[Peace-discuss] Segolene et John

[C. G. Estabrook]

(Sounds like a Johnny Halladay song.)  Some questions were raised at 
last night's meeting about the positions of US Democrats and French 
Socialists.  Here are some details.  --CGE

===

	Impeachment 'Off the Table,' Conyers Says
	BY Jonathan Tilove
	c.2006 Newhouse News Service

WASHINGTON -- Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., presumed to become chairman of 
the House Judiciary Committee in January, said Thursday that impeachment 
of President Bush "is off the table."
    "In this campaign, there was an orchestrated right-wing effort to 
distort my position on impeachment," Conyers said in a statement 
released by his Judiciary Committee spokesman. "The incoming speaker 
(Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.) has said that impeachment is off the 
table. I am in total agreement with her on this issue: Impeachment is 
off the table."

Through his investigations as the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, Conyers 
became a hero to people who would like to see President Bush impeached 
for the manner in which the U.S. was led to war in Iraq, among other 
alleged crimes. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have said the new 
Democratic Congress will not pursue impeachment.

But Tuesday's big Democratic victory, in which Conyers secured a 22nd 
term and Democrats regained control of both the House and Senate, has 
only invigorated a large national network of grassroots impeachment 
activists. Conyers' statement is unlikely to dampen their enthusiasm or 
efforts.

"This is still in some ways a democracy and we will, as American 
citizens, use our voices to suggest what we think should be on the 
table," said David Swanson, co-founder of afterdowningstreet.org and 
Washington director for impeachpac.org.

Conyers laid out the grounds for impeachment in a report last December 
called "The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and 
Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution and Cover-ups in the Iraq 
War" and later updated to add "illegal domestic surveillance." It is 
more than 350 pages long.

The Downing Street reference is to the minutes of a secret 2002 meeting 
of British government officials that critics of the Iraq invasion 
consider the "smoking gun" indicating the Bush administration fixed its 
pre-war intelligence to justify an already decided-upon plan to remove 
Saddam Hussein.

In his statement Thursday, Conyers said, "To be sure, I have substantial 
concerns about the way this administration has abused its authority, but 
impeachment would not be good for the American people. The country does 
not want or need any more paralyzed partisan government -- it wants a 
check and balance and real progress on the issues that matter to their 
lives."

But as recently as May 18, in a column in The Washington Post headlined 
"No Rush to Impeachment," Conyers wrote that a new Congress ought to 
seek answers about whether "intelligence was mistaken or manipulated in 
the run-up to the Iraq war" as well as the extent to which "high-ranking 
officials approved of the use of torture and other cruel and inhumane 
treatment inflicted upon detainees." A select committee would forward 
evidence of any potentially impeachable offenses to the Judiciary 
Committee, he wrote.

Swanson sees it this way: "If we get a real investigation there will be 
one of two outcomes, or both -- either there will be clear grounds for 
impeachment, or there will be a crisis when the Bush administration 
refuses to acknowledge subpoenas."

The common wisdom from the Democratic leadership and the Washington 
punditocracy is that pursuing impeachment would be a fatal political 
mistake.

"The Democratic Party cannot repeat the mistakes of the Gingrich 
Republicans, which allowed themselves to get identified in the public 
eye as extremists," said Jeremy D. Mayer, a professor in the George 
Mason University's School of Public Policy.

Pelosi's first test, Mayer said, will be "reining in" those on her 
party's left end, many of whom, like Conyers, are black.

Ronald Walters, a political scientist at the University of Maryland and 
long-time observer of the Congressional Black Caucus, doubts that 
Conyers will press impeachment.

"There may be some pressure from the far left, but I think most people 
understand that is not popular among the American people at a time when 
the Democratic Party is trying to tee up for 2008," Walters said. "The 
American people just threw over the radicalism of the right and they are 
not going to want to replace it with the radicalism of the left."

