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Now
Forget Her "Pledge" Not to Impeach,
She Took an Oath to Defend the Constitution
Why
Nancy Pelosi is Wrong
By DAVE LINDORFF
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA),
in an interview with Lesley Stahl of CBS News, said impeachment
would be "off the table" if Democrats take over the
House of Representatives in November, calling it a "waste
of time."
She couldn't be more wrong,
and most Americans know it.
While Pelosi was responding
to a loaded question from Stahl, who couched impeachment in terms
of Democrats' supposed desire to seek revenge if they retake
Congress, Pelosi, who would become majority leader in a Democratic
House, bought into Stahl's argument, saying that she'd be "satisfied"
to see the president and vice president spending the remaining
two years of their second term as "lame ducks."
What Stahl should have asked
Pelosi was whether she thought that President Bush had violated
the law and the Constitution, and whether she believed he has
committed impeachable offenses.
The answer to that is clearly
yes.
Rep. Pelosi must know most
of the president's crimes are not partisan at all. They are crimes
against Americans of all stripes, and against liberty and the
Constitution.
Just take the president's order
to the National Security Administration to spy on Americans without
first seeking a warrant. A federal judge in Detroit has already
found that the president violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act--a felony--and the Fourth Amendment. That is an impeachable
act, and one which Democrats and Republicans alike would punish
if they understood the the implications of what the president
has done. Given that the secret FISA court has only rejected
a handful of warrant requests out of over 70,000 made since 1978,
the only reason Bush could have decided to violate the law is
that he is doing something so outrageous he knew the hand-picked,
top-security-cleared FISA judges would have rejected it out of
hand.
Or take the signing statements.
This president has used so-called "signing statements"
to render inoperative over 800 laws or parts of laws passed by
Congress, claiming that he has the authority to do so because
he is a commander in chief in time of war (the so-called "War"
on Terror). Rep. Pelosi claims that if she becomes House leader,
Democrats will want to pursue a positive, progressive political
agenda, yet this will be clearly impossible if the president
is allowed to simply continue issuing signing statements invalidating
any laws passed by a Democratic Congress. Signing statements
cannot be overridden, and if Democrats were to attempt to pass
legislation outlawing them, Bush could veto that legislation--or
render it inoperative with another signing statement. The only
way to stop this unconstitutional usurpation of the founding
principle of tripartite government is to impeach the president
for blatant abuse of power.
This too, is an issue that
Republicans and Democrats should agree on, for if this president
is permitted to ignore laws passed by the Congress, then subsequent
presidents (perhaps a President Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama?)
could also do it, citing the continuing "War" on Terror,
and the Bush precedent.
Does Nancy Pelosi believe that
the president's lies and deceptions and the conspiracy by his
administration to trick the nation into a disastrous invasion
of Iraq is not grounds for impeachment? Nearly 3000 Americans
have died as a result of that deceit, and nearly 40,000 have
suffered grievous wounds, while the US military has been stretched
to the breaking point, leaving the country unable to respond
to genuine threats. Surely the author of this ongoing national
nightmare must be punished, so that future presidents will not
attempt to do the same thing.
These are only some of this
administration's crimes. Others include:
* Bush's role in attacking,
and then covering up the attack on former ambassador Joseph Wilson
and his CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame--a crime that was committed
to discredit Wilson and discourage reporters from probing more
deeply into his revelation that the documents used to claim Iraq
was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger were obvious forgeries,
and into who was behind those forgeries in the first place.
* Bush's authorization of torture
as a policy for captives in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the nebulous,
endless and borderless "War" on Terror. The president,
in an act of desperation, has gotten the currently Republican
Congress to ram through a bill granting retroactive immunity
to all those, including himself, who authorized or engaged in
torture, but this should not deter a Democratic Congress from
seeking impeachment for an action that remains a violation of
international law, that places American troops at greater risk,
and that has destroyed America's image around the globe.
* Bush's criminally negligent
handling of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans.
* The rot of corruption in
the administration, highlighted by the Abramoff lobbying scandals,
which clearly reach right into the Oval Office, despite the president's
initial lie that he didn't know Jack Abramoff.
* Bush's refusal to testify
under oath and on the record before the 9-11 Commission, and
his refusal to provide officials and documents demanded by the
commission regarding what the administration knew before the
attacks and how it responded to what it knew. This obstructionism
by the White House has been called close to an act of treason
by former Sen. Bob Graham, who until the end of 2002 was the
chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and who has said
if he were currently in the House would be the subject of a bill
of impeachment.
Rep. Pelosi may think Americans
don't want impeachment, but, like many Democratic leaders, '
simply out of touch. Indeed, the congresswoman will find a resolution
on impeachment on her own ballot when she goes home to San Francisco
to vote this November (a resolution that is likely to pass handily).
Meanwhile, a new Newsweek magazine poll finds that fully 51 percent
of all Americans believe that the president should be impeached--more
than half of them saying this should be a priority. That same
poll finds that 20 percent of Republicans think the president
should be impeached, with one in four of those saying it should
be a priority for the next Congress.
These are astonishing figures
when you consider that support for impeachment of President Bill
Clinton never got higher than 36 percent, even at the height
of his impeachment process.
Maybe Rep. Pelosi should start
listening to the voters, instead of to her campaign strategists.
More importantly, she and other
Democratic-and Republican--members of the House should recall
that oath they took when they assumed office, which commits them
to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States
against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
The Constitution these days
is under relentless assault by an enemy in the White House. Defending
it is not a "waste of time" Ms. Pelosi; it is your
sworn duty.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
