[Peace-discuss] Why impeach even now

[Morton K. Brussel]

I've not read all of this useful article, but fear that if the Dems  
win the election, Congressional and Presidential, all the air will go  
out of the impeachment initiative by the powers that are needed to  
impeach. --mkb


On Oct 15, 2008, at 12:18 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [The following is David Swanson's introduction to Rep. Kucinich's  
> book, "The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting  
> George W. Bush." --CGE]
>
> 	Kucinich, the Resolution, and the
> 	Prosecution of Impeachable Crimes
> 	By David Swanson
>
> When former president George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick  
> Cheney are
> finally hauled into court, their first line of defense is likely to  
> be, “We
> served the American people, whose representatives chose not to  
> impeach us.” If,
> on the other hand, they are impeached, even after having left  
> office, the
> likelihood of prosecution and of successful prosecution will increase
> dramatically. Impeachment after January 2009 would not remove them  
> from office,
> but could cut off their public pensions and bar them from ever  
> holding any
> public office again. Those would be trivial results, but the  
> primary impact of
> impeachment would be to establish for future presidents and vice  
> presidents that
> there is a penalty to be paid for violating the law or abusing power.
>
> For the penalty to include prison time will require prosecution at  
> the federal,
> state, or local level, or in a foreign country or international  
> court. The
> possibilities for prosecution are more diverse and more likely than  
> for
> impeachment. While Congress has not yet aided the cause of  
> prosecution by
> impeaching, Dennis Kucinich has done so by drafting an extensive  
> indictment in
> the form of the 35 articles of impeachment contained in this book.
>
> On the evening of June 9, 2008, Congressman Kucinich of Cleveland,  
> Ohio, had
> been working many hours without a break or a bite to eat, and I  
> would have
> assumed that he was near the point of collapse had I not worked  
> with him before.
> But it was Dennis, and he grabbed a thick sheaf of paper from the  
> printer, and
> continued making changes as he headed to the floor of the House of
> Representatives, and read aloud, for nearly six hours, 35 Articles of
> Impeachment against President George W. Bush. The impeachment news  
> flashed
> across the internet and through the radio waves, and C-Span’s  
> viewership soared.
> Two days later, after the clerk of the House had read the entire  
> resolution (H.
> Res. 1258) aloud again, the full House voted to send it to the  
> House Judiciary
> Committee, to be considered or ignored, as that committee’s  
> chairman or his
> party’s leader saw fit.
>
> Kucinich had introduced articles of impeachment against Vice  
> President Dick
> Cheney, in April 2007, and reintroduced them to force a vote in  
> November ‘07
> that sent them to committee. When Dennis introduced the 35 articles of
> impeachment against Bush in June 2008, he threatened to come back  
> with 60
> articles in July if no action had yet been taken. That didn’t  
> happen, but
> Kucinich did go back to the floor in July and forced a vote on a  
> single article
> of impeachment against Bush related to the invasion of Iraq, the  
> issue Kucinich
> had focused on above all others.
>
> At that point Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, told John  
> Conyers, Chairman of
> the Judiciary Committee, to hold a hearing at which Kucinich could  
> present his
> case for impeachment, but to announce in advance that no actual  
> impeachment
> proceedings would follow the hearing, no matter what was heard  
> there. The
> hearing was held on July 25th, and Kucinich and other members of  
> Congress,
> former members of Congress, former prosecutors, and other experts  
> argued for
> impeachment, many of them drawing on the arguments made in  
> Kucinich’s 35
> articles. The hearing, like Kucinich’s reading of his articles,  
> took six hours,
> and was probably the most devastating indictment of a sitting  
> president and vice
> president in the history of the nation. The corporate media almost  
> completely
> ignored it. A couple of weeks later, some concerned citizens caught  
> up with
> Pelosi, who was touring the country to sell her new book, and asked  
> for her
> opinion of Kucinich’s articles of impeachment. She replied that she  
> had not yet
> read them.
