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35 Articles of Impeachment Introduced Against Bush
vsync64 writes "Last night, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) spent 4 hours reading into the Congressional Record 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. Interestingly, those articles (63-page PDF via Coral CDN) include not just complaints about signing statements and the war in Iraq, but also charges that the President "Sp[ied] on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment,' 'Direct[ed] Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens,' and 'Tamper[ed] with Free and Fair Elections.' These are issues near and dear to the hearts of many here, so it's worth discussing. What little mainstream media coverage there is tends to be brief (USA Today, CBS News, UPI, AP, Reuters)." The (Democratic) House leadership has said that the idea of impeachment is "off the table." The Judiciary Committee has not acted on articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney introduced by Kucinich a year ago.
Impeaching him would have been a better idea 7 years ago. Right now, it would have no real benefit.
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Everyone knows this won't pass. Everyone knows that this will get tabled at the first opportunity. Everyone knows Bush will be gone in seven months. What's the point?
Most likely, in February there will be a Democratic president and a more heavily Democratic congress. That's the time to open up investigations, because that's the time when investigations will actually have teeth.
This is just pointless grandstanding.
The cake is a pie
Actually, I think it's a good idea to force representatives to read out loud any legislation that they propose/endorse. Maybe then they'll actually read the fine details instead of just signing off on legislation that lobbyists wrote up for them.
Shouldn't count for much, as I'm not american, but impeaching this president might set a precedent and send a warning to newer presidents to tread lightly or be out of a job.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
I don't understand why this is silly. If "GWB's assault on the Constitution" doesn't merit impeachment, what does?
Congressman Dennis Kucinich read off all thirty-five articles of impeachment, each one accompanied by a great deal of supporting evidence, so that the other Congress Critters couldn't avoid hearing about it, and that at least people watching C-SPAN could witness it for themselves (as he probably knew it would get ignored by the traditional media). The vile actions of this administration need to rest on the consciences of all our representatives, whether complicit or just complacent.
:)
If you want to complain about wasting time in Congress, look up which party has done more filibustering in recent years.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
How interesting is it that attempting to impeach a president because he got a BJ and lied about it gets so much more publicity than one who kills thousands in an unjust war, breaks the constitution, and effectively turns a "free" country into a police-state. /me weeps for the future
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The House of Representatives would have to vote to impeach then the Senate would hold the actual trial. There's no actual chance of this happening right now though, it's just grandstanding.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Despite the howls from the far left, Bush didn't actually "lie and people died". Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, own report proves that. For example,
The list goes on, and Rockfeller's committee could only say, over and over, "Generally substantiated by intelligence information," though there was some exaggeration (which isn't the same as a lie).
HOWEVER! Spying on citizens, arresting and holding without probable cause or a trial, wiretapping -- basically using our Constitution to wipe his ass -- now that's a good enough reason to impeach him and the majority of assholes sitting on their fat asses in Washington DC (both Democrats and Republicans).
-- Will program for bandwidth
I sure hope he realizes he can't impeach the President for going to war, since Congress votes to go to war. I would assume someone in Congress would realize this.
If the article is based on lying, you'd have to prove the person knowingly lied. And lying isn't against the law, unless you're talking perjury. And I though Democrats didn't think perjury was impeachable.
That being said, I'm not a Bush lover by any means, and I find it fairly interesting that he is being brought up on charges of spying on citizens. Whether or not that is illegal is debatable, even if it is reprehensible, and again, we're talking about bills that have been passed repeatedly by a bipartisan Congress. In Bush is guilty, again, so is everyone who voted on those measures.
Thusly, the impeachment isn't going anywhere.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Yes. Any treaty signed by the President and ratified by the Senate carries the full force of law. The U.S. is a member of the U.N., created by a multinational treaty signed by the President and ratified by the Senate. Any action the U.N. takes in accordance with that treaty carries the weight of U.S. law (but of course this is only relevant in the U.S.).
This does not stop our country from thumbing its nose at U.N. resolutions, however. Who is going to enforce it?
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
- an elected member of US Congress, and
- in possession of relevant facts, and
- willing to step-up and present the facts, to
present a case that an employee of US Taxpayers is violating his oath to uphold the US Constitution.Further, Article II, Section 4 demands it.
