From David Swanson: Interview with Impeachment Author
Friday, October 27, 2006
Today, David Swanson interviewed Dennis Loo, the author of "Impeach the President, the Case Against Bush And Cheney".Excerpt:
David Swanson: ...yes...it's interesting because among those who ARE relatively well informed, when you bring up the topic of impeachment, at least for the past several months and probably the next two weeks at least, you never hear "there's not a good case, there's no evidence, there's no grounds."
What you hear is this litany of fears: Fear of Cheney being president, fear of looking radical, fear of it not being plausible and draining energy from something else and so on. Do you get those sorts of responses, and how do you reply to them if you do?
Dennis Loo: Yes, I do get those kinds of responses, and how do I reply to them? Well first of all, what's more important than opposing the kinds of things that this regime is responsible for? If you let this kind of injustice go unanswered, even if you don't win the particular battle that you're engaged in at the moment, you can't allow these things to go down without fighting them. There's the stripping of habeas corpus, the spying on all Americans, torturing people as official policy, murdering people on mass scale, breaching the church/state divide and on and on and on, or denying global warming and endangering the future of this planet. These are horrible things, so that's one point.
You cannot, no matter what the political justifications or logic that people are trying to advance at any moment about why you should let these things go, you cannot allow these things to go down, and secondly, as for Cheney becoming president, if impeachment proceedings and investigations were actually to start, the subtitle of our book is 'The Case Against Bush and Cheney', because we certainly don't want Cheney to take over, but if those investigations were to begin, there is no way that Cheney would survive that process, besides Bush being knocked out of office, they would both go, and their whole cabinet would go, because the kinds of crimes and corruption and terrible things that they are doing, I mean, we only see the tip of the iceberg at this point; imagine with the tip of the iceberg looking the way it looks, imagine what's under the surface. I know I haven't completely answered your question; but why don't you ask me a follow-up question, and we'll get into further.
David Swanson: (laughing)... no I think that those are excellent answers and are ones that I have tried to use as well; I think in addition, it can be useful to point out to people that Cheney is largely running things now, and to have him upfront as the face of the Republican Party would be advantageous to us, but I think your first answer is the fundamental answer; we can't let this pass, and impeachment is not for selecting a president, it's for removing a criminal president, and then we'll address the next one when he or she is in there.
Dennis Loo: Yes, absolutely. Were you and I alone in the world today to recognize that this was going on, it would still be a fight that you and I would have to fight, and then we would have to bring other people along, but it isn't only you and I, in fact; roughly 50% of the American population, the people in polls since last year, the fall of last year or late summer of last year, Zogby, at least, began polling people and asking Americans, if Bush lied about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, would you favor the articles of impeachment being drawn up? If he has been spying on Americans without court warrant, would you be in favor of articles of impeachment being drawn up, 40% to 50% of the people have been saying yes, so we, in fact, there is a huge latent support for impeachment.
The Democratic Party is ignoring this as an organization. If they really were a party of opposition, they could sweep the chambers of Congress simply by saying this is our platform; we need to impeach this administration, but they are not doing that obviously, so the situation, those people who say that it's not possible politically to impeach this administration, and that we would be unwise, are contributing to the demise of everything that many of these people say is so sacred; the U.S. Constitution, international law and so on and so forth; they have just taken a hatchet to these things. They are taking a bark saw to the Constitution, and the Democrats.... even the New York Times said on the Military Commissions Act of 2006, they said if you are going to filibuster anything, filibuster this, and the Democrats didn't. What did they do? John Kerry, Senator Feinstein, when they took the vote on the floor of the Senate, what did they say about this bill? Did they say this thing is unthinkable, it is barbaric? No, they didn't say these things, they said, "Oh the GOP is going to use this against people who vote No in the November elections," as if partisan bickering was the issue here, as if their careers was the issue, as if the elections of 2006 were the issue; no, the issue is much more fundamental than that, but they didn't speak to it."
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