>
> If you find this book valuable and believe that Speaker Pelosi  
> can’t possibly
> read it too many times, you can mail your copy along with a  
> personal note to:
>
> 	Nancy Pelosi
> 	450 Golden Gate Ave. — 14th Floor
> 	San Francisco, CA 94102
>
> Or you can politely ask that a local news outlet deliver her the  
> book by sending
> it, along with a note, care of:
>
> 	San Francisco Chronicle — Attention Political Desk
> 	901 Mission Street
> 	San Francisco, CA 94103
>
> As you may have just surmised, I’m an activist. I don’t believe any  
> citizen of a
> democratic republic has a right to be anything else. Congressman  
> Kucinich is a
> politician, and would not urge people to flood Pelosi’s office with  
> books. His
> role is to listen to the majority will of the people of his  
> district and of the
> nation and to act accordingly, and he fulfills that responsibility  
> far more than
> any other participant in the money-choked, party-controlled, media- 
> suffocated
> system in which he works. A few dozen other Congress members stand  
> out by
> following at a safe distance behind Kucinich. Sadly, in a House  
> made up of 435
> members, most of whom simply follow their parties’ leaders, that’s  
> not enough.
>
> Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney deserves a nod of  
> recognition, because she
> introduced articles of impeachment against Bush (and Cheney and  
> Condoleezza
> Rice) before Kucinich did. She did so on her last day in office and  
> the last day
> of the 109th Congress in 2006. It was a symbolic gesture, but one  
> we could have
> used more of. Even McKinney’s gesture was several steps behind the  
> American
> public, which had been clamoring for impeachment for years by then.
>
> The movement for impeachment had been registering major support in  
> various polls
> and had seen intense and widespread activism around the country and  
> on Capitol
> Hill: phone calls, emails, faxes, lobby visits, public forums,  
> marches, creative
> dramas, media activism, civil disobedience, and all forms of public  
> education,
> including the production of numerous books, DVDs, and websites  
> containing
> proposed articles of impeachment.
>
> In 2005 I worked closely with John Conyers’ minority staff on the  
> Judiciary
> Committee to advance the cause of impeachment. In 2006 Pelosi  
> announced that she
> would not allow impeachment if she were to become Speaker. In 2007  
> I was
> arrested, along with 50 other people for sitting in Chairman  
> Conyers’ office and
> asking him to hold impeachment hearings. It was in such a climate  
> in which
> Kucinich stepped forward and led the cause of accountability  
> without apology.
>
> The case for impeachment had never before been laid out as  
> thoroughly as in
> Kucinich’s articles, but it had been made in print in 2005 by a  
> group called the
> International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity  
> Committed by the
> Bush Administration of the United States, as well as by Congressman  
> Conyers and
> his staff in a book written in 2005, and in books in 2006 by the  
> Center for
> Constitutional Rights, Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky,  
> Elizabeth Holtzman
> and Cynthia L. Cooper, and Dennis Loo and Peter Phillips, among  
> others.
>
> A plausible ground for impeachment can be found in the record of  
> just about
> every past US president, at least with the benefit of evidence that  
> has emerged
> since their terms in office; but none of them come anywhere close  
> to the record
> documented in Kucinich’s 35 Articles. Bush and Cheney have outdone  
> all past
> presidents and vice presidents combined in volume and degree of  
> abuses of power.
> The 35 Articles could quite easily become 60 or more.
>
> Bush broke more laws on some single days than some of his  
> predecessors did in
> their entire terms in office. January 31, 2003, stands out in my  
> mind. That was
> when Bush met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the White  
> House and
> proposed possible ways to provoke Saddam Hussein into an attack,  
> which included
> the painting of US airplanes with United Nations colors and trying  
> to get them
> shot at. Bush also proposed assassinating Hussein. He also promised  
> Blair that
> he would try to get the United Nations to legalize the coming  
> invasion, the same
> day the National Security Agency (NSA) launched a campaign to bug  
> the phones and
> emails of key members of the U.N. Security Council. When Bush and  
> Blair finished
> their private chat, they held a press conference at which they  
> professed not to
> have decided on war, to continue working for peace, and to be  
> worried about the
> imminent threat from Iraq to the American people. They claimed that  
> Iraq
> possessed “weapons of mass destruction” and had links to al Qaeda  
> and — as Bush
> implied but avoided explicitly stating — to the attacks of  
> September 11, 2001.