Article VI
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I have mod points. But I want you to repeat for us your assertion that the Attorney General has the power to issue warrants. Alternately, you may explicitly state your belief that a law may override the Constitution.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
correct, of course. It's amazing how many people in the thread don't even know what impeachment means.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
> This does not stop our country from thumbing its nose at U.N. resolutions, however. Who is going to enforce it?
Care to point to the UN resolution that would/should have prevented the US from going into Iraq?
After you find that... do take a look at some of the UN resolutions on Iraq where you'll find that wording that gives any member nation unilateral authority to ensure compliance with existing resolutions.
Let us not forget that this whole thing began with Iraq thumbing it's nose at multiple UN resolutions despite new ones being threatened, passed and largely being ignored by all except for the US and it's allies.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Is it stupid because you disagree with the terms, or stupid because it will accomplish nothing?
I think that it is stupid because it distracts from core issues and fails to separate the constitutional and legal issues from the reasons people dislike the President. Bush is unpopular because Iraq isn't going the way people wanted to believe it would and because you can no longer make yourself rich by getting an ARM in a rising housing market.
But those aren't the things that come close to impeachable offensives. The possibly impeachable offensives (signing statements, domestic spying) are things that people don't care about and my even agree with the President on.
I would like to try to focus attention on those issues without it being about the individual. An impeachment circus isn't the way to do that.
Mostly, I dislike the idea of impeaching any President who becomes unpopular. We (correctly) don't have a "recall" mechanisms for federal elections, and we shouldn't use impeachment as a substitute.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
"Worst" in the sense of damaging the country more than helping it, and generally failing to uphold his responsibilities as well as failing to meet anything close to his stated goals in his largest presidential decision. But yes, he was certainly an effective leader, and he accomplished a great many things for his party, as well as running a very tight ship in terms of controlling Congress and the media. or, as Scott McClellan would put it, he was in perpetual campaign mode, and at that he was very successful. But perpetual campaign mode is not about success in substance, it's about success in contemporary perception.
Substance is what history will judge his term on, and barring any major changes in the Middle East, it's unlikely to be kind.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
And just so everyone knows that I'm not a Bush lover, I do think Bush can and should be impeached. The spying is a tough one, again because Congress passed it, and because our Constitutional right to privacy is more one of not being forced to self-incriminate. It would certainly be interesting to see played out in front of a court, but it isn't slam dunk by any means.
I'd have impeached Bush a long time ago over Jose Padilla however. Padilla is a scum bug, but he is an American citizen all the same. I routinely disagree with fanatics who scream the sky is falling, and that we'll all go to gitmo for being unpatriotic, but the Padilla case did happen. There should be fallout for suspending the rights of a US citizen.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Clinton was impeached and was found not guilty, that's why it didn't "get you anything". It got Bush something though, since the process was politicized so much that our congress is now afraid to do anything despite the very real crimes this administration has committed.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
As if it were just about being unpopular. Get a grip... if you actually READ the articles in the .pdf there is seriously strong evidence for the criminal acts this president has wrought upon us. The political grandstanding comes when there is failure to act on this!
And then your signature tells us the irony in your ad hominem for kucinich.
What would he have to have done for you to consider impeachment merited? And do you consider his actions so typical that we should assume that any standard that justifies impeaching him would, de facto, justify impeaching anybody simply for being president?
Oh, and btw, he has yet to be arrested or jailed.
Though we can certainly hope ;->
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
History is often a poor and indecisive judge. The Republican party will not dissappear and there will be plenty of people (including Bush himself) who will spend the rest of their days writing books on just how right they were. And while the general opinion of him and his sidekick will be certainly low, they will essentially carry no responsibility for their actions, and will spend the rest of their lives basking in the narrow but numerous circle of cronies. A very well-provided circle, I might add.
The Clinton thing was blown out of proportion because they had a provable lie under oath. The fact that it was a lie about a trivial matter (trivial to the public anyway; obviously not trivial to the Clinton family) was irrelevant to the right-wingers who attacked him on what many of them saw as a matter of principal. The problem is the same principals are ignored when one of their own engages in provable lie after provable lie about matters of grave public importance such as war and peace. But Bush and co. have been smart enough not to find themselves in the position of uttering provable lies under oath (they avoided this simply by refusing to take an oath when testifying to the 911 Commission, for example, and by refusing to testify altogether). So we don't have the "gotcha" moment that we had with Clinton. I can agree that Clinton's lies were shameful whether under oath or not and that perhaps I'd have more respect for him had he come clean, but it doesn't change the fact that the issue he lied about was one I had no business knowing anything about in the first place. Whereas Bush & Co's lies have been about issues that the public does have a right to know, and thousands of Americans have died as a direct result of these lies. I hope people can see the difference.
citing "antiwar.com"...Priceless. I don't even have to click the link to know it has no credibility.
