEEKING NUCLEAR POWER BECAUSE IT COULD LEAD TO NUCLEAR WEAPONS, BUT US IS NOT WORKING TO ELIMINATING US NUCLEAR WEAPONS OR THE WEAPONS IN OTHER NUCLEAR NATIONS, BUT IN FACT RECENTLY ENABLED INDIA TO ENHANCE ITS NUCLEAR ARSENAL.

NUCLEAR WAR (first Nuclear GENOCIDE Newsletter June 14, 2007)
We cannot refer to nuclear bombs as weapons, as though their destructiveness is only one of degree with conventional bombs. A one megaton nuclear bomb is about 50 times more powerful than the bomb that produced more than 100,000 deaths in Hiroshima. A one megaton bomb would vaporize 6,000,000 New Yorkers if dropped over Times Square. It’s a genocide bomb. But these realities should not cause despair. We can ban these bombs. We have the intelligence and the knowledge. We only lack the will. What could cause us to feel despair is the silence of the public. Let each of us be leaders to end this danger. Let each of us give up one meaningless activity in our life, and focus that energy on changing our country’s nuclear derangement .

UN CHARTER (a Treaty initiated by US and signed into US law)
Article 2(4): All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

WHAT THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES SAY

FROM THE NUCLEAR AGE PEACE FOUNDATION Below is an overview of an important new feature on the Foundation’s website (www.wagingpeace.org), which provides information on the views of US Presidential candidates on issues of US nuclear policy. I hope that you will use this resource and let your friends know about it. US nuclear policy should be one of the most important issues, if not THE most important issue, in this campaign. US voters should not let another election go by without thoroughly understanding the positions of candidates on this critical issue for our common future.
David Krieger President Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
PMB 121, 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 1, Santa Barbara, CA 93108
www.wagingpeace.org www.nuclearfiles.org
Click here to add your voice to a growing movement for peace and a nuclear weapons-free world

US Presidential Candidates
Positions on US Nuclear Weapons Policy
One of the most important issues of the 2008 US Presidential election is US nuclear weapons policy. We believe it should be a priority issue when Americans go to the voting booth next year in primary and general elections. It's not our purpose to suggest how people should vote, but rather to educate and inform the public on where candidates stand.

To this end, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is pleased to announce the latest addition to our website. We feature key quotes made by the major Republican and Democratic candidates on five issues relating to US nuclear weapons policy:

? Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

? Disarmament

? Missile Defense

? New Nuclear Weapons / Reliable Replacement Warhead

? Use of Nuclear Weapons

Click here to view the Presidential Candidate quotes page.

Additionally, Foundation President David Krieger sent all candidates a survey asking their positions on several important points. Results of the survey are coming in. Click here to read what we have received so far.

These pages will be updated often over the next 13 months as nuclear weapons issues continue to gain prominence in the presidential campaign. Please check in with us frequently at www.wagingpeace.org to see what else the candidates are saying.
We encourage you to forward this message to at least 5 friends so they too can discover where the candidates stand on an issue that affects each of us so deeply.
If you know of a quote that does not appear in our report that you think should be included, please contact us.

Read what the candidates have to say about US nuclear
weapons policy

Nuclear Weapons: Candidates Debate Nuclear Policy
The Democratic candidates for president clashed over whether or not they would use nuclear weapons against other countries in last Sunday’s Democratic Party debate. Read what the candidates had to say. FCNL is currently compiling the major candidates’ statements on the issues of Iraq, Iran, and nuclear weapons.

Debates on nuclear weapons ignore one critical point: they must never be used again!

Hello Dick,
As the presidential candidates strive to stake out their positions on national security, one thing must be crystal clear: The willingness to use nuclear weapons is not a measure of toughness or pragmatism; it’s immoral and reckless.
Tell the 2008 presidential candidates we need a plan for a nuclear weapon-free world >>
Using or threatening to use such weapons would only erode our security, not enhance it.
Debates between the candidates about when and under what circumstances they would consider using nuclear weapons ignore the critical reality of the twenty-first century: Nuclear weapons must never be used again.
We need a President who will make a nuclear weapon-free world a top priority of the next administration. Sign today >>
Thank you for your help in making peace and security a priority!
Sincerely,
Breeana L.
Care2 Campaign Team

P.S. If you cannot see the links in this message, please go to: http://go.care2.com/e/tBRA/NnCA/oKXw

Thank you for signing up to receive Action Alerts via ThePetitionSite or Care2 website. Your email address has not been bought from other sources. If you learned something interesting from this newsletter, please forward it to your friends, family and colleagues.

Care2.com, Inc. 275 Shoreline Drive, Suite 150 Redwood City, CA 94065
http://www.care2.com

NUCLEAR BOMB PLANS, CIA, AND IRAN

James Risen, State of War. Free Press, 2006. See The Guardian Jan. 5, 2006 for extract on CIA giving Iran bomb plans.

YOUTUBE FILM ON NUCLEAR AGE

Below is a link for a short film by Foundation member Mary Becker on the News and Politics page of YouTube. The film, which won first prize at the 2006 Cannes online competition, provides a short history of the Nuclear Age and is well worth viewing. Mary would love to see interested people add informed comments to the conversation on YouTube about the film.

http://www.youtube.com/categories_portal?c=25&e=1

David Krieger President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

PMB 121, 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 1 Santa Barbara, CA 93108 www.wagingpeace.org www.nuclearfiles.org

MIDWEST CONFERENCE ON NUCLEAR THREATS

“Is Iran the Real Nuclear Threat?” Marquette Univ., Milwaukee. peace@peaceactionwi.org

GEORGE ON IRAN AND NUCLEAR WAR
I have no idea if you have given this any thought but it is a serious concern of mine.
Ever since dropping a nuclear weapon on Japan this weapon has been put away in the arsenal of many countries including many of our allies. To date these weapons have been used as a deterrent to aggressor nations who realize that we could easily wipe out any nation that attacked us. This defensive strategy was what kept us free from wars against our homeland.

G.W. Bush's switch to a offensive as a defense has surely made our allies as well as our enemies look toward us and wonder just what this country is doing. They could easily get the idea that our government is looking for world domination rather than peace. If these allies start siding with Russia, China, and India, we could see those countries build a war machine capable of overwhelming power to initiate a nuclear strike against us because they fear that we are preparing to move from the Middle East into their countries.

We could find ourselves being attacked with no alternative than to send every nuclear missile we have into the middle of Europe and the Far East.

George Bush would then feel complete because he would believe that Armageddon has arrived and he will be taken into heaven to spend eternity with Jesus Christ.

No, I am not crazy.... I am putting a huge puzzle together and I do not like what I see for this planet.

I feel like a lucky one... I have lived a long life and never had to live in a war torn country. I believe this could happen right here in the Good ole USA unless someone quickly finds a way to get Bush back to his Ranch with only animals to care for.

I was very happy to hear John Edwards speech today whereby he talked about the fact that this country Is NOT SAFER TODAY than 6 Years ago. This is 180 degrees form Hillary Clinton's claim that we are Safer today.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/09/07/350273.aspx

Did We Miss the Lesson of Nagasaki?
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 >Did We Miss the Lesson of Nagasaki? >By William D. Hartung
>8-13-07
>
>
>Mr. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security
>Initiative at the New America Foundation. He writes
>frequently on nuclear non-proliferation and U.S.
>nuclear policy.
>
>It has been 62 years since the atomic bombings of
>Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the moral and strategic
>lessons of those devastating acts have still not been
>fully learned.
>
>Despite the efforts of scientists like Leo Szilard and
>diplomats like John McCloy to promote alternative means
>for ending the war, the bombings went forward. There
>are still debates among historians and the public at
>large about the primary rationale for the use of the
>weapons. Some interpretations accept the official claim
>that it was done as a way of ending the war as soon as
>possible, on allied terms. Others note that the
>intention of the Roosevelt administration had always
>been to use the atom bomb once it had been developed,
>and that in this sense President Truman inherited a
>policy that already had considerable momentum behind
>it. Other historians suggest that the bombings were
>aimed at preventing the Soviet Union from entering the
>war in the Pacific theater.
>
>It is possible that all of these factors were at work
>to some degree, and they may constitute an explanation
>- though not a moral justification - for the attack on
>Hiroshima. But even if one accepts the rationales put
>forward for the Hiroshima bombing, the use of a second
>atomic weapon against Nagasaki just three days later
>seems like an act of gratuitous cruelty on a monumental
>scale.
>
>We now know that Japanese leaders were still reeling
>from the impact of the first bombing when the second
>bomb struck. Debates over terms of surrender were
>deadlocked, but a few more days' time - especially in
>light of the Soviet Union's imminent entry into the war
>- may well have produced an agreement acceptable to the
>United States without the need to destroy Nagasaki. In
>addition, the sheer destructive power of the Hiroshima
>bombing -- killing tens of thousands of people
>immediately while turning the city into a pile of
>radioactive rubble -- should have raised qualms about
>launching another strike in such short order.
>
>The Nagasaki bombing went forward in any case and
>subsequent efforts to curb the use of atomic energy for
>military purposes failed. President Truman apparently
>believed that the U.S. nuclear monopoly would last
>indefinitely, telling Robert Oppenheimer that he
>believed that the Soviets would "never" get the bomb.
>Just a few years later he was proven wrong, and the
>nuclear arms race was off and running. With so many
>factors at play, it is by no means certain that U.S.
>forbearance over Nagasaki would have changed this
>tragic outcome, but it might have at least opened the
>door to other possibilities.
>
>Six decades later the United States remains the only
>nation to have used nuclear arms as a weapon of war.
>The absence of additional attacks has been driven in
>part by the moral opprobrium attached to the use of
>these weapons of mass terror, and in part by the fear
>of devastating retaliation by another nuclear power --
>particularly on the U.S.-Soviet front. But despite this
>record, the foundations of U.S. nuclear policy remain
>morally suspect. There has not been another Nagasaki,
>but it is U.S. policy to engage in veiled threats to
>launch just such an attack, even if the target nation
>does not possess nuclear weapons.
>
>The immorality of U.S. declaratory nuclear policy was
>made evident recently when Barack Obama asserted that
>"it would be a profound mistake to use nuclear weapons
>under any circumstance . . . involving civilians." This
>seemingly common sense statement was roundly criticized
>by rival presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and
>Christopher Dodd, who essentially argued that the
>nuclear option should never publicly be "taken off the
>table."
>
>Not only is the prospect of using nuclear weapons in
>circumstances in which civilians will be killed
>immoral, but the threat of doing so violates
>international law, as expressed in an historic 1995
>advisory opinion by the World Court.
>
>This policy is also counterproductive at the strategic
>level. The threat to use nuclear weapons against non-
>nuclear states is only liable to spur them to seek
>their own. Taking this stance toward Iran -- even if
>the actual use of the weapons is extremely unlikely --
>will undermine prospects for negotiations to curb
>Teheran's program while giving leverage to officials
>within Iran who want to go from nuclear enrichment to
>nuclear weapons.
>
>Short of getting a global agreement to abolish nuclear
>weapons -- a goal worth striving for no matter how
>difficult it may be to achieve in practice -- one of
>the most important steps the U.S. could take would be
>to adopt a policy of "no first use" of nuclear weapons
>against any nation that is not literally poised to
>launch a nuclear attack on the United States. This
>shift in U.S. policy would suggest that it is possible
>to reverse the mentality that led to the bombing of
>Nagasaki, even at this late date.