> They also claimed to already have U.N. authorization for launching  
> an attack on
> Iraq. At this time the US military was already engaging in bombing  
> runs over
> Iraq, and redeploying troops — including to newly-constructed bases  
> — all in
> preparation for an invasion of Iraq, and all with money that had  
> not been
> appropriated for these purposes.
>
> Half the crimes in the above paragraph did not make the cut in the  
> 35 articles,
> and yet Iraq cast such a shadow that misdeeds in other parts of the  
> world didn’t
> make the list at all. Who recalls the bizarre incident in which the  
> United
> States kidnapped and imprisoned the president of Haiti? Who’s  
> suffering from too
> much scandal fatigue to focus on the secret US funding and  
> assistance to an
> attempted coup against the president of Venezuela? What about the US
> encouragement and aid to Israel’s bombing of civilian targets in  
> Lebanon?
> President Bush issued an Executive Order on July 17, 2007, that  
> authorized the
> Treasury Department to seize the assets of American citizens on the  
> basis of a
> non-judicial process that denies them their Fifth Amendment rights,  
> but how can
> we get excited about that when the things Bush did on most other  
> days were worse?
>
> A law called the Hatch Act bars the use of federal resources for  
> partisan
> politics, and prohibits partisan political events and other  
> partisan efforts
> during work hours at federal government facilities, but Karl Rove  
> routinely
> worked on partisan politics out of the White House and held over  
> 100 illegal
> events in the Old Executive Office Building and at a variety of  
> government
> agencies. The First Amendment bans state religion, and yet Bush and  
> gang used
> numerous departments of the government to promote Christianity, in  
> violation of
> a variety of laws. In fact, you can pick just about any department  
> answering to
> the president and find that Bush and/or Cheney (usually Cheney)  
> exercised an
> unprecedented degree of control over it, reversed the decisions of  
> the head of
> the department, censored the reports of the staff, and imposed  
> policies in
> violation of laws.
>
> Take the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as an example that  
> didn’t find
> its way into the 35 articles. In July 2008, former EPA official  
> Jason Burnett
> blew the whistle on Dick Cheney, reporting that Cheney’s office had  
> pushed
> successfully to have “any discussion of the human health  
> consequences of climate
> change” removed from testimony that Julie Gerberding, director of  
> the Center for
> Disease Control had presented to Congress in 2007. Under  
> administrator Stephen
> Johnson, the EPA consistently took its orders from Cheney and Bush,  
> and
> pressured scientists to make their findings conform to White House  
> demands.
>
> In August 2003 the Bush Administration denied a petition to  
> regulate C02
> emissions from motor vehicles by deciding that C02 was not a  
> pollutant under the
> Clean Air Act. In April 2007 the US Supreme Court overruled that  
> determination.
> The EPA then conducted an extensive investigation involving 60 to  
> 70 staff who
> concluded that “C02 emissions endanger both human health and  
> welfare.” These
> findings were submitted to the White House, after which work on the  
> required
> regulations was effectively delayed for the remainder of the Cheney- 
> Bush presidency.
>
> Johnson’s EPA set ozone pollution limits at unhealthy levels after  
> rejecting the
> conclusions of its own scientists, and then weakened those limits  
> further after
> a late-night intervention by Bush on the eve of announcing the new  
> standards.
> And Johnson and the EPA stonewalled Congress, refusing to produce  
> subpoenaed
> documents, leading top senators and Congress members to  
> pathetically ask Johnson
> to resign, which of course he did not do, as he was merely  
> following orders from
> Cheney and Bush whom Pelosi had promised never to impeach.
>
> A close look at Bush and Cheney’s handling of the economy might  
> find impeachable
> offenses as well, ranging from protection of (rather than from)  
> predatory
> mortgage lenders, neglect of a foreclosure crisis, and abuses such  
> as the
> incident in March 2008 when Bush and his Treasury Secretary  
> transferred a
> mountain of public money to J.P. Morgan/Chase via the Federal  
> Reserve, in order
> to induce J.P. Morgan/Chase to assume the liabilities and assets of  
> Bear Stearns
> and Company at a price not determined in the free market or via  
> public bidding,
> in violation of the limitations expressly set forth in the Federal  
> Reserve Act.
