Impeach President Bush

President Bush should be impeached, convicted and removed from office. Here is why:
• He launched an unprovoked, unilateral, uncalled for war in Iraq.
• He lied to the American people with bogus claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Iraqi ties to al-Qaida. His minions peddled lies about mushroom clouds and chemical weapons. (The more things change the more they remain the same. Congressman Lincoln in 1848 said President Polk’s Mexican War was “from beginning to end the sheerest deception.”)
• Bush cooked the intelligence books to fit his predetermined war.
• He authorized the National Security Agency to snoop illegally on emails and phone calls without getting a warrant, trashing the Fourth Amendment and evoking the totalitarian horrors of Big Brother.
• He authorized torture contrary to all the lofty principles of the nation. He endorses the notorious torture school at Fort Benning, Georgia.
• He masked torture by rendition--outsourcing it--to countries that do not have the scruples America espouses.
• He sanctioned secret CIA prisons--torture chambers--in Eastern Europe.
• He ordered the Google search firm to hand over millions of records, a gross invasion of privacy.
• He has promulgated a pernicious and unconstitutional doctrine of a “signing statement,” declaring that the law is what he says it is rather than what Congress says it is. Congress passed an anti-torture proviso banning degrading and inhumane treatment of prisoners. But Bush proclaimed in a signing statement that he could ignore the law.
• He has the FBI and NSA badgering peace groups, reaching the absurdity of calling Quakers in Florida a threat because they protested military recruiting in high schools.
• He pushed the Patriot Act with its unconstitutional provisos for “sneak and peek” searches of homes, demands for business and personal records, and library and bookstore records of what people are reading.
• He denies due process to scores of prisoners held for years without charge. He claims he has the right to imprison without trial anyone he labels an “enemy combatant.”
• He has a long record of lies and manipulations, deceptions and distortions. His credibility has vanished.
• He disdains the whole system of checks and balances, the hallmark of U.S. democracy.
• He orders monitoring of defense lawyers, scholars, journalists and political activists with nonterrorist links to the Middle East.
In brief, he unconstitutionally usurped power in his so-called fight--and fearmongering--since 9/11. America is supposed to be a democracy not an absolute monarchy. He is President Bush, not King Bush. Yet in his view, as commander in chief he can invade Iran and order the assassination of whomever he pleases.
Bush’s dumping of the Constitution recalls the prescient novel by Sinclair Lewis, “It Can’t Happen Here,” published in 1935. The book warns of a fascist dictatorship in America. And Bush also reminds you of President Eisenhower’s farewell address in 1961 warning about the military-industrial complex: “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”
Non-impeachable offenses abound in the terrible Bush presidency with its daily outrages.
• He mixes theology with ideology contrary to the nation’s historic separation of church and state. He has substituted religious fundamentalism for hard science, using a zealous faith rather than reason.
• Right-wing politics are everything to him, facts nothing. He says dissent from his policies abets terrorists, making it treason to reason.
• His administration buys favorable news coverage of education in America and pays for propaganda in the Iraqi press…It says the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the United States…His IRS hunts down poor people while not bothering the fat cats…He insists on immoral tax cuts for the wealthy.
• He repeatedly wants to investigate the leakers rather than address the damaging information they reveal. He calls it shameful that the Times broke the story about NSA domestic spying.
• Under Bush’s terribly secretive administration, Vice President Cheney met behind closed doors with oil executives to set energy policy. The public is not entitled to that information, Cheney loftily declares…Bush has allowed his GOP epigones to slime Vietnam veterans like Max Cleland, John Kerry and John Murtha.
The long bill of indictment is sufficient reason to force Bush from office. He has already done great harm to America at home and destroyed its credibility abroad. Impeachment would stop him from doing further harm and eroding still further America’s worldwide moral standing.
Sparks Tribune, Jan. 26, 2006