How about every bill being publicly posted without alteration for 90 days before any voting is allowed? That would stop a lot of bad legislation from being pushed through congress.
There is no case for impeaching Bush.
He hasn't broken United States law.
What we ought to do is turn him over to the Hague to stand trial for war crimes.
Should we fail to do anything then we assert that we are tolerant of these violations and should expect ongoing erosion.
Quack, quack.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
After the 2006 election, Nancy Pelosi's first action as Speaker of the House was to take impeachment off the table. Why would she do that when the vast majority of the Democratic base clearly wanted it? Because, even if it had succeeded, it would have hurt the Democrats' chances in 2008. The first interest of the Democrats was to ensure that they remained in power, or solidified their grip on power. An obligation to the Constitution and their constituents was a second priority. And before anyone thinks I'm taking sides here, I'll say that both major parties do this.
Why are they doing it now, when Bush has only seven months left in office rather than a year and a half ago? Election year theater.
And that's why I cringe when people say "We really need to get the Democrats the White House and majorities Congress in 2008" or something to that effect. They have no interest in you, the country, or anything but power and money.
Kucinich is an exception among them. We need more like him, but he is an anomaly.
You apparently live outside of the Cleveland area much less the State of Ohio.
If
>Clinton LIED under oath in a federal court after taking an oath to tell the truth.
Bush took an oath to uphold the Constitution.
What happens in the Middle East over all, but specifically in Iraq. If Iraq stabilises and becomes a flourishing democracy, it'll be attributed to Bush's visionary leadership. The flaws and the problems will be slowly forgotten, replaced with the idea of a leader willing to stand up and do the right thing and free people. He'll be hailed as a great president. If Iraq stays the same or degenerates, he'll be remembered as a failure, who screwed things up and was a really shitty president, maybe even the worst.
A quote from a Bond film (which may have been somewhere else first but that's where I heard it) is "The line between genius and insanity is measured only by success." Well, there's some truth to that. Something that is "An insane stunt," when it fails can then become "A brilliant feat," when it succeeds. Success or failure often clouds how we evaluate the situation that lead to something.
Thus it will most likely be for Bush. The Iraq war has been the major thing of his presidency, so it's outcome will likely shape how he is judged. Doesn't matter if it's outcome really has nothing to do with his actions, or is even in spite of his actions. If it comes out good, he'll likely be held up as a great president, if it comes out poorly he'll be held as one of the worst.
Please bare with me on this for a moment, and put aside your feelings about if the Clintion or Bush impeachments are warranted...
I have a bad feeling we are witnessing a new trend in politics... that from here on out damn near every president will be impeached by the other side of the isle.
If I'm right on this it's going to hurt us as a nation in the long run, and make the act of impeachment have little meaning.
Think about it, if every president is officially pronounced a criminal.. what message does that send to the rest of the world about our nation? How strongly will our citizens back a president in times of crisis?
Not to mention anything of the millions of people of other nationalities (perhaps an order of magnitude higher) who have died, been irreversably wounded or displaced as a direct result of Bush's lies and mis-leading of the American public. A few Americans might have a problem with that, too.
Sounds like a good idea, but sometimes you need to act faster than 90 days in order to be effective. Unfortunately, any exceptions you can come up with would then be abused, much like everything else by this administration.
- passion
If there are no major changes in the Middle East in the next ten to twenty years which are attributable to GWB's actions, history will pretty much forget him as a NOP (relegating him to the same heap as Ford and Carter).
If there are major negative changes in the Middle East in the next ten to twenty years which are attributable to GWB's actions, history will be harsh to him. But, given the extent to which the Middle East was screwed up before GWB took office, blame will be apportioned and GWB's administration will receive only part of it. History will note that GWB was the only one of these administrations forced to act, starting with Afghanistan, due to the first massive terrorist attack on America's soil occurring not long after he took office. History is more likely to look critically at previous administrations for doing nothing than to simply label GWB as the source of the problems in the Middle East in, say, 2028.
However, if the Democrat's worst nightmare becomes reality, history is likely to look very favorably on GWB. This "nightmare", which has a finite chance of being reality in 2028, is that most of the following are true:
+ The U.S. military strategy of the past year in Iraq continued to improve the situation.