Nuclears weapons must never be used again !
Hello Dick,
We each have a responsibility to our children, grandchildren and future generations to end the threat that nuclear weapons pose. And, to carry out this responsibility, we need a leader who agrees nuclear weapons must never be used again!

We need a President who will make a nuclear weapon-free world a top priority of the next administration.

Keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of those who would use them, whether terrorist groups or governments, and working to eliminate the world’s nuclear arsenals are not challenges we can afford to put off.

The next presidential candidate should have a strong plan to:

Stop the development and production of new nuclear weapons around the world.
Lock up and safeguard bomb-making materials.
Promote peaceful, non-nuclear resolutions to the nuclear crises in North Korea and Iran.
This issue must be put on the forefront to make sure nuclear weapons are never used again. Tell the 2008 presidential candidates we need a plan for a nuclear weapon-free world >>

Thank you for your help in making peace and security a priority!
Sincerely,
Breeana L.
Care2 Campaign Team

P.S. If you cannot see the links in this message, please go to: http://go.care2.com/e/u6Aw/pihD/oKXw

Thank you for signing up to receive Action Alerts via ThePetitionSite or Care2 website. Your email address has not been bought from other sources. If you learned something interesting from this newsletter, please forward it to your friends, family and colleagues.

Care2.com, Inc. 275 Shoreline Drive, Suite 150 Redwood City, CA 94065
http://www.care2.com

Success: Congress Stops New Bomb Plant
Four separate committees in two chambers of Congress have now zeroed out funding for the Bush administration's proposal to build a new nuclear weapons facility to be located in one of six states. FCNL worked with people like you around the country to oppose this new facility. But the administration remains committed to its plan to develop and build new nuclear weapons. Read more.

U. S. ANTI-NUCLEAR ORGANIZATIONS

Council for a Livable World (DC)

Global Network Against Weapons in Space (Maine) Bruce Gagnon’s org.

Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action (Poulsbo, WA)(year around year after year protests against the Trident submarines)

Nevada Desert Experience (Las Vegas), annual protest

Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) (Takoma Park, MD)

The Nuclear Resister

Magazine, keeps up with political prisoners also

Nukewatch (Wisconsin), edited for many years by a noble couple

Nukewatch Quarterly

I am on the mailing list of all except CLW. We need more people in NWA to connect with these indispensable groups, to help them struggle against nuclear holocaust and to raise awareness and resistance here.

AFSC’s work in North Korea: Read and listen to an interview with Randy Ireson who recently completed 9 years as the development assistance coordinator of AFSC’s North Korea program.

NDE Newsletter, Divine Strake Hearing, & more

August Desert Witness at Los Alamos
August 3-4

NDE will join Pax Christi New Mexico to vigil, pray and Witness For Peace in Los Alamos, New Mexico on the 62nd Anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.

~ Friday, August 3rd ~
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Taking a Stand for Peace
Catholic Mass at Santa Maria de la Paz Church, 4:00 p.m.
...an evening with Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of School of the Americas Watch,
7:30 p.m. at El Museo Cultural

~ Saturday, August 4th ~
Nonviolence Training will be offered in Santa Fe
Santa Maria de la Paz Church, 9:00 a.m. - noon.

Walk, Pray & Vigil For Peace at Los Alamos, 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
BRING PEACE & NUCLEAR ABOLITION BANNERS

Download the PDF flyer
Visit the Pax Christi New Mexico website for more information

Reliable Replacement Warhead Funding

Congress is now deciding whether to fund the Reliable Replacement Warhead or not. This would arguably be a re-launch the U.S. Nuclear Weapons program, creating 125 new nuclear weapons a year. The House has cut funding in the spending bill for this, but the U.S. Senate has yet to create a bill in Energy and Water Appropriations that will cut all spending for new nuclear weapons. Speak out and ask your senators to create and support such a bill. Below are links to two organizations that have online campaigns for contacting your senators:

True Majority / Peace Action

Fort Huachuca Torture Protest Trial Update

Fr. Louis Vitale, OFM, NDE co-founder, is currently awaiting trial
for nonviolent prayer protest action at Fort Huachuca denouncing torture training and the Military Commisions Act of 2006.
Read the latest update

NDE's Desert Voices July 2007 Newsletter
Now Available Online in Color

Featuring:
“We Won’t be Fooled” April 1st rally at NTS Raises Diverse Voices for Peace
Sacred Peace Walk Reflections
Divine Strake Called Off - Where are We Now?
Spring Events: Poetry and Photos

Click to view the July 2007 issue of Desert Voices (804kb PDF)
(Right-click and choose Save Target/Link As... to save the newsletter on your computer)
Click to Download Acrobat Reader

NDE T-shirts
Now available online

Click to get your T-shirt

Jesse Manibusan's
Walking the Ways of Peace CD

Click to get your CD Now

Intern for NDE
Berkeley Internships Available

Upcoming Event

Hiroshima & Nagasaki Commemoration
August 3-4
with Pax Christi New Mexico
Los Alamos, New Mexico

NDE relies upon donations to continue its work. Your generous support is appreciated.

Nevada Desert Experience
1420 W. Barlett Avenue
Las Vegas, Nevada 89106
(702) 646-4814
www.nevadadesertexperience.org

If you would prefer not to receive email communications from Nevada Desert Experience, just drop us a note and let us know.

CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES

--Senator Blanche Lincoln: Web Site (they have contact links): www.lincoln.senate.gov; http://www.lincoln.senate.gov/index.cfm; http://www.lincoln.senate.gov/webform.html

Washington Office: 355 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510-0404

Phone: (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371.

Fayetteville office: 251-1380. Lincoln’s staff is better informed than Boozman’s (see below), but obviously (her vote to join Bush in appropriating $95 billion more to keep the occupation going) they need a lot of education. (Send Dick, Melanie, Gladys, Kelly and Donna corrections and additions.)

Northwestern Regional Office
4 South College Avenue, Suite 205,
Fayetteville, AR 72701 (479) 251-1224; FAX (479) 251-1410
Community Affairs Specialist: John Hicks
State Central Office
912 West Fourth Street
Little Rock, AR 72201
TEL: (501) 375-2993
FAX: (501) 375-7064

--Senator Mark Pryor: Web Site (see contact link): www.pryor.senate.gov ; http://pryor.senate.gov/contact/ Pryor has no office in NWA, so call or write him and his staff in DC: Washington Office: 217 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510-0403. Phone: (202) 224-2353 Fax: (202) 228-0908

Main District Office: 500 Pres. Clinton Ave., Suite 401, Little Rock, AR 72201.

Phone: (501) 324-6336 Fax: (501) 324-5320.

(Send Dick up to date details.)

--Congressman John Boozman, District 3, 12 counties from Benton to Washington

Lowell office: 479-725-0400. 213 W. Monroe, Suite K, 72745. ASK BOOZMAN WHO ON HIS STAFF IS KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Boozman's new office in Lowell is located at 213 West Monroe in Lowell between I 540 and Business 71. Go there, talk to Boozman’s staff members. They are all polite young people, but now, made blind and deaf by the US Corporate/War complex, they need your peaceful explanation of reality and values. To reach that office take Exit 78 off I - 540 and go east. You will be on Hwy 264 which is also West Monroe. The office is in the Puppy Creek Plaza, past the McDonald's on the right. His suite is in the back of the complex to the left. Or write or call. Ms. McClure is Assistant Chief of Staff for the Lowell office, Ms. Breazeal focuses on gangs, and Ms. Stacy Davis is constituent staff member.

Ft. Smith office: 479-782-7787; 30 South 6th St. Rm 240, Ft. Smith 72901.

Harrison office: 870-741-6900; 402 N. Walnut, Suite 210, Harrison 72601.

DC address: 1708 Longworth House Office Bldng., Washington, DC 20515; 202-225-4301. Leslie Parker, appointments secretary: 202-225-4301. (Or she was, let me know if it’s now someone else.)

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Majority in Arkansas acknowledge global warming

ARKANSAS POLL ON WARMING‏
From: Dick Bennett

Scroll down to Warming; Good news: 57 percent acknowledge warming. But we have 43% to educate, if we are to overcome corporate grip on the legislature.

