Regarding Impeachment:

[hedgehog]

Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon and declared that the Soviets didn't dominate Poland! Even back in those pre-Net days, we all heard about LBJ's comment that Gerald had played too many football games without a helmet. Chevy Chase built a career out of lampooning Ford's clumsiness. Yet Carter went from a 33 % lead at the time of the convention to a bare victory of 50.1% of the popular vote in the 1976 election.

Imagine this scenario:

Somehow, both Bush and Cheney are impeached.

Option 1: Nancy Pelosi becomes president.
The Republicans have 12 -18 months to spread the meme that the impeachment was nothing but pay-back for Clinton, that if only Bush had been left alone, the US would have won in Iraq, etc, etc.
Meanwhile, unless Nancy withdraws her name, the Democrats eviscerate each other trying to decide whether to go with Nancy or someone else in 2008. All the while, the Iraq problem bubbles away. No more US troops may be dying there, but sure as hell people are dying every day.

Option 2: A Republican becomes President
Possibilities: he somehow charms the American people; he convinces the American people that he knows how to win the war, he goes into the 2008 election as a sitting president. Along the way, he convinces everyone that Bush was a fluke, that the GOP is A-OK.

It'd be very satisfying to impeach these bastards. However, there is no guarantee that impeachment equals conviction. Moreover, are we willing to trade an impeachment now for possible Republican victories in 2008 and 2012?

How about this plan:

1. Focus on getting our people out of Iraq.

2. Drag Bush's buddies before Congressional Committees every day between now and Election Day 2008 to remind people how thou=roughly they've looted the country.

3. Make sure that in people's minds, Republican Party = George Bush & Dick Cheney.

4. After winning the 2008 election, haul Bush and Cheney into a real court and send their asses to jail. Impeachment and conviction followed by a retirement to the lecture circuit is too good for these guys.

[rodeodance]

1. they can be tried by the Congress even after they leave office.

[AntiFascist]

2. More likely scenarios....

Scenario 1) More democrats and some republicans sign onto HR 333. News of the people pushing for impeachment starts hitting the mainstream media and more questions are being raised regarding the administration's crimes. BushCo finally caves under public pressure and makes real plans for pulling out of Iraq. They wouldn't dare use fear of terrorism as a political tactic because of some of the deeper questions being raised about how they lied us into war. :think:

Scenario 2) Pelosi continues to stress that impeachment is off the table, HR 333 is forgotten, Democrats move on with lesser priorities. Meanwhile the Administration, feeling emboldened that they have been let off the hook, return to their old warmongering tricks: stirring up fear, beating the war drums, and hawkish Dems join in with the orgy of death, destruction and profiteering.

[RufusTFirefly]

3. Good plan if you think the Constitution is irrelevant

JOHN NICHOLS: You are seeing impeachment as a constitutional crisis. Impeachment is the cure for a constitutional crisis. Don't mistake the medicine for the disease. When you have a constitutional crisis, the founders are very clear. They said there is a way to deal with this. We don't have to have a war. We don't have to raise an army and go to Washington. We have procedures in place where we can sanction a president appropriately, do what needs to be done up to the point of removing him from office and continue the republic. So we're not talking here about taking an ax to government. Quite the opposite. We are talking about applying some necessary strong medicine ....

BRUCE FEIN: (Impeachment is) not an attack on Bush and Cheney in the sense of their personal-- attacks....(Impeachment is saying that) it's the Constitution that's more important than your aggrandizing of power. And not just for you because the precedent that would be set would bind every successor in the presidency as well, no matter Republican, Democrat, Independent, or otherwise.

JOHN NICHOLS: The fact of the matter is that, again, the genius of impeachment is it tells the president that, wow, there is a Congress. And that Congress is on your case. And it causes, I think at its best, it causes a president to want to prove he can cooperate, to want to prove he can live within the law.... (The prospect of impeachment might compel the President to) go before the American people and say, "Oh, yeah, I just remembered, you're the boss. You are the bosses. Not me. And that I am not a king." Again, this is why raising impeachment at this point, it's a very late point, is so important. Because we are defining what the presidency will be in the future today because we do know the high crimes and misdemeanors of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Bill Moyers Journal

[hedgehog]

4. I fully agree that these guys deserve to be impeached and convicted.

It's just that I've seen Nixon elected, twice, Nixon somehow redeemed and turned into an elder statesman, Reagan elected, twice and Bush I elected and Bush II elected, twice. (or at least put into office). Reagen and his buddies should have been impeached then jailed over their interference in the Iran hostage crisis, let alone Iran-Contra. Instead, Democratic congressional committees made such a hash of investigating these crimes that not only did no one go to jail, most Americans have no idea what went on. All of the underlings involved in these administrations went on to lucrative careers as talking heads, consultants; even VP and Sec'y of Defense! I mean, why is Kissinger still walking around a free man?

Never underestimate the low attention span of the American electorate.

[EST]

5. The first thing that happens is that the house opens an

impeachment investigation. Even though it's not declared as such, that investigation is going on, now.
If a full scale investigation with an eye toward impeachment were declared on monday, however, and the waltz begun, there is no reason to suspect that it could be wrapped up and all the mechanism be put in place and exercised in eighteen months.
Cheney is another matter, however.

It's a difficult question. On the one hand, lie all the reasons you submit, quite reasonable.
On the other is the necessity for showing the country and the world that our commitment to law and order is intact, and that, before the bar of justice, all people stand as equals; morey, status, influence must not matter, as well as the very real danger that the country is in mortal danger every minute that these enablers remain in office.

There is also the importance of reining them in for whatever time remains to them and the need for an absolutely iron clad promise to pursue prosecutions after they are routed. If we are truly a nation of laws and not men, women or personalities, they have to be treated as the common criminals in five thousand dollar suits that we know them to be. The work has to be done. The choices have to be made.

[hedgehog]

6. It occurs to me that if there is a bad hurricane this summer and if

the response is anything like what happened in New Orleans, then all bets are off.

[MonkeyFunk]

7. there's no chance

of the senate removing both Bush and Cheney simultaneously, thus putting Pelosi in the White House.

I can't believe ANYONE even thinks this is possible.

[hedgehog]

8. I'm afraid that if Cheney is President for 2 minutes, we'd be bombing Iran. nt