Even as a Republican — and a conservative one to boot — I can clearly see the legitimate points made by Democratic leaders. But, there is yet another point to be made. And you won’t hear it from the Democrats.
Inherent in the power of Congress is the power to declare war … and to end it. No Democrat has sought to exercise that authority even as its party leadership bitterly complains about the manner in which the president and his administration have run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution and international laws as well.
Inherent in the power of Congress is the ability to impeach and remove executive leaders who have misled the American people into an illegal, illicit, unjust and immoral war. The cost of the war in lives and money is incalculable. The number of lies and deliberate deception is, however, well documented.
Additionally, Congress has the ability to seek its own independent investigation into whether the U.S. truly was attacked by rogue terrorists on 9/11 or if there was some complicit involvement by the executive branch. If it turns out to be as one former national security adviser testified before a senate committee earlier this year, the people could discover that our own government created the horrific scenes we witnessed that day. Numerous questions still remain and millions of citizens have constantly called for a real investigation.
Congress — in particular the whining Democrats opposing the leadership in the White House — have ignored the cries of the people.
Inherent in the power of Congress is the ability to impeach the vice president. Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced a bill to impeach the vice president — warning that if the president was impeached first, Dick Cheney would simply move up. But if Cheney is impeached, then Congress can impeach the president immediately thereafter, causing a monumental shift in leadership.
It is not only a strategy that is good for America and our troops in the Middle East, but the Democratic Party as well. Still, it is going nowhere. It is as if the political enemies of the republican administration might also be serving as his ally against the American people.
Kucinich’s bill, H. Res. 333, has 14 co-signers and is currently stuck in the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Civil Rights icon, John Conyers.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - John Bambenek
Please, all the conspiracy theories have been debunked. Move on.
2 - Michael
Wow. When a Conservative Christian says things I'd expect to hear among my Liberal Atheist crowd, I think it's time to worry. It's a challenge just to get other liberals to agree that there's no work more important than impeachment right now. Pelosi and the Democrats claim that it's more important to pass good laws, but those good laws have been vetoed every time, and bad laws that reflect that administration's every wish get passed instead. How in the world can this be said to be progress?
3 - Nancy
Good job. It's about time someone besides me suspected that BushCo is setting up a scenario for a political coup that would lead to a permanent Bush white house. Likewise I agree, the Dems in congress are doing nothing - NOTHING - to either stand up to BushCo or to prosecute on their own, but on the contrary the two female leaders are seemingly doing everything they can to block active impeachment &/or prosecutions or investigations. One has to wonder what stake they have in all this. I suppose we'll never know.
Meanwhile, Bush, Cheney, & Rove are plotting highest treason unimpeded, while the maggots in congress sit in the infested carcass of the capitol, wring their hands, & do nothing.
Would that Al Qaeda or some such would get their brains & their balls together & take out those actually responsible for their putative perceived wrongs, instead of bombing everyone else.
4 - moonraven
Actually, Bush and his Gang already pulled two coups. Successful ones, in fact. And not a shot was fired.
Having the voting machines on your side is more effective than paying off a bunch of generals--who might just take the power away from you.
There is no question in any aware person's mind that the US is a dictatorship. The only question is:
How long will it last?
5 - Lee
Might I suggest Debunking 9/11 Debunking by David Ray Griffin and if you have not read it, pick up a copy of the 9/11 Commission Report along with David Ray Griffin's Omissions and Distortions. Google Operation Northwoods for a glimpse at what elements within our own military were willing to bring upon our nation 40 years ago. At the very least, do some research into Philip Zelikow who was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission.
This is such an ugly scenario that some people simply can't look at the evidence with an open mind and prefer to believe and defend an outrageously silly and simple story about 19 Arabs with box cutters! But denial won't get us anywhere. When another "terrorist attack" occurs within our borders I suggest that we all face the music and consider domestic rather than foreign enemies. We're in for a bumpy ride folks.
6 - weekapaug81
great article
7 - Al Barger
Yeah, yeah, with the cheesy conspiracy theories already. This statement in particular right here regarding the Bush administration is pretty much 99.9% factually wrong "The number of lies and deliberate deception is, however, well documented." You just made that up based on what you want very badly to believe.
Any president is likely to push their bounds of authority to some extent, and there are certainly a few points where Bush et al have done so.