2007 Arkansas Poll: From Presidential Preferences to Global Warming
Janine Parry, associate professor, political science, University of Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — In the lead-up to the 2008 elections, the 2007 Arkansas Poll reveals Arkansans' presidential preferences and sense of candidate electability. The poll also offers researchers and policymakers a snapshot of major concerns and attitudes toward social issues and global warming.
Politics
"While this year's Arkansas Poll shows approval ratings for state politicians remaining stable, President Bush's approval rating has declined to 30 percent, in line with national ratings but noteworthy for a state that cast its electoral votes for Bush in 2004," said Janine Parry, a University of Arkansas political scientist and director of the Arkansas Poll.
As primaries approach, the poll asked Arkansans this pre-election question: "If the presidential election were held today, who would you vote for for president?" In answer to this open-ended question, 35 percent of respondents named Hillary Clinton. The next most frequently named candidates were Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee at 8 percent each. More than one quarter of respondents hadn't yet decided who would get their vote.
The poll also asked respondents what they thought the chances were that certain candidates would be nominated or elected. Democratic voters were asked about Clinton, Barak Obama, John Edwards and Bill Richardson. When it comes to gaining the party's nomination, 93 percent agreed or strongly agreed that Clinton could be nominated, well above the 49 percent who agreed or strongly agreed that Obama could win the nomination. At the same time, 79 percent of Democratic Arkansans agreed or strongly agreed that Clinton could actually win the election, again well above Obama's 41 percent. Edwards' electability came in at 37 percent and Richardson's at 13 percent.
Republicans were asked the same questions about Giuliani, Huckabee, Fred Thompson, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Here the chances were much more closely grouped, with 56 percent agreeing or strongly agreeing that Giuliani could be elected, followed by Thompson at 45 percent, Huckabee at 44 percent, McCain at 32 percent and Romney at 28 percent.
"We've heard reports for months now that Republican voters aren't wildly enthusiastic about a particular candidate," Parry said. "It appears to be the case in Arkansas, too, that - for the first time in recent memory - the Republican base is fractured and uncertain, while Democrats have a clear favorite."
Social Issues
Poll results showed stability in attitudes toward the hot button social issue of abortion. Questions about gay and lesbian relationships focused on policy issues related to adoption and foster parenting rather than on personal preferences. This year's results revealed a small majority - 53 percent - in support of prohibiting adoption and foster parenting by gays and lesbians, up only slightly from 2006, though the question was restructured for greater clarity.
Previous research on controversial social issues suggests that personal feelings about an issue are sometimes different from policy preferences. Although other polls most often ask questions about social issues in terms of personal feelings, Parry said that the Arkansas Poll's focus on policy preferences offers a clearer picture to lawmakers.
"In other words," Parry explained, "just because we don't like something doesn't mean we want to outlaw it. My sense, having tinkered with these questions for a few years now, is that while most people may not desire this for their own families, many Arkansans - both liberals and conservatives - are still uncomfortable dictating the family arrangements of others."\
Global Warming
On the question of whether global warming is happening, 57 percent of Arkansans are mostly or completely convinced that we are experiencing global warming. In answer to another question, 44 percent judge it an urgent problem requiring immediate attention, and 44 percent see it as a longer term problem.
This year, pollsters also asked what the state's global warming policies should be relative to other states. While 47 percent stated that Arkansas should adopt policies that have proved effective in other states, 27 percent of respondents thought that Arkansas "should be on the leading edge of creating policies to combat global warming."
Cindy Sagers, an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Arkansas and member of the state Global Warming Commission, was impressed by the level of understanding reflected in the poll results.
"Nearly 90 percent of the respondents thought global warming is a problem, and that is really impressive. The 44 percent who believe global warming is a long-term problem may be really savvy readers," Sagers said. "Scientists have a sense that global warming won't be linear, and the poll results suggest that people recognize we need to do something now for the longer term."
Most Important Problem
In response to an open-ended question - "What do you think is the most important problem or issue facing people in Arkansas today?" -- Arkansans named the economy. In odd-numbered years, this question is open-ended; in even-numbered years the poll asks respondents to choose from the most frequently mentioned issues in the previous year.
"The economy, a broad category which includes jobs, wages and economic development, is very important - 29 percent named it the most important problem facing Arkansas," Parry said. "It's always among the top issues mentioned, along with education and health care. When we offer respondents options to choose from, health care often comes up first, as it did in the 2006 poll."
Methods
The Arkansas Poll was conducted in October by the Survey Research Center at the University of Arkansas and yielded 754 completed surveys from a random sample of adult Arkansans. The margin of error in the poll is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The Arkansas Poll has been conducted annually since 1999, with a total of nearly 7,000 Arkansans having participated.
"Over the past 9 years, these thousands of interviewees have helped us accumulate information that guides researchers and policymakers to better serve the people of Arkansas," Parry said.
The 2007 Arkansas Poll is sponsored by the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. The poll was designed and analyzed by political scientists Janine Parry and Bill Schreckhise. Results of previous polls from the years 1999 through 2006 can be accessed online at http://www3.uark.edu/arkpoll/.

Janine Parry, associate professor, political science
J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences
(479) 575-6439 or (479) 571-2973, parry@uark.edu

Cindy Sagers, associate professor, biological sciences
J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences
(479) 575-7195, csagers@uark.edu

Barbara Jaquish, science and research communications officer
University Relations
(479) 575-2683, jaquish@uark.edu

Thursday, October 25, 2007

OMNI NEWSLETTER, SPECIAL NUMBER 3 to IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY

OMNI NEWSLETTER, SPECIAL NUMBER 3 to IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY OCTOBER 25, 2007,

Editor: Dick Bennett (Previous Impeachment Newsletters: Dec. 7, 2006, June 17, 2007)

See at end to communicate with Lincoln, Pryor, and Boozman.

Scroll down for IMPEACH CHENEY ONLY

ACTION: If you would throw the wolves out before 2009, forward this newsletter (the previous newsletters)to your address book. And write : Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, 235 Cannon HOB, Washington, DC 20515.

COLONEL (RET.) ANN WRIGHT TO SPEAK AT THE UA OCT. 30.

Former State Department Official to Discuss Impeachment

Fayetteville, AR – On Tuesday October 30th from 3:30 to 4:30 PM at Giffels Auditorium in Old Maine, a seminar titled “Accountability, International Law, and Impeachment” will be given by retired Colonel and Bentonville native Ann Wright.

Colonel Wright is a 29-year veteran of the US Army and 16-year veteran of the U.S. State Department Diplomatic Corps, serving in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She is also a recipient of the prestigious US State Department Award for Heroism during the dangerous evacuation of 2,500 people from the 1997 civil war in Sierra Leone.

Under the leadership of Secretary of State Collin Powell, Colonel Wright worked on a team to reopen the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December 2001 after invasion. However, she resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, among other policy and legal disagreements. After resigning, she became a fulltime activist against the Iraq war, and was recently denied entry to Canada because she appears on an FBI watch list due to her activism. Interestingly, she is also a former graduate from the University of Arkansas Law and Graduate Schools. Lastly, she recently authored a book titled Dissent in a Democracy.

The seminar will be a discussion of the value of impeachment as a vital and necessary tool for Constitutional accountability. Legal breaches of the Geneva Conventions and US Constitution by the George W. Bush administration will be examined in this context. Additionally, the long-term consequences of failing to conduct oversight of this lawbreaking executive branch will be discussed.

This event is sponsored and organized by the University of Arkansas registered student organization Impeach for Peace UA.

Contact:

Abel Tomlinson

Impeach for Peace UA, President

(479) 799-1492

atomlin@uark.edu

Ten Reasons to Impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney

http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/88?ad=d1

I ask Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney for the following reasons:

1. Violating the United Nations Charter by launching an illegal "War of Aggression" against Iraq without cause, using fraud to sell the war to Congress and the public, misusing government funds to begin bombing without Congressional authorization, and subjecting our military personnel to unnecessary harm, debilitating injuries, and deaths.

2. Violating U.S. and international law by authorizing the torture of thousands of captives, resulting in dozens of deaths, and keeping prisoners hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

3. Violating the Constitution by arbitrarily detaining Americans, legal residents, and non-Americans, without due process, without charge, and without access to counsel.

4. Violating the Geneva Conventions by targeting civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and using illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new type of napalm.

5. Violating U.S. law and the Constitution through widespread wiretapping of the phone calls and emails of Americans without a warrant.

6. Violating the Constitution by using "signing statements" to defy hundreds of laws passed by Congress.

7. Violating U.S. and state law by obstructing honest elections in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006.

8. Violating U.S. law by using paid propaganda and disinformation, selectively and misleadingly leaking classified information, and exposing the identity of a covert CIA operative working on sensitive WMD proliferation for political retribution.

9. Subverting the Constitution and abusing Presidential power by asserting a "Unitary Executive Theory" giving unlimited powers to the President, by obstructing efforts by Congress and the Courts to review and restrict Presidential actions, and by promoting and signing legislation negating the Bill of Rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

10. Gross negligence in failing to assist New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina, in ignoring urgent warnings of an Al Qaeda attack prior to Sept. 11, 2001, and in increasing air pollution causing global warming.