>
> Most of the 35 Articles below address Bush, Cheney, and Bush’s other
> subordinates, and rightly so. The framers of the Constitution chose  
> a single
> executive in order to hold him (or her) accountable for the entire  
> branch of
> government. But articles focused on Cheney would have added more  
> crimes to the
> list. The resolution that Kucinich introduced in April 2007 did not  
> attempt
> comprehensive coverage. It included only three Articles of  
> Impeachment, alleging
> that Cheney had misled the Congress and the public about “weapons  
> of mass
> destruction” and about ties to al Qaeda, and had threatened an  
> aggressive war on
> Iran. Cheney had also personally profited financially from the  
> invasion and
> occupation of Iraq, via no-bid contracts that he awarded to a  
> company still
> paying him “deferred compensation.”
>
> And, of course, more crimes and abuses have emerged since July  
> 2008, including
> evidence of partisan hiring practices at the Justice Department,  
> and more
> evidence has emerged in support of the allegations found in the 35  
> articles,
> including evidence of war lies reported in Ron Suskind’s The Way of  
> the World.
> It is a good bet that yet more evidence will continue to be made  
> public in the
> coming months and years.
>
> Again, impeachment will remain possible, even with Bush and Cheney  
> out of
> office. Penalties that can be imposed include removal of pension  
> and barring
> from ever again holding public office. Civil and criminal  
> prosecution will be
> far more likely with Bush and Cheney and their subordinates out of  
> office.
> Whether impeachment or prosecution or other major steps to reform  
> our political
> system occur will largely not be determined by the outcomes of  
> elections, and
> the question of whether they occur is more important than the  
> outcomes of elections.
>
> I agree with George Mason’s analysis of our system of government  
> when he said on
> July 20, 1787, that “No point is of more importance than that the  
> right of
> impeachment should be continued. Shall any man be above Justice?  
> Above all shall
> that man be above it, who can commit the most extensive injustice?”
>
> Impeachment has been used far more routinely through American  
> history than most
> people realize. The history of impeachment is very well told by  
> John Nichols in
> his book, The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism.
> Impeachment proceedings have been initiated in the House 62 times,  
> and 17 people
> have been impeached. Thirteen of those have been federal judges,  
> one a secretary
> of war, one a senator, and two presidents. Seven individuals have  
> subsequently
> been convicted in a trial in the US Senate, all of them federal  
> judges.
>
> But that’s not the half of it. Impeachment often achieves its  
> purpose of
> preserving our democratic rights short of actually arriving at a  
> majority House
> vote for impeachment. Richard Nixon was never impeached, but he  
> rightly resigned
> from the presidency. Harry Truman was never impeached, but he  
> ceased the abuses
> of power for which Congress Members were pushing to impeach him and  
> which the
> Supreme Court rapidly ruled against (during “war time” to boot).
>
> Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was never impeached, but there  
> was a major
> push in Congress to impeach him. Prior to summer recess 2007, there  
> were 32
> Congress members who had cosponsored a resolution calling for  
> impeachment
> hearings to begin. Many more pledged to sign on when Congress  
> returned in the
> fall, but before that occurred, Gonzales announced his resignation.
>
> Our Constitution was written as Edmund Burke was leading the  
> impeachment of
> Warren Hastings in England—an effort that did not achieve  
> impeachment but did
> restore democratic checks on power. American colonies, too,  
> impeached governors
> and justices. In recent years, the British Parliament saw an active  
> effort to
> impeach Prime Minister Tony Blair, which weakened his power.  
> Impeachments went
> on in nations all over the world during the Cheney-Bush era, and a  
> threat of
> impeachment led Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf to resign.
>
> While only two US presidents, Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson, have  
> been
> impeached, and neither one of them convicted in the Senate,  
> articles of
> impeachment have also been filed in the House against presidents  
> Tyler,
> Cleveland, Hoover, Truman, Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr.  
> That’s a total
> of 10 out of 43 presidents, or 23 percent. Some of these cases  
> involved serious
> threats of impeachment, and others involved one or a dozen  
> defenders of our
> rights in Congress going up against Congressional leaders intent on  
> ignoring them.