But Congress can't just do anything they want anytime they want, and they certainly do not get to demand absolutely anything they want from the White House. Bush is probably right to be resisting a lot of those specific things you list early in the article.
8 - Nancy
Unfortunately, Al, when it happens (not if), it won't be any comfort to those of us conspiracy theorists to tell YOU, "We told you so...."
9 - dr rdw
In response to couple of amazingly naive comments made above. The official government conspiracy theory has been so well discredited that I'm amazed there any who still buy into it. Further, the steady erosion of liberty and rights in our country is a treasonous reality. It has been deliberate with an obvious end in mind.
Oh, an Al, why don't you demonstrate with data and sources where the comments regarding BushCo. are 99% wrong. Should be interesting to see you try.
10 - David
Lovely article. If only we could believe Al and trust our own government. Sadly, no one with an open mind who has researched this topic can say that it's not going to happen. This time if/when the bushites try to take control, I'm gonna fight back if it means going to gitmo, or dying. I'm not a martyr, I'm just standing up for myself, and my rights, I have no reason to fight with a cause, unless it suits me.
11 - Dave Nalle
Millions of Americans are convinced that 9/11 was just such an event,
Which just proves that millions of Americans are idiots and that those who perpetuate these conspiratorial fictions are victimizing the weak minded.
And you massively mischaracterize what Brezinski said to the Senate. What you interpret as a 'false flag' operation is his suggestion that the US might provoke an incident with Iran - like the recent seizure of British sailors - to use as a pretext for a war. Hardly the same thing as blowing up the WTC and killing almost 4000 Americans.
I really don't understand how you can repeat these lies and look at yourself in the mirror every day.
dave
12 - Nancy
I - & the rest of us with open eyes - don't understand how you can be so willfully blind to ignore, misread, misinterpret, or twist the FACTS that have been reported or are there in living color via video, radio, or transcript, of BushCo's actual words & deeds. Au contraire, you willingly & willfully swallow all the pap, spin, & lies dished out by the shovelful by Snow & all the other BushCo puppet speakers, or by Bush & Cheney - the Liars-in-Chief - themselves. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see, whether thru misguided loyalty or refusal to admit being wrong. The FACTS are there, in print, on tape. Too many for any sane & thinking person to ignore.
13 - jackieo
may I start off saying that i respect you opinion and your voice concerning the day of september 11th and that this blog was very well written. I agree that there are holes in the stories the bush administration has told the citizns of the United States about september 11th, however, by focusing your attention and pointing the finger at the bush adminstartion and the US government you are assuming that the events of 911 were infact a inside job. assuming that the government has not released all the imformation because then the data would point a finger to the government, which caused the death of 3000 of their own citizens to further help politics. It seems that you are saying that the government is this corrupt body of people that are in office to voice the people they represent, however they are acting through a different agenda that doesn't include the American people? i think that there are holes in the information that the government has left out when telling us the truth, however, i believe that the united states government would not killtheir own 3000 citizens for their own agenda.
14 - zingzing
"i believe that the united states government would not killtheir own 3000 citizens for their own agenda."
oh, i believe they would kill their own citizens, but i doubt they'd do it here when they can just do it in iraq.
15 - Dave Nalle
Nancy, was #12 directed at me? You have factual evidence that Bush was behind the WTC attack? Wow, share it with us. I'm eager to see it.
Dave
16 - Matt
I'm canadian and you jerks down there better get your shit together come this election and stop the economic and moral spiral that i percieve your country as taking. Bush STOLE the election the first time and then WTF you elect him again? and now your dollar is crappy your boys are dying (not that ours aren't but they're in afganistan y'know...with terrorists) and your so called "freedoms" don't exist. investigate 9/11 all you want but fix the political system first.
17 - Baronius
Bush won in 2000 and 2004.
Bush and Cheney have done nothing impeachable.
9/11 was a terrorist attack.
Some people say that the Big Lie wins by being repeated so many times that people believe it. I don't think so. I think that people don't believe it, but get tired of disputing it.
I'm kind of baffled that the 9/11 conspiracies have continued to gain strength, though. I mean, vices are supposed to give you pleasure. Lying to oneself about 2000 and 2004 is probably soothing to a Democrat. But what cheap thrill does one get by self-delusion about September 11th? I dunno.