Links for the topic of Impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney

Feingold to Introduce Resolutions Censuring President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Other Administration Officials (July 22, 2007)
Bill Moyers Journal of July 13, 2007 "Tough Talk on Impeachment" focusing on the constitutional issues
Rosa Brooks: Did Bush commit war crimes?, Los Angeles Times, June 30, 2006
Bill Moyers interviews John Dean (video) (Transcript)
Is Lying About War An Impeachable Offense? by John Dean
Polling Report, which reports a Zogby Poll which shows 42% of Americans agree that "if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment?"
The Impeachment of George W. Bush an article in the January 30, 2006 issue of The Nation magazine
Impeach Bush Coalition
Salon.com on the mainstreaming of "The I-word"
Group's web site where over 868,000 people have voted for the impeachment of the top characters of the Bush regime. Site includeds "Articles of Impeachment" and "Notes for the consideration of Impeachment" by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark
Impeach Bush: When the emperor has no clothes by Garrison Keillor
Concerning The Impeachment Of President Bush
CNN - Is lying about 'the reason for a war' an impeachable offense?
CNN - Gore: Resist Bush's 'excessive power grab'
CBS - San Francisco's Impeachment of Bush Now Law
MSNBC - Spying, the Constitution — and the ‘I-word’
MSNBC - Live Vote: Should Bush be impeached?
ABC - Feingold Calls for Bush's Censure; Library Of Congress link to Feingold's Senate resolution
Harper's Magazine Editor Lewis Lapham discusses the case for impeachment (Real Media)
The Sunday Times: "Impeach bush chorus grows"
NY Times: In Court Filings, Cheney Aide Says Bush Approved Leak
C-Span Book TV Program: Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky discuss their book The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office
MSNBC - Countdown with Keith Obermann: "Beginning of the End of America
"Impeachment of Bush is not an option for the Democratic Congress" argument diagram at HonestArgument.com
"Top 10 reasons to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney"
Impeach Bush Group News and Resources
Impeachment Info, links and more information from the WikiYourRights.com wiki.
A28, website showing examples of movements with pictures and support for impeachment process of the President and the Vice President

Ralph Nader | “Dodging Impeachment”
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/13/4512/

BUSH/CHENEY PLANNING TO TAKE OVER GOVERNMENT FOLLOWING NEXT ATTACK

JEFF KOSSEFF/The Oregonian, Saturday, July 28, 2007
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/118559492719310.xml&coll=7
WASHINGTON -- Peter DeFazio won't take no for an answer.
After conspiracy theorists fanned the Internet with their outrage, the Oregon congressman renewed his push Friday to gain access to the classified portion of a White House plan to operate the government after a terrorist attack.
This time, DeFazio is joined by two other Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee who wrote to a top Bush administration Homeland Security official requesting access to the information. The White House refused to provide it to DeFazio earlier this month, offering no explanation beyond national security concerns.
After The Oregonian reported the situation a week ago, the story spread rapidly across the Internet, linked from more than 250 blog postings and political Web sites.
"We can think of no basis for you to deny members of the Committee on Homeland Security the opportunity to review this document in a secure setting," states the letter signed by DeFazio; Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the committee; and Rep. Chris Carney, D-Pa., chairman of the Homeland Security oversight subcommittee.
The letter was addressed to Frances Townsend, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism.
DeFazio wants to read the secret file after hearing from constituents concerned about a conspiracy. The public portion of the presidential directive lays out general policies for operating the government during a major catastrophe, but it referred to classified portions.

According to the letter, White House staff had initially said it would provide the document to Homeland Security Committee staff so DeFazio could review it. But on July 18, White House staff, the congressmen wrote, "informed the committee that the request had been reconsidered and rejected. In fact, the committee staff was told the document is 'close hold,' and 'frankly we are not willing to share it.' "
"This response is as troubling as it is shocking," wrote DeFazio and the other Democrats. (Dick: I cut off the article here.)
Jeff Kosseff: jeff.kosseff@newhouse.com

ALSO CENSURE

Sue Skidmore (sue@hon-our-earth.net) has forwarded you a message from Progressive Patriots Fund, which is on the web at: http://ga1.org/nd.html?r=q7xonyd1ZLOL&n=5764165

Dear Friend,

Senator Feingold recently proposed censuring President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the current Administration for their misguided actions in Iraq and for their disregard for the rule of law. Click the above link to read Senator Feingold's latest message on his censure resolutions.

Follow this link to sign up:

http://ga1.org/progressivepatriots/join.html?r=q7xonyd1ZLOL

P.S. See Feingold's new video podcast on his censure resolutions - be sure to visit his website to check it out!

https://secure.ga1.org/05/fr_censure/nE1111111ZLOL?qp_source=web%5fcensure07

07c

US CITIES IMPEACH (from Mike T)

TELLURIDE, Aug. 2, 4:37 p.m. – Want to know how a prairie fire starts in cyberspace? Well, for better or worse, the buzz on the town council’s upcoming vote on the second reading of an amendment calling for impeachment proceedings President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney has resulted in a full-blown argument within the electronic ether of the online world.

http://www.telluridewatch.com/articles/2007/08/03/news/doc46b25cf5271be617626072.txt

http://www.telluridewatch.com/articles/2007/08/02/news/doc46a5266a25154033744830.txt

Click here to subscribe.

[Note from Dick: This Sept. link is still active.]

A message from Ramsey Clark
Be one in a million voting for impeachment by Sept. 15
Join me in Washington on Sept. 15 to demand impeachment

Dear Katrina,

Make an urgently
needed donation today

You can be one in a million demanding the impeachment of the Bush/Cheney cabal if you act fast. More than 929,000 patriots have voted to Impeach at ImpeachBush.org and more are pouring in by the hour. There are only six weeks left before the major Peace and Impeachment rally on September 15, 2007 in Washington . We intend to reach the first Million by then.

The following three months, September 15 to December 15, 2007 will probably determine whether Bush escapes the judgment of the American people during his Presidency.

We can be sure Bush will not back down. Any hint of recognition by him of the enormity of his crimes, the failure of his criminal enterprise, the unbearable human suffering he has wreaked and the hatred and shame he has brought to our country, would shatter his heroic sense of himself. Unfeeling, uncaring, unwilling to listen, he will carry on, whatever the cost to others, assured in the safe, privileged, protected shell he has always lived in. He will insist war is peace, dictatorship is democracy, tyranny is freedom, theft is gift, worse is better. He will abuse all the power of the Presidency, the press, false propaganda and political spin to have his way. And he will increase death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan and spread his war to Pakistan and Iran in the face of mounting hostility everywhere. His usurpation and abuse of power, criminal conduct and refusal to face the facts are his responsibility.

At this late date, after all that Congress has seen of the crimes, corruption and tragic consequences of the Bush Presidency and the little to next to nothing it has done, there is scant reason to believe Congress without huge pressure from the people will find the will to act to impeach and prevent further crimes. It has possessed the power all along to pass laws to stop the criminal course on which the Bush Administration has set the nation. Congress had the constitutional duty from the first High Crime committed by the Bush Administration to proceed to impeachment in the House and trial in the Senate. It has failed to act, or show any promise that it might. This derogation of duty is its responsibility.

The American people have lived through this tragedy for 6 years, in the main, submissively. We will act in these next six months, or George W. Bush will escape the judgment of the American people during eight years of unrelenting ruination of every principle this nation has proclaimed. His successors will assume they can do the same and may. Guiliani has said "the challenge we face is Islamic terrorism." Peoples and nations around the world will have to believe Americans are powerless, don't care, or worse, condone and approve the violence, suffering, corruption and lies the Bush Administration has inflicted with impunity.

Finally, it is clear that We, the People of the United States, are the only force that can bring Bush, Cheney and their cohorts to account for bleeding Iraq, flaming Afghanistan, the American surge spreading more death, millions fleeing their homeland, arming other countries to the teeth, all brought about by the Bush Administration through falsely stimulated fear and lies to achieve domination and exploit the resources of the region.

Our clear commitment to unrelenting struggle to awaken the people, arouse their irresistible energies to change this course of human events, to manifest unalterable insistence that the Bush Administration be removed from office is the only remaining honorable action we can take. Then only can we act to establish peace, freedom and security for all.

The integrity of our Constitution, economic and social justice, the freedom of the American people and peace on earth all now depend on accountability of the Bush Administration and its removal from office. This is our responsibility.

We must expose constantly the High Crimes and corruption of constitutional government committed by the Bush Presidency and act to end them.

The many offenses of George III against "the thirteen United States of America" ascribed as cause for our Declaration of Independence pale in comparison to the offenses of George W against the fifty United States and the world at large.

They then proclaimed "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injustice and usurpation...

"To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

"He has refused to Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good." Bush has refused to assent to a plethora of laws from a date to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, and the Geneva Convention to stem cell research.

After 26 additional grievances, nearly all dealing with Colonial laws and government, the Declaration, with considerable exaggeration for July 1776, claims "He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our peoples." Perhaps not unlike Bush's claim Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The grievances of descendants of American slavery and segregation in the urban rebellions of the 1960's were far greater in human terms than those of the Colonials in 1776. The painful riots caught the attention of both power and the people, but achieved only partial rectification.

George W has laid waste to Iraq bringing death to hundreds of thousands, injuring millions, destruction that will require billions to rebuild and decades to do it; driven one in ten of the people, out of their own country to refugees camps, poverty and uncertain futures and 2 million more to homeless exile within Iraq where all who remain live in constant fear of death without essential food, water, electricity, jobs, schools, or future.

He has occupied Iraq with a surging military force he intends to be permanent and demands of the government of Iraq, he installed and supports, that it give long term ownership of 2/3 of all Iraq's oil to foreign oil companies, a major Bush benchmark of progress in Iraq. This while Iraq loses 14 billion annually in oil revenue from corruption and limited production and imports $2.6 billion in refined fuel products from you know who.

A senior official of the U.S. Government Accountability office asked if he had ever seen anything like the U.S. failure to end high level corruption in the Iraqi oil sector and bring its oil exports up to target goals, replied "Not in the 25 years I've worked for the GAO." He said smuggling of refined oil out of the country lines the pockets of "all levels" of the Iraqi government.

If George W succeeds, Iraq will be the only nation in the oil rich Gulf and Middle East to hand over its oil to foreign countries. All the others retain ownership and control over their oil even if they pay excessive fees to foreign companies to help produce their oil. Anyone still wonder why George W invaded Iraq?

In these times, George W has vastly increased U.S. militarism which already spent more on arms than all other countries, by spending more and more. He has enticed surrogate governments with military dictators like Pakistan and Egypt, with their staggering domestic problems and poverty, to militarize providing them billions of dollars of more sophisticated weapons. President Mubarak speaking at Egypt's Military Technical Academy in mid July proclaimed "the advancement of the Armed Forces ... number one priority to protect the country's security and interests..."

George W has accelerated and expanded nuclear weapons programs in flagrant violation of the Non Proliferation Treaty by spending billions on new, mostly tactical nuclear weapons, while upgrading the existing nuclear arsenal and placing Star Wars missile batteries on Russia's border and simultaneously threatening Iran, North Korea and others for developing nuclear weapons, a psychological necessity for states desiring sovereignty in the face of U.S. aggression, as recognized by the Truman Administration and the basis for the Non Proliferation Treaty. George W insists on the use of land mines and cluster bombs that indiscriminately kill and the use of minors as soldiers in war.

