Impeachment is Now a Political Movement. Join ImpeachPAC.org!
Monday, November 28, 2005
After carefully considering the matter, the Impeach Bush Coalition hereby endorses
ImpeachPAC.org. It's time to mobilize and lend our support to ImpeachPAC.org. We finally have a political action committee representing OUR interests-- the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
ImpeachPAC.org was
formed less than a month ago by Bob Fertik of
Democrats.com (IBC member and contributor). It is a political action committee
registered with the Federal Election Commission.
ImpeachPAC's goal is to support candidates in next year's congressional election who favor impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Less than a month into it, ImpeachPAC has already raised
over $35,000.00 and has already garnered it's first
congressional endorsement!
What can we, the Impeach Bush Coalition, do to help out?
First, we can join
ImpeachPAC.org and make a donation.
As the saying goes, money talks! The ImpeachPAC is our very own, tailor-made, political action committee. By financially supporting it, we are empowering it to go to work for us. We are showing congressmen and congresswomen that impeachment is not only right for America, but supported by Americans.
Second, we should all add an ImpeachPAC.org
banner to our blogs (alongside our
IBC banners, wherever possible). As a political action committee, the success of ImpeachPAC.org hinges upon it's ability to grow large and strong.
That's where we come in! IBC members should always do their best to spread the word as much as possible-- all around the blogosphere. Not only on our own blogs, but on other blogs!
We continue to urge everybody to post about the impeachment cause as much as possible, and more specifically, to raise awareness about the
Impeach Bush Coalition and the
ImpeachPAC.org.
The IBC is where we go to talk, the
ImpeachPAC is where we go to fight the political war! From ImpeachPAC.org:
ImpeachPAC is a "bundling" PAC like Emily's List or Moveon.org, which means we ask you to make an annual contribution to ImpeachPAC to help us build a large and powerful PAC, and also make one or more contributions to pro-impeachment candidates we recommend in the coming months. Our suggested annual dues are:
* $10 citizen
* $25 hero
* $100 founder
* $250 patriot
* $1,000 sustainer
To show George Bush, Congress, and the media that we're serious about impeachment, we have set a goal of $100,000 to launch ImpeachPAC.
C'mon IBC! Time to start
FIGHTING!
Today's Zogby Results: 53% Support Impeachment
Friday, November 04, 2005
According to the latest Zogby Poll commissioned by
AfterDowningStreet.org, Americans want Congress to impeach President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq by a margin of 53% to 42%.
The poll interviewed 1,200 U.S. adults from October 29 through November 2.
Accordingly, the poll found that 53% agreed with the statement:
"If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."
42% disagreed, and 5% said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 2.9% margin of error.
Say Hello to ImpeachPAC.org
In response to these results, Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com (a fellow IBC member), announced the creation of a new political action committee called ImpeachPAC, headquartered at ImpeachPAC.org. According to the Democrats.com site,
"ImpeachPAC will support Democratic candidates who support the immediate and simultaneous impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney for lying about Iraq. ImpeachPAC set a goal of raising $100,000 over the Internet to prove to President Bush, Congress, and the media that there is intense grassroots support for impeachment, as reflected in the new Zogby poll."
As one of the founders of the
Impeach Bush Coalition, I am proud of everyone who
donated money to AfterDowningStreet.com to make this poll happen. We should all give special thanks to the folks at AfterDowningStreet.org, Democrats.com, and a certain blogger named Luke Ryland from
Wot is it Good 4. Luke Ryland was instrumental in
chasing down Zogby and bringing light to the need to get more polling on the issue of impeachment.
Impeachment is not going to happen overnight. In fact, if it happens, it likely won't happen until after the midterms in 2006. Now is the time to begin talking about it. Now is the time to make impeachment part of the American lexicon.
It is also the time to show the American public that the phrase "if he lied," is no longer a question of "if".
Personally, I think we are on the path.
From Club Lefty: Criminal Conspiracy
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Check out this
article by Elizabeth de la Vega (former federal prosecutor from N. California) on Truthout.org.