+ Iraq is governed by those fairly elected by its citizens.
+ A reasonable level of rights is afforded to minority groups in Iraq (i.e., no "tyranny of the majority").
+ Iraqis are in complete control of their internal security with little, if any, regular assistance from outside parties.
+ Iraq is a relatively safe place to live and do business.
+ Iraq is prospering economically as a country.
+ Iraqis are prospering socially and economically as individuals.
+ Iraqis of differing religions, heritages, and beliefs live in relative harmony.
(Admittedly, many Americans would be happy for most of these to be true within the US!)
While to many the preceding outcome may seem unlikely, recall that just a little over a year ago (April 2007) Senator Reid was proclaiming and this was the "standard view" at the time. Now, however, this view is hotly contested and many who previously held this view now grudgingly acknowledge that the surge seems to be working as violence has declined dramatically in Iraq and previously lawless areas are now under control of Iraqi security forces.
Predicting history is a tricky business - and those that are consistently good at it usually enrich themselves by acting on their insights on Wall Street or elsewhere rather than pontificating in online forums.
A lot of people including myself deeply respect Dennis Kucinich. Do you know anything about his accomplishments, or are you just parroting back what the conservative media tells you to say?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."
Wow...
/. were supposed to be at least above average intelligence...
All this nonsense based on spin and innuendo... And people actually believe this stuff...
I thought that the people on
I know, I'm trolling, thats not like me... But Wow...
---
When you start with the conclusion that you want, then throw out fact and reality, is your conclusion true?
--- When you start with the conclusion that you want, then throw out any facts that don't agree, is it true?
This has no chance of going anywhere.
emark, answer me one question: if not for Bush, then what the *fuck* do we have impeachment for, exactly? How do you violate half the Bill of Rights and not get impeached?
Kucinich is perceived as a nutjob by tools and fools such as myself.
Fixed that for you.
No matter how cynical you are, throwing the bums out is a Good Thing. Even if you install equally bad bums you've avoided getting entrenched bums.
Any formation when taken by itself is a small part of the worlds supply. If everyone took that attitude, we wouldn't have any oil. And no, alternative technologies would not provide more bang for your buck. At the vary least, if we drilled this oil, we could use it to build new alternative energy sources more cheaply. Good luck building your nuclear reactors, the same forces that stop new drilling will stop them too.
AMENDMENT XXVIII
Congress shall make no law exceeding in length this Constitution.
(Let's make them earn their pay by holding a separate vote on every pork-laden amendment.)
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
If the current crop of politicians had been in Congress 35 years ago, Nixon would have served a full second term.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
And that's why he did it. A permanent record.
Yes, the impeachment is going nowhere. Even if Pelosi did go forward with it, a split Senate would never get the 2/3 majority to actually oust Bush.
But at least people in the future will be able to look at the record and know that we all weren't duped.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Bush doesn't have to be an evil genius to be guilty of mass murder. The two are not mutually exclusive.
The buck stops with him, and it's HIS fault if he was to ignorant to think analytically about the bullsh*t that Cheney, Rove, and Rummy were spooning him.
Bush must be accountable for his decisions, whether or not they were his ideas or not...he's the 'decider' as he was fond of saying.
That said, I think he should be impeached, booted out of office in disgrace (along with Cheney), tried for many crimes, but I would stop short of saying he should be put in court for mass murder.
Thank you Dave Raggett
To me this issue is as simple as can be. We are (in theory) a nation governed by rule of LAW, not men. This administration has committed serious crimes. The proof is clearcut and easy to find for anyone who bothers to look. For some of the crimes, the domestic spying, we have public admissions of guilt. So being a nation of law, we put the accused on trial. The likely outcome of the trial is totally irrelevant at this point. In fact it doesn't matter if you support the republicans or the democrats, if you support the constitution you support impeachment and trail. It is the process that matters not the outcome. I supported the impeachment of Clinton, the crime was clear and so was the evidence, put him on trial and see how it works out. I was glad to see he was acquitted, but no man especially the President is above the law. If we let them/him get away with all of these crimes, then we set a precedent and since these crimes are about basic constitutional issues and issues of life or death for thousands of Americans and many more Iraqis, and the evidence is very strong, the precedent is that we become a nation governed by men. Laws become irrelevant to those in power.