Waging his wars of aggression, which are devastating not only Iraq, but the whole region, George W is utilizing tens of thousands of civilians in quasi military and police positions, enlisting and deploying tens of thousands of aliens into U.S. military service with money and promises of U.S. citizenship.

George W has systematically acted to destroy legal barriers to arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, intrusive surveillance of citizens and others, all the basic protection of the U.S. Bill of Rights and international covenants, treaties and laws. As Dick Cheney put it, "old doctrines... do not apply" to George W and his War on Terror.

He has aggressively pursued taxation, domestic social programs and international policies that further enrich and benefit the rich while impoverishing and harming the poor.

Each of us can make a difference between now and September 15

Make an urgently
needed donation today

Beginning now we must "let the facts be submitted" to the energies of the American people to impeach the Bush Administration and remove it from office. If we fail, the next administration, seeing what the people will tolerate, will be as bad.

Each of us must call every relative, friend, neighbor, acquaintance. Provide them the facts for Impeachment. Have every supporter register on ImpeachBush.org. Secure their support and participation in the impeachment movement. Enlist every group, or organization with which you are associated to active roles in the struggle.

All who can must set up card tables on street corners, at malls and shopping centers, distribute pamphlets and secure registration, door to door, wherever people are, to Impeach Bush.

Take to the streets where people pass to spread the word and enlist their support to Impeach the Bush Administration.

Donate now and collect money from others for buses to bring people to September 15th, for impeachment leaflets, information pamphlets, newspaper ads and more. Please click this link now to make a donation.

Each and every one of us must do all that we can to support the major Peace/Impeachment demonstration in Washington, DC on September 15, 2007 backed by more than a million votes for impeachment, and accelerating. The rally will begin at 12 noon at the White House, followed by a march to the Capitol.

Then we must buckle down for a three month all-out effort to determine whether the will of the people means anything to power in America. Demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, work stoppage, mass rallies every weekend.

Organize direct appeals to every member of the House of Representatives in your district offices and in Washington, all 435. Take community leaders and petitions signed by voters in the District and where appropriate promise to field a candidate to oppose a recalcitrant Member in the 2008 elections. Do the same for the two Senators from your state urging them to prepare for impeachment trials in the Senate, starting with Bush and Cheney.

We salute the scores of City Councils across the country which have passed Impeachment Resolutions. We must enlist their support in organizing impeachment activities.

We must organize campaigns to persuade every City Council which hasn't to pass an Impeachment resolution and carry on.

Focus on political and other leaders in your area and persuade as many as possible to speak out for impeachment and sign on ImpeachBush.org. Where appropriate, urge elected state, or local officials, political leaders, or qualified leaders to run for office in 2008 against members of Congress who oppose impeachment.

Let every candidate for the Presidency, wherever they appear, know that the people on whom their nomination and election depends want an end to the Bush Administration, its wars, aggressions, threats, coercions, torture, militarism, actions to dominate foreign governments and exploit their peoples, its favoritism for the rich and neglect of the poor and its false and criminal methods and means to have its way.

This is our responsibility. We must meet it.

Only this way can we do our part. Only if we do our part might the rest of the world again believe, as it usually has, and has always wanted to do, that the American people are their friends, it is their government that is the problem. Only then can we say we did our best knowing we will have to persevere and do better in the future. By meeting this responsibility now we will be better skilled and prepared for the never ending struggle for peace, freedom, the equal dignity of all and the health and well being of the planet, its people and all living things.

We must also remember that if we prevail this time, it will be only a beginning toward principled self government and preparation for addressing the many crises that confront humanity.

We can't do it without your help. Please make an urgently needed donation today by clicking this link.

Sincerely,

Ramsey Clark

From the http://www.impeachspace.com

website I belong to: “Tomasky on Impeachment: The Dumbest Advice the Democrats Ever Got” by Dave Lindorff

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/
Over 15 months after publishing our "indignant" book on the reasons that President George W. Bush has to be impeached ("The Case for Impeachment," published in May of 2006), it's nice to finally be mentioned in the Washington Post. That publication had to date ignored our book, despite its having been published by a mainstream publisher (St. Martin's Press), and despite its having sold 20,000 copies in hardcover without a single mainstream review anywhere in the country (it's now out in paperback).
That sales history alone should have alerted writers like Michael Tomasky, a mainstream Democratic liberal with American Prospect magazine (another publication that continues to black out our book) that something is going on out there in the grassroots.

But somehow, Tomasky still doesn't get it.

As he wrote in his August 5 Washington Post article, the case for impeachment, on the facts, is clear:

"As Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky argue in their indignant book The Case for Impeachment, the bill of indictment goes far beyond Bush's grave lies about Iraq. There's also the arrest and detention without trial of U.S. citizens, the violation of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions at the prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the `blatant violation' of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment `by secretly authorizing secret warrantless spying on thousands of American citizens by the National Security Agency.'"
Tomasky might have gone on to also mention Bush's 1200 signing statements, which he has used to invalidate hundreds of laws passed by Congress, in "blatant violation" of the basic Constitutional principle of separation of powers, and in express violation of Articles I and II of the Constitution (which state clearly that, respectively, the legislative function is the express and exclusive responsibility of the Congress, and that the job of the executive is to enact that legislation and not to not enact it!). He might also have mentioned obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame outing case, and also conspiracy to violate the law against outing undercover operatives, conspiracy to subvert the electoral process, failure to obey his oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution, lying to the American people, lying to Congress, and, as former Nixon impeachment panelist Elizabeth Holtzman argues, criminal negligence for a variety of things, including failure to plan for the inevitable post-invasion occupation of Iraq, failure to provide adequate armor to American troops, and failure to respond to the disaster in New Orleans.
Even this long list does not cover all of the president's and vice-president's crimes (Cheney should probably also be impeached for war profiteering), and yet Tomasky then insists that, despite this clear record of high crimes and misdemeanors, on the political front, impeachment would be the "worst course of action the Democrats could possibly take."
On the basis of absolutely no evidence, and even after acknowledging that the most recent polling on the subject finds 54 percent of Americans to favor Cheney's impeachment and 45 percent to favor Bush's impeachment, Tomasky argues that impeachment would somehow hurt Democrats in 2008, divide the country, and, finally, not succeed.
If Democrats in the House had listened to people like Tomasky back in 1974, president Nixon would have finished out his second term of office, and no doubt would have gone far towards establishing the same kind of draconian dictatorial presidency that Bush and Cheney are well on the way to establishing now. Because they went ahead and held impeachment hearings on a president who two years earlier had won re-election by a landslide, leading to Nixon's resignation in disgrace, Democrats went on to make record gains in Congress in 1976, and they captured the presidency.
On the other hand, Democrats did listen to Tomasky-like voices in the late '80s, and declined to impeach President Reagan for his illegal role in the Iran-Contra scandal. The result? They paid for that cowardice by losing the election in 1988.
There are two key reasons why Tomasky is wrong—why indeed his call to avoid impeachment is "the dumbest move the Democrats could make."
First, impeaching Bush and Cheney is not a matter of Democratic strategy and partisanship. It is a matter of defending the Constitution and the republic against an unprecedented threat. It is a matter of the members of Congress acting in accordance with their oaths of office, which call on them to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Impeaching this administration is what the American public wants Congress to do. In the face of a media black-out, or of mainstream media ridicule of the idea of impeachment, a majority of Americans—Democrats, independents and even many Republican--nonetheless knows better and wants these men impeached. Without even having good access to information about the grim details of the president's and vice president's crimes, and with the pundits like Tomasky and O'Reilly in full negative mode, the American people know a threat to their country when they see it.
And second, impeachment is a process, not an action. It was the hearings on impeachment in the House Judiciary Committee in 1974, televised and presented to the American people live, unmediated by glib corporate reporters, that convinced the American people and the politicians in Congress that Nixon deserved to be impeached. While there was great public skepticism about impeachment at the start of those hearings, when only 25 members of the House signed on, by the end of the hearings, the public was in favor, and three articles of impeachment were voted out of the committee, all of them with Republican support, and one of them by unanimous vote. It was the hearings, and the resulting wave of public revulsion against Nixon, that led Republican leaders to go to the president and tell him that he had to resign or he would lose the impeachment vote in the House, and that he would lose a trial in the Senate, and probably even end up in jail.
Tomasky has to know that the same thing is even more likely to occurf in the case of an impeachment hearing into the crimes of Bush and Cheney—crimes which are far more serious and more far-reaching than those of Richard Nixon.
It doesn't matter that Democrats have only a narrow margin in the House and a razor-thin majority in the Senate (no one, before impeachment hearings began, thought there was a chance that the Senate, with some 40 Republican members at the time, would ever oust Nixon in an impeachment trial either). What matters is standing up to the wholesale destruction of Constitutional government that is taking place under Bush and Cheney.
The real question is not the one posed by Tomasky about whether impeachment is "good for the Democrats"; it is what will be left of America and our Constitution if Bush and Cheney are not impeached before they leave office in January 2009.
At least some members of Congress get it. Although Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still on record as saying "impeachment is off the table," as of today there are 19 members of Congress, including six members of the House Judiciary Committee, who have signed on to Rep. Dennis Kucinich's Cheney impeachment bill (H Res 333). It's a number that is starting to rise rapidly. As for the current Democratic leadership, their continued cowering surrender and outright obstruction on these major issues (as most recently demonstrated in their fawning granting of more power to the president to spy on Americans without any judicial restraint or oversight), appears likely if anything to lead to Democratic defeat in 2008. They ignore at their peril the reality that it was angry independents and even disaffected Republicans who crossed over and voted for Democratic candidates that handed Congress to Democrats in 2006. Those crossover voters didn't vote Democratic because they wanted milquatoast, but because they wanted action. They wanted the war ended, and they wanted their Constitution protected.
They are getting neither of those things from the people they put in power in Congress, and they are unlikely to make the same mistake again in 2008. More likely, they'll stay home this time, or even vote Republican, and we will see a continuation of the same disaster we currently face.
Tomasky has it wrong. The worst mistake the Democrats could make is not to impeach this Constitutional wrecking crew.

