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Recent
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July
23, 2003
Uri
Avnery
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David
Lindorff
Lynne Stewart's Big Win: Ashcroft
Rebuked
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Singham
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Steve
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Better Late Than Never: the Press, the Dems, and Bush's Lies
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Avoiding Plato's Republic in America: Is Anarchy the Only Hope?
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Bush and South Africa: a Petro-Military-Commerce Mission
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A Victory for a Disarming Irishwoman
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When the WTO Comes to Montreal
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The Sons are Dead, But the Resistance
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Georgie Porgie
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Solidarity and Student Protests in Iran
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Plugging Iraq into Globalization
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Greening the Golden Triangle
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Smile, You're on Federal Camera
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This Day Shall Not Define My Life:
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July
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Said
Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping
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Shut Up and Shoot
Allan J.
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Why is George Bush President?
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John Dean: Taking Apart Bush's State of the Union Speech, Claim
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Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
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Jason Leopold
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Mano Singham
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18, 2003
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Mahajan
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Harold
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Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island
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17, 2003
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Sometimes Even the President of the
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Lisa
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Wolfowitz Told White House to Hype
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Judge Brinkema v. Ashcroft: She Whom
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Linda Heard
Bondage or Freedom?
Raymond
Barrett
From Detroit to Basra
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Back to the Future in Guatemala:
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July
15, 2003
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Why We Resigned from VIPS
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Cassel
Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers:
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Chris
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Gaius Publius
Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please
John
Troyer
The Niger Syndrome
Becky Gillette
No Conspiracy at Coffeen Nature Preserve: a Response to David
Orrr
Uri
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The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall
Dwell with the Lamb
Website
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Cost of Iraq War
July
14, 2003
Lisa
Taraki
Hot Days in Ramallah
Walter
Brasch
Bush: the Pretend Captain
SOA
Watch
Training Colombia's Killers in the US
Dan Bacher
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Veteran
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July 12 / 13, 2003
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John Feffer
A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang
Ron
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Shades of Gray in Iran
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Cassel
Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights
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Stephens
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New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On"
Jason
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The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11
Lee Sustar
What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia?
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God Responds to Bush
Mokhiber
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The Two Faces of Bush in Africa
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Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor
David Orr
Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation?
David
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July
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Sean
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Who Outted Bush in Afrika?
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Abunimah
US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated
Joanne
Mariner
Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions
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Electronic Iraq
July
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Is the Media Finally Turning on
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David
Krieger and Angela McCracken
10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons
Mickey
Z.
Why Speak Out?
Lee Sustar
The Great Medicare Fraud
John
Chuckman
The Worst Kind of Lie
Gary Leupp
"Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq
Website
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Hail to the Thief:
Songs for the Bush Years
July
8, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bully on the Bench: the Pathological
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Alan
Maass
Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor
Chris
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Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Brian
Cloughley
They Tell Lies to Nodders
Charles
Sullivan
Bush the Christian?
Saul
Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
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Occupation Watch
July
7, 2003
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives Should Think About
Iran
Lesley
McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
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Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
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Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
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Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
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Adam
Engel
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The Lipstick Librarian
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
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Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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July
25, 2003
It's About the Rule
of Law
Impeaching
George W. Bush
By FRANCIS A. BOYLE
Professor of Law,
University of Illinois School of Law
With another Bush Family war of aggression against
Iraq staring the American People, Congress and Republic in their
face, on Tuesday 11 March 2003, Congressman John Conyers of Michigan,
the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, which would
have jurisdiction over any Bill of Impeachment, convened an emergency
meeting of forty or more of his top advisors, most of whom were
lawyers, to discuss and debate immediately putting into the House
of Representatives Bills of Impeachment against President Bush
Jr., Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and
Attorney General Ashcroft in order to head off the impending
war.[i] Congressman Conyers kindly requested me and Ramsey Clark
to come in to the meeting and argue the case for impeachment.
Ramsey had launched his own campaign to impeach Bush Jr. et al.
in mid-January 2003 at a peace rally held in Washington D.C.
This impeachment debate lasted for two
hours. It was presided over by Congressman Conyers, who quite
correctly did not tip his hand one way or the other on the merits
of impeachment. He simply moderated the debate between Clark
and me, on the one side, favoring immediately filing Bills of
Impeachment against Bush Jr. et al. to stop the threatened war,
and almost everyone else there who were against impeachment.
Obviously no point would be served here by attempting to digest
a two-hour-long vigorous debate among a group of well-trained
lawyers on such a controversial matter at this critical moment
in American history. But at the time I was struck by the fact
that this momentous debate was conducted at a private office
right down the street from the White House.
Suffice it to say that most of the "experts"
there opposed impeachment on the grounds that it might hurt the
Democratic Party get their presidential candidate elected in
the year 2004. As a political independent, I did not argue that
point--it was not for me to tell Democrats how to get their candidates
elected. Rather, I argued the merits of impeaching Bush Jr.,
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft under the United States Constitution,
U.S. Federal Laws, U.S. Treaties and other International Agreements
to which the United States was a contracting party. Article VI
of the U.S. Constitution provides that Treaties "shall be
the supreme Law of the Land." This so-called Supremacy Clause
of the U.S. Constitution also applies to International Executive
Agreements concluded under the auspices of the U.S. President
such as the 1945 Nuremberg Charter.