Of course that's just my patriotic rhetoric. I believe that we stopped being a nation governed by law a looooong time ago. It's just now we have to live with it thrown into our faces on a daily basis, and there will be no consequences for these criminals except that a marginalized senator reads a bunch of accusations into the record.
-- QED
Plus, the Democrats are looking to rout the Republicans in November at least in the Senate and House
Which would happen regardless. If the Dems had opposed the Administration and the Iraq invasion from the beginning, they would be winning outright instead of winning by default.
Playing good politics and taking a firm stand on ethics aren't mutually opposing stances.
As long as we also require all the rest of the representatives to sit there and listen to everything be read...so they will all hear the fine details instead of just signing off on it....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Speaking as a non-USer, the answer is "Yes. It matters. A lot".
Collectively we need to see that the US system of checks and balances w.r.t. its executive branch actually works. Your main man has run roughshod over your own Constitution, and not been called to task over it.
If you don't call him on it, then we lose just a bit more faith in what's historically been a pretty good relationship between the US and most of the rest of the world.
And, between you and me, I don't think there's a lot of faith left between us these days.
You elected him, but all of us had to deal with the consequences. Then you re-elected him. The least you can do is ensure that stuff that's gone on under his watch can't happen again, and a very good step in that direction is to punish the bastard.
It doesn't matter if it takes years to do it, but it needs to happen if you want the rest of us to respect you again.
$5 a gallon? That's nothing. That's cheap. You ain't seen nothing yet.
And do your really think that domestic drilling is going to keep oil prices low? Tell me how that works, then.
Those oil reserves have immense long-term strategic and economic value. What's your reason for tapping them now? To save a few cents for people who are wasting oil just to fill their SUV to go to the supermarket? What a total waste. Instead of just throwing it all away for frivious purposes today, why not wait until it is really needed, and use it in a more efficient manner?
It's not really a good idea wasting precious oil on fueling private cars. We can do transport without oil. But it's harder to replace when making things like plastics and petrochemicals. Sure, there are some substitutes emerging. But oil would be really useful in the case of a real national emergency where we need to manufacture or rebuild things quickly, or in the case of a real war.
I still can't get over the fact that you think current gas prices are expensive, and that's significant justification for tapping domestic supplies. That's fucking hilarious.
... and then they built the supercollider.
ABOUT
FUCKING
TIME.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
First, to be "outed", Valerie Plame would have had to be a covert operative. She wasn't at that time. You can check the Congressional Record to read the testimony of the author of the governing regulations.
Even if she weren't, and I've seen noone but Bush defenders saying she wasn't, any other agent, front, or contact she'd dealt with in her career is now potentially exposed.
Second, the ultimate classification authority is the President. This has a long history of precedent. If the President wishes to reveal something which is classified, that's his prerogative. The Soviet nuke missile sites in Cuba were classified information and JFK didn't need anyone's permission to reveal that.
Ever hear of abuse of power? Was JFK giving up secret spy plane specs so that he could get revenge on an op/ed writer? In any case, your argument rests on the notion that Bush ok'd the leak. Did he do that?
Third, it was Richard Armitage who revealed the information about Valerie Plame. Even the special prosecutor knew that before investigating.
This is very hard for Bushies to understand, but if one person in the administration reveals a secret, that doesn't make it ok for the rest of the administration to launch a campaign to make sure the secret is as widely heard as possible.
This is a country of laws, It's the usA, not the usSR.
It sure is! There are laws against abusing presidential powers, against lying to congress to start wars, against trying to force US attorneys to prosecute people for political reasons, against torture, against arrest without trial. We've got a lot of laws, but no guts to enforce them.
Play Command HQ online
Even if half of it is true, it's more than enough.
No wonder Kucinich was able to snag such a young, sprightly and attractive wife. The man has the biggest balls in Congress.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
If one is true, it is enough.
-----
I watched part of it on C-SPAN but, judging from the coverage by the so-called "liberal" media, it doesn't even seem to qualify as news. Didn't happen. Nothing to see here...
Adultery is not a Democratic monopoly--during the impeachment both Delay and Gingrich were having affairs. During! Do Republicans care? No, which shows that the whole sordid thing was, after all, only about politics.
Which do you consider more morally wrong--Clinton's blowjob, or people being tortured at Abu Ghraib?
...is that articles of impeachment are fairly routine. Yes, it's true - they were introduced by various congressmen at various points against Bush prior to this, against Clinton (before Lewinsky), GB I, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson...