(forwarded by Jody E.S. Miskell jmiskell@hotmail.com )

IMPEACHMENT IS THE SAFETY VALVE OF DEMOCRACY

On this independence day 2007, we reflect on these words from our Declaration of Independence.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government . . ."

Nothing could better describe the urgency of the situation we find ourselves in as a people today, with an executive branch bent on seizing dictatorial power. But the founders of our country in their wisdom built into our Constitution the procedure of impeachment, so that if we as a people were ever again confronted with such an abuse of power as they faced, we would not have to do what they did. By impeachment we can change our government anytime in an instant by a simple vote of the representatives of the people.

That is the genius of impeachment, to act as the safety valve of democracy, and all we have to do is open it. It is our right. It is our duty. And more and more people are now finally saying it. Last night Keith Olberman launched into a Emile Zola style J'Accuse, calling for the immediate resignation of both Cheney and Bush, with the express recognition that the only alternative would be impeachment.

TELL DENNIS KUCINICH HOW MUCH YOU LIKE HIM

And it is very possible that none of this might have happened, at least not as quickly, without the raw courage of Dennis Kucinich in bringing forward proposed articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney as H.Res. 333, which is now certain to get a hearing. Please consider making a contribution to him if you can, to thank him for his stellar leadership on this issue of all issues.

http://www.usalone.com/donations_kucinich.php

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at http://www.usalone.com/in.htm

BILL MOYERS’ PROGRAM ADVOCATING IMPEACHMENT

If you didn't get to see this program, this is the link to the Friday the 13th Bill Moyers Journal, called "Tough Talk on Impeachment". Two Constitutional specialists - one [Fein] a conservative Constitutional lawyer who wrote the article of impeachment against Bill Clinton, works with the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Inst., and the Hoover Foundation; the other [Nichols] a writer who wrote The Genius of Impeachment, blasts Congress for caving to the Bush administration and "taking impeachment off the table."
This is a [film] every American needs to see soon. www.pbs.org. (1-800-PLAY-PBS). We've known for years that our freedoms were in danger. These men lay out just how close we are. Conservatives should initiate the impeachment. Republicans should jump on this before their party takes the blame for what Bush has done to the Constitution. (from Gladys)

PUBLIC DESIRE FOR IMPEACHMENT

On Moyers’ “Tough Talk” we learned that 45% of the public wanted Bush impeached and 54% wanted Cheney. The issue is not merely B & C, but they will have established a strong precedent for contempt for law if not impeached.

BUSH REJECTS SUBPOENA

U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary
http://judiciary.house.gov/

Leahy-Conyers Letter to White House on Subpoenas
http://www.judiciary.house.gov/Media/PDFS/Leahy-Conyers070629.pdf
According to that letter, the rubber should start meeting the road on or about July 9, 2007. I highly recommend reading the Leahy-Conyers Letter above.

Bush rejects subpoenas on attorney firings
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-executive29jun29,1,920185.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
(from Mike T)

COMMUTING LIBBY’S JAIL SENTENCE

(from Mike T) Dear Friend,

For a while we’ve known that George Bush believes his administration is above the law. For anyone who still had doubts, yesterday he proved just that. By commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence and removing his prison term, George Bush has disrespected the authority given to him in the Constitution.

We cannot let this moment go by without speaking out on this travesty of justice.

Let George Bush know the disgrace he is bringing on the White House by commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence:

http://www.giveemhellharry.com/page/petition/abovethelaw/fuztzw

IMPEACHMENT BILL ADVANCING

Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Donald Payne (D-NJ) now make it 17 for Cheney impeachment bill 8/3

MORE INFORMATION ON THE CHENEY IMPEACHMENT CAPS

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Dick Cheney has been a destructive force on the checks and balances of American government for more than six years. He has subverted long-standing processes, procedures, protocols and laws to lead us into the tragedy in Iraq, and is now seeking to do the same with Iran. (Both countries, mind you, that he did business with while CEO of Halliburton.)

As the Washington Post's recent four-part series on the most influential and powerful man ever to hold the office of vice president showed, Cheney also usurped his Cabinet colleagues to make himself the dominant voice on tax and spending policy; secretly steered the Bush administration's most important environmental decisions and purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive Congress by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq.

That's why there's a growing national movement to support H. Res 333, the articles of Impeachment against Dick Cheney. The bill is already endorsed by 14 members of Congress.

Sign the petition calling for the bill's passage, watch a new video by Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films for more evidence of why Cheney deserves immediate impeachment and check out impeachchenecy.org for info on the impeachment campaign.

Tell Congress: Impeach Dick Cheney

The Time For Accountability is NOW

Dick Cheney's offenses against the nation unquestionably rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors spelled out in our Constitution. Tell Congress -- it's time for impeachment proceedings to begin.

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Watch the Impeach Cheney Video

Brave New Films has come out with a short video documenting the charges contained in H. Res. 333. Have a look by clicking below.

For six long years, Vice President Dick Cheney has subverted long-standing protocols and laws in exercising his power. Recent polls indicate that for the first time, a majority of the American people want to see Cheney impeached -- but until recently, Congress lacked the courage to act.

Now, however, the movement to impeach Cheney is picking up speed. More than a dozen members of the House of Representatives have now signed on as co-sponsors of H. Res. 333, "Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors." The bill is currently in the House Judiciary Committee, but unfortunately won't pass out of that committee until there is broad and overwhelming public support for the bill's goals. That's where we come in.

Ask your representative to sign on as a co-sponsor of H. Res. 333.

Cheney was instrumental in the effort to "out" covert CIA agent Valerie Plame in a cheap act of political retribution against her husband, Joe Wilson, an outspoken Bush critic. He pressured our intelligence agencies, deceived Congress and then misled the nation into invading Iraq based on a false threat of weapons of mass destruction. He continues to imply a link between Iraq and the Sept. 11th hijackers -- even though this claim has been disproved time and time again.

If the checks and balances inherent to our constitutional form of government are to mean anything at all, Congress must take action against an executive branch official who has committed such grave misdeeds. Imagine how much damage Cheney can do if left in office another 18 months.

Does YOUR representative know that you support impeaching Cheney? Click here to send that message.

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New "Impeach Cheney" Video from Brave New Films

Our good friends at Brave New Films are at it again...this time with a short point-by-point documentary on the impeachment charges against Dick Cheney. It's pretty devastating.

Click here to watch the video.

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CHENEY INDICTED BY WASHINGTON POST

The Darksider

by Hendrik Hertzberg July 9, 2007

….A thick sheaf of new material has lately been added to the Cheney folder. For four days last week, the front page of the Washington Post was dominated by a remarkable series of articles slugged “ANGLER: THE CHENEY VICE PRESIDENCY.” (“Angler,” Cheney’s metaphorically apt Secret Service code name, refers to one of his two favorite outdoor pastimes, the one less hazardous to elderly lawyers.) The series, by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, occupied sixteen broadsheet pages and topped out at twenty thousand words. The headline over last Monday’s installment encapsulates the burden of the whole: “The Unseen Path to Cruelty.”

Some of the Post’s findings have been foreshadowed elsewhere, notably in Jane Mayer’s dispatches in this magazine. (See, especially, Letter from Washington, “The Hidden Power,” July 3, 2006.) But many of the details and incidents that Gellman and Becker document are as new as they are appalling. More important, the pattern that emerges from the accumulated weight of the reporting is, as the lawyers say, dispositive. Given the ontological authority that the Post shares only with the New York Times, it is now, so to speak, official: for the past six years, Dick Cheney, the occupant of what John Adams called “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived,” has been the most influential public official in the country, not necessarily excluding President Bush, and his influence has been entirely malign. He is pathologically (but purposefully) secretive; treacherous toward colleagues; coldly manipulative of the callow, lazy, and ignorant President he serves; contemptuous of public opinion; and dismissive not only of international law (a fairly standard attitude for conservatives of his stripe) but also of the very idea that the Constitution and laws of the United States, including laws signed by his nominal superior, can be construed to limit the power of the executive to take any action that can plausibly be classified as part of an endless, endlessly expandable “war on terror.”

More than anyone else, including his mentor and departed co-conspirator, Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney has been the intellectual author and bureaucratic facilitator of the crimes and misdemeanors that have inflicted unprecedented disgrace on our country’s moral and political standing [foreign affairs]: the casual trashing of habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions; the claim of authority to seize suspects, including American citizens, and imprison them indefinitely and incommunicado, with no right to due process of law; the outright encouragement of “cruel,” “inhuman,” and “degrading” treatment of prisoners; the use of undoubted torture, including waterboarding (Cheney: “a no-brainer for me”), which for a century the United States had prosecuted as a war crime; and, of course, the bloody, nightmarish Iraq war itself, launched under false pretenses, conducted with stupefying incompetence, and escalated long after public support for it had evaporated, at the cost of scores of thousands of lives, nearly half a trillion dollars, and the crippling of America’s armed forces, which no longer overawe and will take years to rebuild.

The stakes are lower in domestic affairs—if only because fewer lives are directly threatened—but here, too, Cheney’s influence has been invariably baleful. With an avalanche of examples, Gellman and Becker show how Cheney successfully pushed tax cuts for the very rich that went beyond what even the President, wanly clinging to the shards of “compassionate conservatism,” and his economic advisers wanted. They show how Cheney’s stealthy domination of regulatory and environmental policy, driven by “unwavering ideological positions” and always exerted “for the benefit of business,” has resulted in the deterioration of air and water quality, the degradation and commercial exploitation of national parks and forests, the collapse of wild-salmon fisheries, and the curt abandonment of Bush’s 2000 campaign pledge to do something about greenhouse gases. They also reveal that it was Cheney who forced Christine Todd Whitman to resign as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, by dictating a rule that excused refurbished power plants and oil refineries from installing modern pollution controls. “I just couldn’t sign it,” she told them. Turns out she wasn’t so anxious to spend more time with her family after all.