18 - Dave Nalle
It's beyond me, Baronius. And the mental contortions they have to go through to deny obvious fact and accept bizarre alternative theory instead have got to be painful - at least to the sane mind. But maybe they are no longer sane.
I have to comment that I'm irked by the title. The only reason the author isn't of the left or the right is not that he's in the middle, but that he's so far out in ultra right/left Bircher paranoia land that he's beyond the partisanship of left and right and has become a partisan of pure insanity. That is more dangerous than simple old left or right.
Dave
19 - Baronius
Nalle, it's true that when you're on the flat part of the bell curve on either side, you can sound similar. The thing that amazes me is that, as the article says, there probably are millions of people who believe this stuff.
I know I've said this before, but I'm reminded of something Arendt wrote. The totalitarian mindset develops in a culture of cynicism and gullibility. They seem to be opposite things, but the deliberate cynic will always assume that the official story is false, leaving him to accept any unofficial story, no matter how absurd. C.S. Lewis once said something similar - I don't recall it exactly, but I think it was that people believe absolutely nothing that they read in the paper.
20 - REMF
"Bush and Cheney have done nothing impeachable."
Yeah, but would someone please give these two blowjobs so we CAN impeach them...?
21 - Mike Green
Thanks to all who have replied.
Please allow me to address some of the concerns regarding my sanity.
I try very hard to write articles that are readable without merely citing sources throughout. But few things are more frustrating than folks attributing relevant, factual and researchable data to my presumed insanity.
For example, if the detractors would simply do their own research without sitting on the sidelines slinging nasty muddy comments perhaps they would expand their own mental horizons and discover the following:
Conyers is the sole authority preventing a democratic vote on articles of impeachment presented to his committee by 15 members of Congress. (That's 15 against 1 for those of you keeping count).
For those of you who have failed to read the charges within H. Res. 333, well, perhaps you all are afraid of being wrong? The vice president is indeed impeachable. The evidence presented is his own testimony over and over on many separate occasions â€" contained within the bill that was introduced. The damage committed by this administration is incalculable in millions of lives impacted and billions of dollars spent, predicated upon deliberate deceit.
Pelosi and Clinton together could easily prevent the executive branch from conducting its tyranny, yet neither have any intentions of doing so. Thus, we have a conspiracy of compliance between the legislative and executive branches ... against the American people.
The president has indeed committed acts that are impeachable offenses. However, those who have little knowledge of the historical definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors" would argue to their deaths that deliberate deceit of the American people in order to send the country to war sinks to the depth necessary to remove a president. Such an argument flies in the face of the rationale presented by those who wrote the constitution.
But before one goes wandering into a minutiae of reasoning behind a single charge, perhaps the detractors should examine all of the numerous acts of definace committed by this presidential administration (and keep in mind that I was also in favor of impeaching Clinton, who undermined due process and justice for an American citizen he wronged in order to cover up other nefarious acts. No president ought to abuse his or her authority at the expense of the citizenry, whether it is one or millions).
Regarding that which is well documented:
The expansion of the authority of the executive branch is well documented.
The decisions to refuse compliance with the legislative branch is documented.
The refusal to open the doors of public access to critical information pertaining to alleged crimes to the media, the American people and the qualified legislative representatives of the people is well documented.
The support of illegal detainment, illegal espionage upon Americans, illegal threats to foreign governents, illegal wars, illegal imprisonment, illegal torture, and a number of other illegal acts are indeed well documented.
But is scares me most of all is not what Bush and Cheney do and have done, but rather to see that the acts committed by this administration sit well in the minds of some as acceptable. In fact, if the acts committed by this administration, which have gone beyond the illegal acts committed by previous administrations, are acceptable to detractors on this post, it appears that whoever is in power in 2009 will have Carte Blanche authority to do as they please.
And that, my friends, is the scariest scenario of all ... when the American people willingly turn over complete authority to the executive.
22 - Mike Green
I made an error in a statement in comment #21. I stated:
"However, those who have little knowledge of the historical definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors" would argue to their deaths that deliberate deceit of the American people in order to send the country to war sinks to the depth necessary to remove a president."