>
> Since polling began, the least popular president on record is Bush  
> Jr., but both
> Truman and Nixon came close. Both were unpopular for seizing too  
> much power. In
> both cases, Congress began steps toward impeachment. In both cases,  
> abuses of
> power were checked. Neither Nixon nor Truman, however, ever held as  
> much
> unconstitutional power as did the real all-time leader in  
> unpopularity: Dick Cheney.
>
> Even this expanded list of past impeachments leaves out most of the  
> history of
> impeachment movements, which have pushed from the local level up, both
> successfully and unsuccessfully, for the impeachment of officials  
> in Washington.
> One of the judges successfully impeached and convicted was  
> impeached after a
> state legislature petitioned the House to impeach him, and another  
> after an
> individual petitioned the House. The Jefferson Manual, a book of  
> rules that
> Thomas Jefferson originally wrote for the Senate but which is now  
> used by the
> House, and which has been much added to since Jefferson’s day,  
> includes
> procedures by which individuals and state and local governments  
> have in the past
> petitioned, and can in the future petition, the House to impeach.  
> Such petitions
> are not binding, but can influence Congress when Congress is  
> willing to be
> influenced.
>
> Impeachment has been a path to electoral success throughout US  
> history. After
> the Whigs attempted to impeach Tyler, they picked up seven seats,  
> and Tyler left
> politics. Weeks after he lobbied for Johnson’s impeachment, Grant  
> was nominated
> for president. Lincoln had pushed toward the impeachment of Polk  
> without
> introducing actual articles. He, too, was elected president. Keith  
> Ellison, who
> introduced a resolution to impeach Bush and Cheney into the  
> Minnesota state
> legislature, was elected to Congress in 2006, where he did very  
> little to
> support impeachment. After the Republicans pursued impeachment of  
> Truman and won
> what they wanted (and the nation needed) from the Supreme Court,  
> they won in the
> next elections. After Nixon resigned, the Democrats won the White  
> House and
> picked up 4 seats in the Senate and 49 (yes, 49!) in the House.  
> Even during and
> following the unpopular impeachment of Clinton (an impeachment the  
> public was
> overwhelmingly opposed to), the Republicans held onto majorities in  
> both houses
> and lost very few seats. They also had the pleasure of watching Al  
> Gore campaign
> for president while pretending he was never close to Bill Clinton  
> and picking
> the unpopular Joe Lieberman, an advocate for Clinton’s impeachment,  
> as his
> running mate. On the other hand, when Democrats chose not to pursue  
> impeachment
> of Reagan for Iran-Contra, so that they could win the next  
> elections, the result
> was that they lost the next elections.
>
> Proposals to impeach Bush were almost always greeted by Congress  
> members with
> horrified shouts of “But we wouldn’t want a President Cheney!” The  
> greatest
> insurance against impeachment was an unpopular and frightening vice  
> president.
> Never mind that Cheney’s unpopularity would have hurt his own party  
> had he been
> made president. Never mind that impeachment is a process that often  
> accomplishes
> great things short of getting to impeachment, much less removal  
> from office.
> Never mind that if Bush could be impeached, Cheney certainly could  
> too. It
> didn’t matter By failing to impeach Bush and Cheney we have  
> established for
> future presidents and vice presidents that they can break the law  
> without
> expecting to be impeached.
>
> Congress members and their staffers believed that the Clinton  
> impeachment had
> ruined impeachment for good. There were perfectly good reasons to  
> impeach Bill
> Clinton, but he was impeached in an absurd bad-faith witch hunt  
> that made a
> mockery of our entire system of government.
>
> In March 2006, the Wall Street Journal did—for one day—what most  
> media outlets
> never did: cover the movement to impeach Bush and Cheney. While  
> most polling
> companies refused to ever poll on the question, even for cold hard  
> cash, Zogby
> had released a poll in November 2005 that we at After Downing  
> Street and
> Democrats.com had commissioned. The Wall Street Journal led off  
> with a graphic
> showing the results of that poll and those of a 1998 poll on  
> impeaching Clinton.
> The same pollster had conducted both polls and asked very similar  
> questions.
> Both polls were conducted among “likely voters.” The results showed  
> that 27
> percent favored impeachment for Clinton and 51 percent for Bush.  