Cheney, Gellman and Becker report, drew up and vetted a list of five appellate judges from which Bush drew his Supreme Court appointments. After naming John Roberts to the Court and then to the Chief Justice’s chair, the President, for once, rebelled: without getting permission from down the hall, he nominated his old retainer Harriet Miers for the second opening. (“Didn’t have the nerve to tell me himself,” Cheney muttered to an associate, according to the Post.) But when Cheney’s right-wing allies upended Miers, Bush obediently went back to Cheney’s list and picked Samuel Alito. The result is a Court majority that, last Thursday, ruled that conscious racial integration is the moral equivalent of conscious racial segregation.

That unfortunate day in the duck blind wasn’t the only time the Vice-President has seemed more Elmer Fudd than Ernst Blofeld; last week, Cheney provoked widespread hilarity by pleading executive privilege (in order to deny one set of documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee) while simultaneously maintaining that his office is not part of the executive branch (in order to deny another set to the Information Security Oversight Office of the National Archives). On Cheney’s version of the government organization chart, it seems, the location of the Office of the Vice-President is undisclosed. So are the powers that, in a kind of rolling, slow-motion coup d’état, he has gathered unto himself. The laughter will fade quickly; the current Administration, regrettably, will not. However more politically moribund it may become, its writ still has a year and a half to go. A few weeks ago, on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, the Vice-President issued threats of war with Iran. A “senior American diplomat” told the Times that Cheney’s speech had not been circulated broadly in the government before it was delivered, adding, “He kind of runs by his own rules.” But, too often, his rules rule. The awful climax of “Cheney/Bush” may be yet to come. ♦ http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2007/07/09/070709taco_talk_hertzberg

IMPEACH CHENEY: MANY SUGGESTIONS FOR ACTION

WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT A LAW DEFYING, POWER GRABBING VICE PRESIDENT OUT OF CONTROL?

There are a million things we can do, and many of them are listed below. If you cannot make a donation to support the impeachment ads, etc, then please just skip down to the next heading and pick at least one thing you CAN do this week to help build the impeachment movement. But if you can make a donation, and have not done so, or can do it on some recurrent basis you can

1. Donate to Dennis Kucinich to thank him for leading the movement to impeach Vice President Cheney, by introducing H.Res. 333. This easy dual action form can do both Act Blue and mail donations:

http://www.usalone.com/donations_kucinich.php

2. Make a donation to help us run more impeachment ads. We have blog ads running it a dozen of the biggest progressive blogs right now, and we are starting to go mainstream. Please help us to keep this up and do even more.

http://www.usalone.com/donations.php

HELP COLLECT VOTES FOR THE IMPEACHMENT POLL IN YOUR COMMUNITY

3. This is easy. Just print out one of the vote gathering sheets for the National Cheney Impeachment Poll where we have already had more that 72,000 votes, 99.22 percent saying Yes to impeach Cheney. Carry one with you in your daily travels and get everyone you can to cast their vote, whether it is yes or no.

http://www.usalone.com/cheney_votesheet.php

PUT AN IMPEACHMENT ACTION BUTTON ON YOUR OWN WEB PAGE OR BLOG

4. We have hundreds of action buttons posted by our participants already. Dennis Kucinich has one himself on his own campaign web site on all pages. If you post a button you will AUTOMATICALLY get a link back to your own site from the action page as our server picks up the hits. Get the code for the buttons here.

http://www.usalone.com/cheney_impeachment2.php

CALL UP RADIO SHOWS AND GIVE OUT THE CELL PHONE SHORT CODE, AND AT RALLIES

5. At considerable expense we have fronted the money to set up the capacity to take votes by cell phone. If you are hip to sending text messages you can text "IMPEACH" to 30644 to vote Yes, or "KEEP" to

30644 to vote No (we haven't had any No votes this way yet even though the option is available). Call up progressive shows and talk about the latest Cheney abuses of power, and then ask if you can give out the cell phone voting options. This is also a great thing to do if you are speaking at a rally of any kind.

EVEN MORE REASONS YOU CAN CITE TO IMPEACH CHENEY NOW

The descriptions at the top of this alert are not ours. In the face of new revelations of the wholesale dismissal of the Constitution by the Vice President Cheney, "Power Grab" was the headline on the ABC New site. "Defiant" was the headline of the Washington Post. By now you could not have escaped hearing all the stories of the assertion by the vice president's office that he is a branch of government unto himself, and not beholden to any other. And if you have not read the stories, they are all linked in the "Arguments" section of the main action below. Just remember, if you are the original recipient of this alert you have already voted in the poll, but you can send this link to others who have not.

http://www.usalone.com/cheney_impeachment.php

Congress will NOT defy the voices of millions of us speaking out.

That's what it will take. We have over 72,000 votes already, and we have only just begun to scratch the surface of the anger about what Cheney and his gang have done to our great country, sucking us into a ruinous, wrong-headed war on phony evidence they cooked themselves, criminal illegal wiretaps, torture as official U.S. policy, while they sell out our economy to foreign oil interests and crony war profiteers.

Our democracy can be saved, but ONLY if we get more people to speak out now.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at http://www.usalone.com/in.htm

From: The Pen [mailto:democracy@peaceteam.net]

Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 7:50 AM

To: jbennet@uark.edu

Subject: Impeachment PROGRESS Update: Kucinich News, Google Words and More

KUCINICH ADDS THE NATIONAL CHENEY IMPEACHMENT POLL TO HIS OWN SITE

dear Friends and Activists,

We have huge news. Dennis Kucinich, the man who had the courage to call for the impeachment of Cheney when nobody else would raise their hand, has now FURTHER stepped up to the plate to add an action button for the National Cheney Impeachment Poll to his own presidential campaign web site in a prominent position on ALL pages. So many of you have written us to ask if there wasn't more we could do to support Dennis, and so at our end we have set up a donations page dedicated specifically for his campaign.

KUCINICH DONATIONS: http://www.usalone.com/donations_kucinich.php

This special page will send you directly the Kucinich Act Blue gateway, or you can simply and easily print out a page to make a mail donation from the same form. We're asking all our participants who can to really step up themselves and support the campaign of this man who is fighting so hard for the policy change we want. Let's show Dennis how much we appreciate someone who is standing up for what we all believe.

For our part we want to continue to run the blog ads which have given this initiative so much visibility so far. There are now more than 70,000 votes in the poll, of which 99.22 percent say YES, Cheney should be impeached. And we want to add Google ads into the mix to reach an even wider audience. They are quoting us 10 cents a click, which at that price means we need $1,000 for each additional 10,000 votes done that way. If some of you can kick in a little something extra, please do so now so we can keep moving the numbers up.

AD DONATIONS: http://www.usalone.com/donations.php

We would also like to thank the more than 200 sites and blogs who have responded to our call to add action buttons for the National Cheney Impeachment Poll to their own pages. We're sure we have at least a thousand more participants who could follow the lead of Dennis Kucinich and do the same thing too. If it's good enough for his site, what about YOUR page? Please get the code for the action buttons from this page and you can even display a dynamic count of the votes as they come in.

ACTION BUTTONS: http://www.usalone.com/cheney_impeachment2.php

Let's make the National Cheney Impeachment Poll a prominent feature of the political landscape by putting it on all our pages, and you will automatically get a link BACK to your site from the main action pages.

NEW SIMPLIFIED CANVASSING VOTE SHEETS

Some of you have been very active collecting votes in your local communities in person. But we have had feedback that some of the people you approach may not have email addresses, and some have suggested they could get more votes if that were not required. As a result we have decided to greatly simplify the process. With the new voting gathering sheet you can get a street address instead. Or if the previous version is working for you keep up with that.

CANVASSING SHEETS: http://www.usalone.com/cheney_votesheet.php

By the way, you may have heard it reported that Cheney is himself even now pressuring Bush to pardon Scooter Libby, to keep him from spilling the beans on the rest of their constitutional crimes. Well, John Dean, who ought to know a little something about impeachment, says THAT interference standing alone constitutes an impeachable obstruction of justice, whether the president has the technical power to grant a pardon or not. It is still an obstruction of justice to exercise that power to frustrate an ongoing investigation.

Dear Folks,

See either of the 2 attachments for House Bill Impeaching Richard B. Cheney - Either printout should print out in 4 pages.

Here is the webpage from thomas.gov the The Library of Congress website.

The Library of Congress > THOMAS Home > Bills, Resolutions > Search Results

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Resolved, That Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to... (Introduced in House)

HRES 333 IH

110th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. RES. 333

Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

April 24, 2007

Mr. KUCINICH submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

RESOLUTION

Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:

Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, against Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Article I

In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of Vice President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests, to wit:

(1) Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Vice President actively and systematically sought to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about an alleged threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction:

(A) `We know they have biological and chemical weapons.' March 17, 2002, Press Conference by Vice President Dick Cheney and His Highness Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince of Bahrain at Shaikh Hamad Palace.

(B) `. . . and we know they are pursuing nuclear weapons.' March 19, 2002, Press Briefing by Vice President Dick Cheney and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem.

(C) `And he is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time . . .' March 24, 2002, CNN Late Edition interview with Vice President Cheney.

(D) `We know he's got chemicals and biological and we know he's working on nuclear.' May 19, 2002, NBC Meet the Press interview with Vice President Cheney.

(E) `But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons . . . Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.' August 26, 2002, Speech of Vice President Cheney at VFW 103rd National Convention.

(F) `Based on intelligence that's becoming available, some of it has been made public, more of it hopefully will be, that he has indeed stepped up his capacity to produce and deliver biological weapons, that he has reconstituted his nuclear program to develop a nuclear weapon, that there are efforts under way inside Iraq to significantly expand his capability.' September 8, 2002, NBC Meet the Press interview with Vice President Cheney.

(G) `He is, in fact, actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.' September 8, 2002, NBC Meet the Press interview with Vice President Cheney.

(H) `And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.' March 16, 2003, NBC Meet the Press interview with Vice President Cheney.

(2) Preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq the Vice President was fully informed that no legitimate evidence existed of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Vice President pressured the intelligence community to change their findings to enable the deception of the citizens and Congress of the United States.