Ms. Vega makes an exceptional argument that this administration may be charged with a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States:
The President's deceit is not only an abuse of power; it is a federal crime. Specifically, it is a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, which prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States...
The Supreme Court has defined the phrase "conspiracy to defraud the United States" as "to interfere with, impede or obstruct a lawful government function by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest."
Finally, "fraud" is broadly defined to include half-truths, omissions or misrepresentation; in other words, statements that are intentionally misleading, even if literally true. Fraud also includes making statements with "reckless indifference" to their truth.
This means that the infamous sixteen words included in the presidents state of the union, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”, does not mean president Bush is not culpable for deception by including the modifier "The British Government has learned". Say George and Tony are riding in a car which is waiting at a stop light. If George is distracted by the stereo, and Tony decides to proclaim the light is green, and George then looks at the light which is still red and steps on the gas, when the cop is writing up the ticket George cant absolve himself of liability by proclaiming that Tony said the light was green. American intelligence had already debunked the uranium claim, and with held it from previous speeches given by the president. While the British Government may have reached a conclusion on this issue (it did, but not the conclusion the administration wished for), it was not Tony Blair giving the state of the union.
This applies to a wide variety of tactics used by the administration in the run up to the Iraqi invasion. For an administration official, on background, to be the source of a story by Judy Miller for publication on the front page of the N.Y. Times on Sunday, and then to have the same official on all the talking heads programs trumpeting the fact that since the Times ran it, it must be true is deceptive. Nearly every feature in the selling of the Iraq war was fraudulent.
So which governmental function was impeded you may ask? It was the function of the U.S. Congress to authorize the president to use any means necessary to enforce U.N. sanctions. The Congress was quite clearly a victim of the misrepresentations of the administration. The sixteen words in the state of the union, a constitutionally mandated presentation to the congress, is just one example of this. They were not provided with accurate intelligence and they made the decision based upon this misinformation. No amount of faux Republican congressional hindsight via committee report can reverse that fact. Also we the people were impeded by this concerted effort to sell the war and a majority at the time based their opinions on this misdirection. This also led to pressure on Congress to give the president carte blanche with Iraq.
Read the
report by Ms. de la Vega and then get ahold of your congressional representative to demand accountability from the administration. This is absolutely an impeachable offense. No one died over a stained blue dress.
From Consortium News: Is Impeachment the Answer?
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
By
Robert ParryNovember 1, 2005
Washington pundits are showering George W. Bush with advice on how to “restart” his presidency, but many Americans seem more interested in whether it's possible to “terminate” his presidency, removing him and other top officials from office. It is a question asked of us often.
The conventional wisdom – virtually across Washington’s political spectrum – is that the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney is unthinkable, and without doubt, it would be extremely difficult to engineer.
But a better answer to Americans interested in holding Bush and Cheney accountable is that impeachment is possible – if enough voters want it to happen.
Say, for instance, 75 percent of voters favored impeachment and considered it a decisive issue in how they will cast their ballots. Would politicians facing such a popular groundswell risk their own jobs to save Bush and Cheney?
Or, put differently, what would happen if voters – beginning with state and local elections on Nov. 8 – rejected every Republican on the ballot? Would the public hunger for accountability begin to sink in then?
Crazy? Well, there are signs that even in Red States, Bush is becoming a drag on Republicans.
In Virginia, for instance, a Washington Post poll discovered that only 26 percent of voters said they were more likely to vote for Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore because Bush endorsed him, while 47 percent said Bush’s endorsement was a negative, with the rest either saying it made no difference or they had no opinion. [Washington Post, Oct. 30, 2005]
So, in a state that favored Bush in 2000 and 2004, barely one in four voters see Bush’s endorsement as a plus and nearly one in two voters see it as a minus.
And what if Bush went from being a drag hindering Republican candidates to being an anchor pulling them under? What effect would that have in the congressional elections of 2006? Might the Democrats achieve more than incremental gains?
Media Needed
Yet, while a political tidal wave starting in 2005 and gaining force in 2006 would have the potential of making accountability a reality, the tougher challenge of impeaching Bush and Cheney comes from the lack of an adequate infrastructure that can make the case consistently with the American people.