> That would have
> been an impressive gap even without the contrasting media  
> attention. The
> impeachment of Clinton was promoted in saturation coverage night- 
> and-day for
> months, with newspapers editorializing in support of it. The  
> impeachment of Bush
> was absolutely unheard of and unmentionable in US corporate media.
>
> The Wall Street Journal did print that one article, but—tellingly— 
> the article was
> written exactly as if the reporter had not seen the graphic at the  
> top and was
> unaware of the poll results. “Democratic Party leaders,” she wrote,  
> were
> “keeping their distance from impeachment talk. They remember how  
> the effort
> boomeranged on Republicans in the 1998 midterm elections.” Of  
> course, that
> boomerang was minimal (the Republicans lost five seats and held the  
> majority),
> but look at those poll results again. The voters didn’t want  
> Clinton impeached,
> and did want Bush impeached. So, why in the world would voter  
> opposition to the
> former suggest that there would be voter opposition to the latter?
>
> From Impeachment to Prosecution
>
> To the credit of the American people, the impeachment movement  
> continued to
> grow, but off the radar of the Wall Street Journal. The movement  
> educated the
> public, influenced elections, and made lies about Iran a lot harder  
> to swallow
> than lies about Iraq had been. And now its focus is shifting from  
> Congress to
> courts, from impeachment to prosecution. Not all impeachable  
> offenses are
> crimes, and not all crimes are impeachable offenses, but there are  
> quite a few
> crimes in Kucinich’s 35 articles. Following this introduction is a  
> list of the
> crimes alleged. The list was drawn up by Elizabeth de la Vega, a  
> former federal
> prosecutor and the author of United States v. George W. Bush et  
> al., a brilliant
> book that depicts a presentation to a grand jury charging Bush and  
> gang with
> defrauding the nation into war.
>
> Now, according to Fox News, the only reason any of us ever favored  
> impeachment
> was because we hated Bush and Cheney and couldn’t beat them at the  
> ballot box
> (on the latter point, see Articles XXVIII and XXIX below). Having  
> failed, at
> least so far, at impeachment, pursuing prosecution (even after an  
> election has
> solved all our problems or at least altered them) must surely be  
> driven by
> nothing other than hatred, right?
>
> Wrong. If I thought we could deter future presidents and vice  
> presidents from
> abusing power by giving Cheney and Bush immunity for life, that is  
> exactly what
> I would propose we do. I would advocate for any deterrent effect. I  
> take the
> matter this seriously because we are preparing to hand what Michael  
> Goldfarb,
> Deputy Communications Director for presidential candidate John McCain,
> approvingly calls “near dictatorial power” to every future  
> president and vice
> president at a moment in history in which the twin dangers of  
> global warming and
> nuclear war threaten us far more seriously than has any nation with  
> which ours
> has ever clashed.
>
> While some have talked of hanging Bush and Cheney after the manner  
> of punishment
> we imposed on German and Japanese war criminals, I am adamantly  
> opposed to the
> possibility of imposing the death penalty on anyone, no matter what  
> they are
> convicted of, because it has been shown to encourage violence  
> rather than to
> deter it. Future presidents are not more likely to refrain from  
> abusing power if
> they might be executed than if they might be imprisoned for life.  
> If they are
> imprisoned for life, they can express their regrets in ways that their
> successors can understand.
>
> As I write this two months prior to the 2008 elections, we may have  
> an honest
> and verifiable election in November, but it’s difficult to see how  
> that is
> possible. And though we may elect a president and vice president  
> who abide fully
> by the Constitution, the treaties our nation has ratified, and the  
> laws that are
> on the books, that’s very unlikely.
>
> In a December 31, 2007, editorial, the New York Times faulted Bush  
> and Cheney
> for kidnapping innocent people, denying justice to prisoners,  
> torturing,
> murdering, circumventing US and international law, spying in  
> violation of the
> Fourth Amendment, and basing their actions on “imperial fantasies.”  
> If the
> editorial had been about robbing a liquor store or killing a small  
> number of
> people or stealing a small amount of money or torturing a single  
> child, then the
> writers at the New York Times would have demanded immediate  
> prosecution and
> incarceration. In this case they demanded that we sit back and hope  
> the next
> president and vice president will be better. How does that deter  
> future crimes?