(A) Vice President Cheney and his Chief of Staff, Lewis Libby, made multiple trips to the CIA in 2002 to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives accounts.

(B) Vice President Cheney sought out unverified and ultimately inaccurate raw intelligence to prove his preconceived beliefs. This strategy of cherry picking was employed to influence the interpretation of the intelligence.

(3) The Vice President's actions corrupted or attempted to corrupt the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, an intelligence document issued on October 1, 2002, and carefully considered by Congress prior to the October 10, 2002, vote to authorize the use of force. The Vice President's actions prevented the necessary reconciliation of facts for the National Intelligence Estimate which resulted in a high number of dissenting opinions from technical experts in two Federal agencies.

(A) The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research dissenting view in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate stated `Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute it's nuclear weapons program INR is unwilling to speculate that such an effort began soon after the departure of UN inspectors or to project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening. As a result INR is unable to predict that Iraq could acquire a nuclear device or weapon.'.

(B) The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research dissenting view in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate also stated that `Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment, highly dubious.'.

(C) The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research dissenting view in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate references a Department of Energy opinion by stating that `INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the US Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose.'.

The Vice President subverted the national security interests of the United States by setting the stage for the loss of more than 3300 United States service members; the loss of 650,000 Iraqi citizens since the United States invasion; the loss of approximately $500 billion in war costs which has increased our Federal debt; the loss of military readiness within the United States Armed Services due to overextension, lack of training and lack of equipment; the loss of United States credibility in world affairs; and the decades of likely blowback created by the invasion of Iraq.

In all of this, Vice President Richard B. Cheney has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as Vice President, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

Article II

In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of Vice President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in order to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests, to wit:

(1) Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Vice President actively and systematically sought to deceive the citizens and the Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda:

(A) `His regime has had high-level contacts with Al Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to Al Qaeda terrorists.' December 2, 2002, Speech of Vice President Cheney at the Air National Guard Senior Leadership Conference.

(B) `His regime aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda. He could decide secretly to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against us.' January 30, 2003, Speech of Vice President Cheney to 30th Political Action Conference in Arlington, Virginia.

(C) `We know he's out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization.' March 16, 2003, NBC Meet the Press interview with Vice President Cheney.

(D) `We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s, that it involved training, for example, on biological weapons and chemical weapons . . .' September 14, 2003, NBC Meet the Press interview with Vice President Cheney.

(E) `Al Qaeda had a base of operation there up in Northeastern Iraq where they ran a large poisons factory for attacks against Europeans and U.S. forces.' October 3, 2003, Speech of Vice President Cheney at Bush-Cheney '04 Fundraiser in Iowa.

(F) `He also had an established relationship with Al Qaeda providing training to Al Qaeda members in areas of poisons, gases, and conventional bombs.' October 10, 2003, Speech of Vice President Cheney to the Heritage Foundation.

(G) `Al Qaeda and the Iraqi intelligence services have worked together on a number of occasions.' January 9, 2004, Rocky Mountain News interview with Vice President Cheney.

(H) `I think there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government.' January 22, 2004, NPR: Morning Edition interview with Vice President Cheney.

(I) `First of all, on the question of--of whether or not there was any kind of relationship, there clearly was a relationship. It's been testified to; the evidence is overwhelming.' June 17, 2004, CNBC: Capital Report interview with Vice President Cheney.

(2) Preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq the Vice President was fully informed that no credible evidence existed of a working relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, a fact articulated in several official documents, including:

(A) A classified Presidential Daily Briefing ten days after the September 11, 2001, attacks indicating that the United States intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11th attacks and that there was `scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda'.

(B) Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary No. 044-02, issued in February 2002 by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency, which challenged the credibility of information gleaned from captured al Qaeda leader al-Libi. The DIA report also cast significant doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda conspiracy: `Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control.'.

(C) A January 2003 British intelligence classified report on Iraq that concluded that `there are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network'.

The Vice President subverted the national security interests of the United States by setting the stage for the loss of more than 3,300 United States service members; the loss of 650,000 Iraqi citizens since the United States invasion; the loss of approximately $500 billion in war costs which has increased our Federal debt; the loss of military readiness within the United States Armed Services due to overextension, lack of training and lack of equipment; the loss of United States credibility in world affairs; and the decades of likely blowback created by the invasion of Iraq.

Wherefore, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

Article III

In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of Vice President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has openly threatened aggression against the Republic of Iran absent any real threat to the United States, and done so with the United States proven capability to carry out such threats, thus undermining the national security of the United States, to wit:

(1) Despite no evidence that Iran has the intention or the capability of attacking the United States and despite the turmoil created by United States invasion of Iraq, the Vice President has openly threatened aggression against Iran as evidenced by the following:

(A) `For our part, the United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime. And we join other nations in sending that regime a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.' March 7, 2006, Speech of Vice President Cheney to American Israel Public Affairs Committee 2006 Policy Conference.

(B) `But we've also made it clear that all options are on the table.' January 24, 2007, CNN Situation Room interview with Vice President Cheney.

(C) `When we--as the President did, for example, recently--deploy another aircraft carrier task force to the Gulf, that sends a very strong signal to everybody in the region that the United States is here to stay, that we clearly have significant capabilities, and that we are working with friends and allies as well as the international organizations to deal with the Iranian threat.' January 29, 2007, Newsweek interview with Vice President Cheney.

(D) `But I've also made the point and the President has made the point that all options are still on the table.' February 24, 2007, Vice President Cheney at Press Briefing with Australian Prime Minister in Sydney, Australia.

(2) The Vice President, who repeatedly and falsely claimed to have had specific, detailed knowledge of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction capabilities, is no doubt fully aware of evidence that demonstrates Iran poses no real threat to the United States as evidenced by the following:

(A) `I know that what we see in Iran right now is not the industrial capacity you can [use to develop a] bomb.' Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of International Atomic Energy Agency, February 19, 2007.

(B) Iran indicated its `full readiness and willingness to negotiate on the modality for the resolution of the outstanding issues with the IAEA, subject to the assurances for dealing with the issues in the framework of the Agency, without the interference of the United Nations Security Council'. IAEA Board Report, February 22, 2007.

(C) `. . . so whatever they have, what we have seen today, is not the kind of capacity that would enable them to make bombs.' Mohamed El Baradei, Director General of International Atomic Energy Agency, February 19, 2007.

(3) The Vice President is fully aware of the actions taken by the United States towards Iran that are further destabilizing the world as evidenced by the following:

(A) The United States has refused to engage in meaningful diplomatic relations with Iran since 2002, rebuffing both bilateral and multilateral offers to dialogue.

(B) The United States is currently engaged in a military buildup in the Middle East that includes the increased presence of the United States Navy in the waters near Iran, significant United States Armed Forces in two nations neighboring to Iran, and the installation of anti-missile technology in the region.

(C) News accounts have indicated that military planners have considered the B61-11, a tactical nuclear weapon, as one of the options to strike underground bunkers in Iran.

(D) The United States has been linked to anti-Iranian organizations that are attempting to destabilize the Iranian government, in particular the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), even though the state department has branded it a terrorist organization.

(E) News accounts indicate that United States troops have been ordered into Iran to collect data and establish contact with anti-government groups.

(4) In the last three years the Vice President has repeatedly threatened Iran. However, the Vice President is legally bound by the U.S. Constitution's adherence to international law that prohibits threats of use of force.

(A) Article VI of the United States Constitution states, `This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.' Any provision of an international treaty ratified by the United States becomes the law of the United States.

(B) The United States is a signatory to the United Nations Charter, a treaty among the nations of the world. Article II, Section 4 of the United Nations Charter states, `All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.' The threat of force is illegal.

(C) Article 51 lays out the only exception, `Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.' Iran has not attacked the United States; therefore any threat against Iran by the United States is illegal.

The Vice President's deception upon the citizens and Congress of the United States that enabled the failed United States invasion of Iraq forcibly altered the rules of diplomacy such that the Vice President's recent belligerent actions towards Iran are destabilizing and counterproductive to the national security of the United States.

Wherefore Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

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CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES

--Senator Blanche Lincoln: Web Site (they have contact links): www.lincoln.senate.gov; http://www.lincoln.senate.gov/index.cfm; http://www.lincoln.senate.gov/webform.html

Washington Office: 355 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510-0404

Phone: (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371.

Fayetteville office: 251-1380. Lincoln’s staff is better informed than Boozman’s (see below), but obviously (her vote to join Bush in appropriating $95 billion more to keep the occupation going) they need a lot of education.

Northwestern Regional Office
4 South College Avenue, Suite 205,
Google Maps puts the marker 308 feet south of Meadow Street.
Fayetteville, AR 72701
(479) 251-1224; FAX (479) 251-1410

--Senator Mark Pryor: Web Site (see contact link): www.pryor.senate.gov ; http://pryor.senate.gov/contact/ Pryor has no office in NWA, so call or write him and his staff in DC: Washington Office: 217 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510-0403. Phone: (202) 224-2353 Fax: (202) 228-0908

Main District Office: 500 Pres. Clinton Ave., Suite 401, Little Rock, AR 72201.

Phone: (501) 324-6336 Fax: (501) 324-5320. From Pryor: “I have received your e-mail and I thank you for your message. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact.”

--Congressman John Boozman, District 3, 12 counties from Benton to Washington

Lowell office: 479-725-0400. 213 W. Monroe, Suite K, 72745. Boozman's new office in Lowell is located at 213 West Monroe in Lowell between I 540 and Business 71. Go there, talk to Boozman’s staff members. Ms. McClure is Assistant Chief of Staff for the Lowell office, STACEY.McCLURE@MAIL.HOUSE.GOV

Ft. Smith office: 479-782-7787; 30 South 6th St. Rm 240, Ft. Smith 72901.

Harrison office: 870-741-6900; 402 N. Walnut, Suite 210, Harrison 72601.

DC address: 1708 Longworth House Office Bldng., Washington, DC 20515; 202-225-4301. Leslie Parker, appointments secretary: 202-225-4301. (Or she was, let me know if it’s now someone else.)

End of Newsletter #3 on Impeaching Bush and Cheney