Despite some bright spots for progressives – from Internet blogs to Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” to talk radio programs such as “The Stephanie Miller Show” and “The Randi Rhodes Show” – not nearly enough resources have been invested in media to reach enough Americans to transform the political dynamic from a general dislike of Bush into a collective decision to fire him.
Conservatives, like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, still dominate the AM dial, while also holding important beachheads in TV, such as Fox News, and across dozens of print publications. Plus, the mainstream news media seems to have learned few lessons from the Bush administration’s exaggerated case for war with Iraq.
While more and more journalists acknowledge they were duped in 2002 and 2003 on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, they continue to buy into Bush’s more recent exaggerations about the threat from al-Qaeda and the dire consequences if the United States doesn’t “succeed” in Iraq. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush’s Latest Iraq War Lies.”]
Though progressives have long prided themselves in their “grassroots organizing,” that area also seems to be lacking when it comes to focusing on a specific political issue, such as demanding Bush’s impeachment. Many of the old divisions come to the fore.
In an echo of the Ralph Nader campaign in 2000, some progressives refuse to unite behind Democratic candidates even to oust the Republican congressional majority, a change that would at least open the potential for investigating Bush’s misdeeds.
Other progressives, who e-mail us, insist that balloting is now so thoroughly rigged that engaging in the electoral process is a waste of time. Then, there are liberals who warn that talk of impeachment sounds so radical that it could offend the political center and further marginalize progressive politics.
Another argument is that it would be difficult to prove that Bush and Cheney committed specific crimes justifying impeachment under the constitutional standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
The Impeachment Case
Though there’s some truth to all these concerns, there are counter-arguments as well.
While the Founders didn’t spell out exactly what they meant by “high crimes and misdemeanors,” certainly such offenses as violating U.S. treaty commitments – like the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Charter – could be regarded as impeachable offenses.
Bush and Cheney also have presided over an administration that bent the rules on torture and tolerated the leaking of a CIA officer’s identity as part of a broader strategy to silence dissent as the nation was led to war under false pretenses. Without doubt, Bush and Cheney either participated in these acts or had oversight responsibilities.
Similarly, Bush and Cheney could be faulted for the crony-driven incompetence in handling natural disasters and the mismanagement of the federal budget, taking it from record surpluses to record deficits. Widespread malfeasance in office could well be regarded as an impeachable offense.
In response to the tactical concerns about impeachment, it could be argued that holding Bush accountable would give momentum – and immediacy – to a political reform movement that otherwise might drift as it awaits the traditional electoral cycles.
One of the reasons for today’s Republican dominance is that conservative operatives have long understood that modern politics has morphed into a year-in-year-out, day-in-day-out struggle, not a process that gears up for a few months once every two or four years.
Over the past three decades, the Right has spent billions of dollars building a political/media machine that never rests.
So, when Republicans were defeated in 1992, they didn’t withdraw and wait for the next election cycle. They turned to their expanding media apparatus, especially talk radio, to go on the offensive against the new Clinton administration.
That aggressive strategy paid huge dividends in 1994 when the Republicans seized control of both houses of Congress and solidified conservative dominance over large swaths of the American countryside, now known as the Red States.
Meanwhile, the progressive community largely ignored the need to build a counter-media-infrastructure that could compete with the conservative message machine. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Left’s Media Miscalculation.”]
Today, a focus on holding Bush and Cheney accountable could act as a catalyst for increasing the number of media outlets and supporting the creation of journalistic content that could compete with the Right’s media machine.
Then, even if Bush and Cheney do struggle to the end of their terms in 2009, the chances would be much less that their policies would survive them.
By standing up now, the American people also could say to the world that when the U.S. political system went awry – when an administration invaded another country under false pretenses and when the White House winked at torture – the people didn’t treat such transgressions as business as usual.
Indeed, if impeachment at least is put on the table, the American people could point to how they demanded accountability from those responsible and did all they could to set things right.
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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book,
Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at
secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book,
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright Robert Parry and Consortium News. Used with Permission.[Hat tip to
And Yes, I DO Take it Personally for bringing this article to the IBC's attention.]