But Swanson said the Democratic leadership, these observers, and the 
mainstream media have the politics of impeachment exactly upside down. 
"What the media is instructing (the Democrats) to do is be nice, play 
civil," he said. But in his view, an election in which not a single 
Democratic member of Congress was defeated is not a mandate for meekness.

A Newsweek poll in October found that 28 percent of respondents thought 
impeaching Bush should be a top priority of a new Congress, and 23 
percent thought it should be a lower priority, while 44 percent thought 
it was a bad idea altogether. That is more support for impeaching Bush 
than there was at any point for impeaching Bill Clinton, Swanson said.

"My nine-year-old niece asked me, `If you're going to impeach Clinton 
for lying about a sexual affair, how can you not impeach Bush for lying 
about a war?"' said William Strickland, a professor of Afro-American 
studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. "This is a slam 
dunk."

Strickland said there is a moral imperative for Congress to undo Bush's 
policy of pre-emptive war and repair America's standing in the world.

Pelosi, as it happens, was among the Americans in a handful of 
jurisdictions who has had a chance to vote on impeachment. Proposition J 
on the San Francisco ballot Tuesday called for the impeachment of Bush 
and Vice President Cheney. It passed with 59 percent of the vote. In 
neighboring Berkeley, a similar measure passed with nearly 70 percent of 
the vote.

Nov. 10, 2006
(Jonathan Tilove can be contacted at jonathan.tilove at newhouse.com)

===

	Royal criticised for hard line on Iran's nuclear ambitions
	By Martin Arnold in Paris
	Last updated: November 9 2006 02:00

Ségolène Royal's campaign for the French Socialist presidential 
nomination came under fire yesterday after she took a hard line on 
Iran's nuclear programme.

Ms Royal said Iran should not be allowed a civil atomic power programme 
because it would inevitably lead to weapons production, a harder line on 
Iran than even George W. Bush, the US president, has adopted.

"We must have an extremely strong diplomatic action to prevent Iran from 
getting nuclear power, which would be very dangerous for the whole 
region," said Ms Royal. "When you control civil nuclear power, you in 
effect control a part of the uranium enrichment process."

Ms Royal's comments, during a televised debate with her two more 
experienced Socialist rivals for the party presidential nomination, were 
seized on as a sign that she does not understand the Nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty and lacked the diplomatic gravitas needed to 
become head of state.

Laurent Fabius, former prime minister, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 
former finance minister, both argued that, as Iran had signed the NPT, 
it had the sovereign right to civil nuclear power.

Michèle Alliot-Marie, defence minister, also attacked the "regrettable 
lightness" of Ms Royal's ideas yesterday.

"It is a misunderstanding of treaties, of international mechanisms and 
the realities of nuclear power. Ms Royal obviously does not know that 
the NPT concerns only military nuclear power," said Ms Alliot-Marie, who 
is a possible presidential contender for the right.

Criticism of Ms Royal's foreign policy ideas increased last month, when 
she appeared confused by a question about Turkey's entry into the 
European Union and refused to say whether she supported the idea, 
promising to leave it to the French people to decide in a referendum.

Ms Royal's advisers were yesterday frantically trying to repair any 
damage from her Iran comments. Jean-Louis Bianco, a spokesman for Ms 
Royal, said her ideas were "in line with the international community's 
stance on Iran".

He said Ms Royal believed that Iran should be allowed a civil nuclear 
programme only if it accepted spot checks by UN inspectors, something 
Tehran has rejected. So, he said, Iran should accept the deal offered 
last year for most of its enriched uranium to be supplied by Russia.

With a week left before party members vote to choose their candidate, Ms 
Royal has a big lead on her rivals in opinion polls. But some surveys 
suggest recent criticism has eaten into her lead.

An Ipsos poll in today's Le Point magazine shows that 62 per cent of 
Socialist supporters prefer her to Mr Fabius or Mr Strauss-Kahn, down 
from 68 per cent in September.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

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