>
> We can announce new policies, pass new legislation, amend the  
> Constitution. We
> can shift power to the Congress, and clean up our electoral system  
> to allow true
> representation of the people in the Congress. We can shift our  
> resources from
> the military to peaceful enterprises. We can eliminate secret  
> government and
> create total transparency. We can perfect the brilliant cuttingedge  
> democratic
> system that our nation created over two centuries ago and has done  
> little to
> update since. We can put an end to plutocracy, reclaim our  
> airwaves, ban war
> propaganda, and develop different public attitudes toward those  
> 95.5 percent of
> people in the world who are not Americans. And so we should. But  
> all that would
> not be sufficient to chain the dogs of war. Exquisite laws and  
> enlightened
> public attitudes are of no use at all as long as presidents and  
> vice presidents
> suffer no penalty for disobeying them, and in fact benefit  
> politically and
> financially.
>
> During the Democratic primaries, Senator Obama said he’d have his  
> attorney
> general look into the possibility that Bush and Cheney had  
> committed crimes, but
> that as far as he knew they hadn’t committed any. He later voted to  
> give telecom
> companies immunity for cooperating with some of the crimes. In  
> early September
> Joe Biden said that he, too, didn’t know of any crimes that had  
> been committed,
> but that an Obama-Biden administration would look into the  
> question. He also
> promised a justice department that would no longer commit crimes.  
> The day after
> Biden made these remarks, he went on TV to insist that an Obama-Biden
> administration has no intention of prosecuting Bush and Cheney.
>
> There’s a much more serious potential roadblock to domestic  
> criminal prosecution
> than Barack Obama’s (and, of course, John McCain’s) belief that  
> Bush and
> Cheney’s crimes should be hushed up, namely the possibility that  
> Bush will issue
> blanket pardons of anyone who engaged in crimes he authorized,  
> including
> himself. Without admitting that Bush or anyone else has committed  
> any crimes,
> Obama or McCain could take a position against any president,  
> himself included,
> ever pardoning anyone for a crime that the president authorizes. A  
> focus on
> pardons at least begins to limit the power of the individual  
> holding all the
> power. Congress, unless it is restored to power, serves — at best —  
> as just more
> people lobbying the president.
>
> Now, blanket pardons or self-pardons could be challenged. There may  
> be local and
> state and civil prosecutions possible despite pardons and  
> strengthened by
> pardons. And prosecution by a foreign country or the International  
> Criminal
> Court (ICC) is a possibility as well. With Obama and Biden  
> suggesting they will
> “investigate” whether any crimes have been committed, there is no  
> reason that
> they could not. That commitment is a second demand that we can make  
> of the
> candidates for president or the president elect.
>
> On the subject of local and state prosecutions, The Prosecution of  
> George W.
> Bush for Murder by Vincent Bugliosi argues that state and local  
> prosecutors have
> jurisdiction to prosecute Bush for the murder of US soldiers from  
> their states
> and counties who died in Iraq. We need to identify or elect courageous
> prosecutors and pair them up with gold star families.
>
> Some have expressed concern that when Cheney and Bush leave office  
> they will
> destroy lots of evidence of their crimes. I do not share this  
> concern, because
> they already have destroyed lots of such evidence, and yet more  
> than enough such
> evidence is in the public realm. And there is something that cannot be
> destroyed: the many potential whistleblowers who have been keeping  
> their mouths
> shut.
>
> We should not be relying on Congress. We should not be funneling  
> our money
> through electoral campaigns and into TV ads on television networks  
> that are
> destroying our country. We should be establishing a whistleblower  
> protection
> fund that can guarantee financial security and legal defense to those
> considering blowing the whistle on their superiors.
>
> There are also a variety of ways in which citizens can file suit.  
> My friend John
> Bonifaz served as attorney on a lawsuit against the President  
> before the
> invasion of Iraq on behalf of Congress members (including Kucinich)  
> and military
> families claiming an invasion would be unconstitutional without a  
> proper
> congressional declaration of war. John consulted in 2007 with a  
> professor at
> Rutgers University, who worked up a case with his students for a  
> full year, and
> in 2008 filed it in Federal District Court in Newark, New Jersey.  