I meant to say:
However, those who have little knowledge of the historical definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors" would argue to their deaths AGAINST the notion that deliberate deceit of the American people in order to send the country to war sinks to the depth necessary to remove a president.
23 - Baronius
Mike, the dumbest thing that a person can do is try to psychoanalyze his political opponent. Republicans wasted a lot of time trying to understand Clinton's motivations. A lot of people on this site do the same thing with Bush and Cheney. With Bush, it's usually something religious combined with a father fixation. Cheney usually is depicted as a combination neoconservative and devil.
I know it's pointless to approach the other person's political position psychologically instead of rationally, because you never learn to construct an argument against him. But for the life of me, after listening to the 9/11 theorists, I can't find reasoning. The thinking doesn't seem to be driven by fact or by politics. I have to resort to psychology.
Take the claim that Bush lied us into a war. All evidence indicates that the world's intelligence agencies believed that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The Baath government did support various terrorist organizations. They broke their post-Desert Storm cease-fire agreement repeatedly. Bush didn't lie about those things.
I get that the war hasn't gone as expected. That doesn't make a prior decision a lie. But every single thing I've just written, you've read before. I've read the other side's arguments. They're wrong. I'm just stumped: either the anti-war people are ignoring the facts, or they're distorting the facts deliberately. I'm sorry that comes out as an accusation, but I don't know what else to think.
24 - X
If 9/11 was actually a legitimate, unexpected terror event that precipitated the U.S.'s enormous military retaliation, it would have been the exception, not the norm. Anyone remember the Gulf of Tonkin? Lusitania? The Maine? Pearl Harbor?
You people who can't seem to find a single hole in the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 need to take stock of what is really going on in your own minds.
It's time to wake up, America.
25 - eliot bernstein
All roads to this political corruption took a major turn for this worse when Skull and Bones men with sworn oath to a secret nazi agenda and the federalist also sworn to overthrow the government came together in a common pursuit that is rapidly becoming known as Patentgate. Some major law firms, Proskauer Rose (Joe Proskauer was involved in the attempted coup of FDR and is a known nazi sympathizer that looks Jew) and Foley & Lardner headed by Michael Grebe (RNC Chief Counsel, Former CEO of Foley, now CEO of ultra ubber right Bradley Foundation and biggest backer behind the scenes of Reagan, Bush I and Bush II the worst years of the country). Reagan was like Bush, script readers for this man who is re-writing the Constitution by the second to serve a nazi agenda for America.
They came together to steal patents and cover up when they were caught by Arthur Andersen including doing secret deals to transfer the patents to energy company Enron. That led to those two being vanquished from the planet trying to cover up the bigger crime. Realizing that they had been caught in hundreds of crimes against the United States, leading the patent office to suspend the stolen properties while investigations remain ongoing, they plotted a cuop on the country through election fraud. Once in, well the fox is in the henhouse. For all those interested in the truth visit the Iviewit homepage at www.iviewit.tv and also read the book at the home page The Fight for the Grail, to not know this story is to not understand the history of inventions heralded as the holy grail and the story of how those who tried to steal it are beginning to fry in hell. This is not a repub/dem thing, this is skull and bones and no matter who won the last election it was one of these two spoiled Yale kids Bush or Kerry who have sworn oath to what is called by them "The Order of Death" and who eat off nazi flatware and believe in two classes them and their slaves.
All great systems get perverted when spoiled third generation pukes, get power, join secret clubs with agenda's against the people they have sworn oath to, in fact, agenda's that are treasonous in nature. Screw impeachment, these guys need to be tried for war crimes and treason and hung at dawn, nooses on iviewit. Like all spoiled kids of kings, who because of their unearned status of elite, mistreat the people, well history says no matter how they change laws or whatever they do, they soon are to have pitchforks in their heads. Conspiracy Theory this is not, that is there tag line to make you think it does not exist, kind of like how they cover up their organizations and acts in flowery terms like patriotism and hard work. dick cheney has been the kiss of death to everything in his life, every campaign he touched, he is from winnetka il, where a lot of rich kids who hate hard workers plot plans. This one seems to have taken on legs. both republicans and democrats need to weed the parties of this trash.
the sleeping sheep have awoken, they are exposed and things are being done by many good people to stop them, hold on, more will surface soon about the plot.
eliot bernstein
inventor
iviewit
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