Congressman Conyers was so kind as to
allow me the closing argument in the debate. Briefly put, the
concluding point I chose to make was historical: The Athenians
lost their Democracy. The Romans lost their Republic. And if
we Americans did not act now we could lose our Republic! The
United States of America is not immune to the laws of history!
After two hours of most vigorous debate,
the meeting adjourned with a second revised draft Bill of Impeachment
sitting on the table. Despite these efforts, President Bush Jr.
started his war of aggression against Iraq on the evening of
Wednesday 19 March 2003 with an attempt to assassinate Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein by means of a so-called "decapitation"
strike, which was clearly illegal and criminal. Since then, Clark
and I have accelerated our respective grassroots campaigns to
impeach President Bush Jr. et al. Don Quixotes tilting at windmills?[ii]
Not at all!
In the run-up to his 1991 Gulf War, President
Bush Sr. feared impeachment. Writing in his diary on 20 December
1990 about the impending war against Iraq, President Bush Sr
recorded his fears of impeachment as follows: "But if it
drags out, not only will I take the blame, but I will probably
have impeachment proceedings filed against me."[iii] There
are thus good grounds to believe that fear of impeachment compelled
Bush Sr. to terminate the war early on 28 February 1991 with
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein still in power, thus avoiding
innumerable and horrendous casualties for Americans and even
more so for Iraqis.
Thirteen years later, after President
Bush Jr.'s invasion of Iraq, flush with "victory" and
the arrogance of power, members of the Bush Jr. administration
publicly threatened to attack Iran, Syria, and North Korea. In
direct reaction to these threats, on 13 April 2003 former U.S.
Secretary of State (under President Bush Sr., no less!) Lawrence
Engleburger told the BBC:[iv]
"If George Bush [Jnr] decided he
was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran after that
he would last in office for about 15 minutes. In fact if President
Bush were to try that now even I would think that he ought to
be impeached. You can't get away with that sort of thing in this
democracy."
Almost immediately after Eagleburger's
BBC broadside against them, the Bush Jr. warmongers cooled their
public rhetoric and threats against Iran and Syria--but not North
Korea.
So the Bush Jr. administration has already
stood down for the time-being from two further aggressions because
of at least one public threat of impeachment. But as of this
writing U.S. military, political and economic preparations are
underway for a Bush Jr. war of aggression against North Korea.
The American People and Congress must put the fear of impeachment
into the highest levels of the Bush Jr. administration in order
to prevent such a catastrophic war that could readily go nuclear.[v]
Certainly, if the U.S. House of Representatives
can impeach President Clinton for sex and lying about sex, then
a fortiori the House can, should, and must impeach President
Bush Jr. for war, lying about war, and threatening more wars.
We need one Member of Congress with the courage, integrity, and
principles of the late and great Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez
of Texas. Otherwise, the alternative will be an American Empire
abroad, a U.S. Police State at home, and continuing wars of aggression
to sustain them--along the lines of George Orwell's classic novel
1984 (1949). Despite all of the serious flaws of the United States
government that this author has amply documented elsewhere during
the past quarter century as a Professor of Law, the truth of
the matter is that America is still the oldest Republic in the
world today.[vi] We, the People of the United States, must fight
to keep it that way![vii] And for the good of all humanity, we
must terminate America's Imperial Presidency and subject it to
the Rule of Law.[viii]
Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution
Francis A. Boyle,
Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations
of World Order, Duke University Press, The
Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Palestine,
Palestinians and International Law, by Clarity Press.
He can be reached at: FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU
Notes
[i]. Ethan Wallison, Time to Impeach?,
Roll Call, March 13, 2003, at 1.
[ii]. Liz Halloran, Wartime Snapshots
of American Life: Tilting at Presidents, Hartford Courant, March
30, 2003, at A3.
[iii]. Laura Myers, Bush Describes Gulf
War Quandary, Associated Press, Sept. 10, 1998, quoting from
Bush's memoir A World Transformed (1998), which he co-authored
with his National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. See also
Bush: Worried about Impeachment for Gulf War, The Hotline, Sept.
10, 1998; Institute for Public Accuracy, Bush Worried About Impeachment,
Too, 28 Sept.1998 Press Release.
[iv]. Ben Russell, U.S. Warns Syria Not
to Provide Haven for Wanted Iraqis, The Independent (UK), April
14, 2003; Former Sec. Of State Lawrence Engleburger: Bush Should
Be Impeached If He Invades Syria or Iran, Antiwar.com, April
14, 2003 (link to audio).
[v]. Francis A. Boyle, The Criminality
of Nuclear War Deterrence: Could the U.S. War on Terrorism Go
Nuclear? (2002).
[vi]. See Akhil Reed Amar & Alan
Hirsch, For the People (1998).
[vii]. Francis A. Boyle, Defending Civil
Resistance Under International Law (1987; Special Paperback ed.
1988).
[viii]. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The
Imperial Presidency (1989). See also Michael Parenti, Against
Empire (1995); John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World (2003).
Weekend Edition Features for July 19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
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