> The Complaint,
> filed on behalf of a number of peace groups, seeks a Declaratory  
> Judgment that
> the President’s decision to launch a preemptive war against a  
> sovereign nation
> in 2003 violated Article I, Section 8 of the United States  
> Constitution, which
> assigns to Congress the power to Declare War. Every peace and  
> justice group in
> the country should be working with lawyers, choosing their favorite  
> Cheney-Bush
> crime, and filing a suit, the point being to change the public  
> conversation
> until we reach the point that a prosecutor will act.
>
> There is also a procedure called Qui Tam found in the Federal False  
> Claims Act
> that allows individual citizens to sue if the government spends money
> fraudulently, and to receive a percentage of any funds recovered.  
> Such a suit
> could conceivable be filed, or perhaps hundreds of such suits could  
> be filed,
> against government officials, including Dick Cheney, who set up  
> illegal
> contracts with Halliburton and other corporations, including  
> contracts to spend
> in Iraq funding that had been legally appropriated for Afghanistan.
>
> Prosecution is also possible in foreign nations. In May 2008 in  
> Milano, Italy,
> 25 CIA agents and an Air Force colonel went on trial in absentia  
> for kidnapping
> a man on an Italian street and renditioning him to Egypt to be  
> tortured. The
> victim’s wife testified for over six hours. A newspaper report read:
>
>    Nabila at first rebuffed prosecutors’ requests to describe the  
> torture
>    her husband had recounted, saying she didn’t want to talk about it.
>    Advised by prosecutors that she had no choice, she tearfully  
> proceeded:
>    “He was tied up like he was being crucified. He was beaten up,  
> especially
>    around his ears. He was subject to electroshocks to many body  
> parts.”
>    “To his genitals?’ the prosecutors asked.
>    “Yes,’ she replied.”
>    The judge said that the current and immediate past prime  
> ministers of Italy
>    would be required to testify during the trial.
>
> Foreign victims can also sue in US courts. Also in May 2008, an  
> Iraqi sued US
> contractors for torture. Emad al-Janabi’s federal lawsuit was filed  
> in Los
> Angeles and claimed that employees of CACI International Inc. and L-3
> Communications punched him, slammed him into walls, hung him from a  
> bed frame
> and kept him naked and handcuffed in his cell. In July, three more  
> Iraqis and a
> Jordanian who had been held and tortured in Abu Ghraib for years  
> before being
> released without charges filed similar suits. Alleged methods of  
> torture by the
> US contractors included: electric shock, beatings, depriving of  
> food and sleep,
> threatening with dogs, stripping naked, forcibly shaving, choking,  
> being forced
> to witness murder, pouring feces on, holding down and sodomizing (a  
> 14-year-old
> boy) with a toothbrush, being paraded naked before other prisoners,  
> forcing to
> consume so much water that you vomit blood and faint, and tying a  
> plastic line
> around your penis to prevent urination.
>
> And on August 15, 2008, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New  
> York
> announced that it would hear the case against the United States of  
> Canadian
> victim of US torture Maher Arar. His suit names, among others,  
> former Attorney
> General John Ashcroft, former Deputy Attorney General Larry  
> Thompson, and former
> head of “Homeland Security” Tom Ridge.
>
> We can also work at the local level to follow the example of  
> Brattleboro, Vt.,
> passing ordinances making it the law that if Bush, Cheney, or key  
> coconspirators
> enter our towns they will be arrested.
>
> And we can make citizens arrests all on our own right now. Here’s how:
> afterdowningstreet.org/citizenarrest
>
> Judge William Price in Iowa in July heard the case of people who  
> had been
> arrested for trying to make a citizens’ arrest of Karl Rove. When  
> told what they
> were charged with, the judge remarked “Well, it’s about time!”
>
> And it’s about time we re-established what John Adams called a  
> government of
> laws and not of men. To get involved in that project, go to the  
> website:
> afterdowningstreet.org and to Dennis Kucinich’s website: kucinich.us.
>
> <http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/36845>
>
> 	###
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