Any congressman can introduce articles of impeachment. Big deal. 99.9% of the time, it's a publicity stunt. Just like this time.
Advice: on VPS providers
Try to remove your bias and read what I typed. The facts are the facts.
No, it's very naive to think ANYONE a person who was supposedly an undercover agent 15 years prior has dealt with is "potentially exposed." Semantically, your statement is correct but it's not realistic. Everyone, you included, interacts with thousands of people over 15 years. You may have heard of the concept of six degrees of separation. Apply that and it's quickly apprent the words you used, while semantically correct, yield an impossibly large number of contacts when seen from the "outside." It's common for people who have never been in these types of environments to think that type of thing. As I said, read the Congressional Record. The sworn testimony during a Congressional investigation is more accurate than projections.
No, my "argument" does not rest on "the fact that Bush OK'd the leak." By definition, the President can't "leak" anything because "leaking" would involve unauthorized disclosure which, by definition, the President cannot do. It is impossible for the pre-requisite to exist. The President has the authority to declassify, at will, either explicitly or implicitly.
"Abuse of power" is a phrase with no legal definition. The Executive Officer is not subservient to the Representitive Brach of the Federal Government. The CIA is in the Executive Branch, under the authority of the Executive Officer. Again, the President cannot be guilty of violating classification. It really is that simple.
As as aside, the legal basis for action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq was laid years ago. The first Gulf War was never officially ended according to the U.N. conditions and Saddam's troops kept violating the cease fire agreement. An existing war cannot be "started" again, it can only be in stasis, continue or end. (The Korean War never ended, either. It's in the same situation, a cease fire agreement.) Saddam's troops violated the cease fire repeatedly during Bill Clinton's terms in office. History didn't start in February of 2001.
WRT "a campaign to make sure the secret is as widely heard as possible", it was Valerie Plame and her husband in conjunction with Vanity Fair and the traditional news media who were proclaiming a "secret" had been revealed. Those are not Federal Branch entities and, most certainly, not controlled by a Republican administration. The President didn't force all the "reporting" and speculating in the press. He didn't put a scarf and sunglasses on Valerie Plame, sit her in a convertible next to her husband, take a photo, write an article and publish them. Valerie, most certainly, wasn't trying to "hide" and wasn't concerned about any past contact who might have been "potentially exposed." If she was, she wouldn't have taken those actions. You can dig through archives such as Lexis-Nexus or even the recorded press briefings on C-Span's website if you wish. What you'll find is the Executive Branch overwhelmingly said there wasn't any "there" there.
Joe Wilson was a paid staffer for John Kerry's Presidential campaign before he wrote the article in which he claimed the VP sent him on a secret mission to gather intel in Niger. Curiously, there was no record of such a meeting, Joe's story changed significantly over time and even he said there was no written record. Additionally, he did state that Iraq was seeking to build increase imports from Niger whose primary exports are livestock products, onions and Uranium ore. Look at a map. Iraq wouldn't get importing onions across Libya then onto ships when they could come from much closer areas. Liby's public renouncement of NBC porograms wasn't an isolated occurrence. It's all in the Congressional Report.
What you are promoting fits the structure of a halfway decent conspiracy theory but only with "a willing suspension of disbelief" given the facts.
Kittens and bunnies were not mentioned I believe.
News about the Kettle Open Source project: on my blog
Maybe they weren't so great after all.
The most dangerous people in the world are those who believe that violating human rights for any reason is worse than not doing so. These people realize that peace can become viral, and if they are charismatic enough, they can start persuading people to give up force as a form of politics. Those who rely on force fear these people more than anyone else. Ghandi was such a person, as was MLK. Look what happened to them.
In fact, this is the central story in Western culture. A guy suggests (just suggests... doesn't start a revolt or hit people or act like a bigot) that we abandon violence and hate as a means of life and promptly gets nailed to a piece of wood for his trouble. I'm not a believer, but the essence of the story is spot on.
That's my dose of idealism for the day.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Simple: because his remarks were made out of session, they carry as much weight as if he'd made them on a talk show. Which he has, frequently.
Had he called for impeachment *in* session, it'd be front page news.
I think you'll find that theres a pretty obvious answer ... hang on, Living with Lohan just started on TV. bbl
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
I assume this was meant to be funny, but in reality it seems like that statement is closer to the truth than it should be.
If anything, the punishment for breaking a law should be more severe the higher up in the government you are.
This would discourage people in power from abusing their power.
Granting them any kind of immunity is asking them to abuse you...
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Peaceful civil disobedience is breaking the law and suffering its consequences to draw attention to the law and have it changed.
That is a whole lot different from breaking the law and trying to get away with it. The point of civil disobedience is that you don't want to get away with it.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
It's an interesting problem that leaders like MLK or Ghandi can only exist in countries that do have in general a rule of law and some right to free expression.
How long do you think either of them would have lasted in the USSR, Mao's China, or most African dictatorships?
And for the record, Jesus wasn't nailed to the cross for his support of being peaceful - he was nailed to the cross for directly challenging the theocracy's right to rule. He walked into temples and trashed the place (read the bible closely in the story about the money lenders - no offense intended, but it sounds like a standard moderately violent protest to me). He claimed that people went to heaven through *him*, not through the established hierarchy. He was also a charismatic demagogue of a conquered people - one of many claiming to be the Jewish Messiah who would lead his people to freedom - most of the others leaned toward freedom in the military sense. So whether you hold he was set up by the Jews for challenging the established hierarchy or by the Romans for rebellion... it's not so much because he was preaching peace and people didn't like it.
It sure does seem odd that there hasn't been much documentation released of WMD but don't forget that WMD doesn't only mean nukes. Genetically-modified smallpox could bring Biblical-level problems if it were released and it doesn't take much. I read the book, "Demon in the Freezer" which discussed it. The book was written before the invasion of Iraq and isn't a "drum beating" book. Anyway, it says the Soviets had satellite tech to carry live spores and drop them. It also says Iraq was working on modifying pox. You can read the book to get a better idea of the scale that bio could bring. What is some of it is missing? What if they are scared to tell people that because of possible panic? What if they know some of it is in Western Europe or the U.S. but don't know where? Saddam had used a lot of chem weapons on the Kurds and the whole world thought he had a bunch of stuff. He had been acting as if he did have it. It's possible he HAD destroyed all of it or used it up or somebody else destroyed/stole it. Maybe he was bluffing too long. There were reports of a Russian truck convoy going into Syria just before the invasion. Is that true? If so, what was in the trucks? In the first few weeks after the invasion there were a lot of news stories about huge caches or small arms and cash that were found all over the place. Who knows what was there and where it was hidden. Maybe that stuff doesn't exist and hasn't for years but then why didn't Saddam admit it? He had enough military power to keep the Iranians at bay. Maybe it's being used to blackmail somebody. It doesn't make sense to me but neither do the people who scream WMD didn't exist because they all said it did. I have no idea why the Administration hasn't defended themselves more vigorously. You're right, it looks like a huge PR mistake. I'm not "pretending" there could be a good reason for not releasing information. I don't know any of the "inside information." I'm just thinking about the stuff I see in the press and history. If you look at other intelligence "flaps" with a long-term view, you'll see lots of similar occurrences. The Venona transcripts weren't released until about 10 years ago. Obviously, there was some value in keeping them classified. Just last week it was finally publicly announced that Bill Ballard was actually hunting for the subs Scorpion and Thresher when he found the Titanic in 1985 (I think it was that year.) Obviously, there were reasons not to release the information at that time. Surely, there are valid reasons not to release more information about Iraq. Do you remember the initial reports and all the complaining about how the U.S. troops supposedly allowed some important antiquities museum in Baghdad to be looted? Turns out it was the currators who hid a bunch of the stuff and some of it was stolen by them. Sometimes information is withheld because it would reveal other things that are important. Things are not always what they seem.
If the U.S. wanted the oil, why hasn't it been taken? If, as you claim, the majority of the public thinks it was an oil grab, who gave them that idea? It's a dumb idea, actually. If the U.S. had that motivation, it would be far easier and more productive to take over Argentina. If the U.S. wanted that oil, why isn't the world supply of oil much higher? That would have been a huge expense compared to buying oil. It doesn't make sense.
I looked at a map before my first post to this thread and saw Libya is between Niger and the ocean, a relatively short distance from Iraq. The way Libya gave up their WMD sure looks like they were rolled. There must be lots of that sort of thing that happens but isn't revealed in the open. Just a few days ago there were some reports (I think it was also here on Slashdot) about the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture's laptop and suspicion the Chinese had copied the hard drive. Why would THAT have been in the news? It seems more like trying to send somebody a message than anything else.