Libby, Bush-Cheney and Impeachment: Don't "Move On"

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http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/24461

Libby, Bush-Cheney and Impeachment: Don't "Move On"
Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2007-07-09 15:54. Impeachment

By Paul Street, Znet

"If Cheney-Bush can't be impeached, nobody can."
- Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report, June 20, 2007

"Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people, to decide."
- Archibald Cox, 1974

"MOVE ON"

I recently spoke about impeachment to the director of a major Democratic presidential campaign.

I didn't raise the topic. He did.

The current president's war policy, I commented after a talk the director gave in Iowa, is not merely "mistaken." It's "something much worse than a strategic blunder," I said. "It is monumentally illegal and immoral. This is high-state criminality of the worst kind," I added, noting that its victims included hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, not just 3600 United States GIs (1).

The director winced when I said "criminality." He knew I was correct in my evaluation of the White House's war on Iraq.

"If we impeach Bush," he said curtly, "that's all we'll be doing in the next year." Discussion over.

The director did not elaborate but the implications were clear: impeachment would distract attention from his candidate's campaign. The nation would be focused on Bush's crimes instead of opportunities for change associated with his candidate. The Democratic Party would be mired in removing a bad old president instead of clearing the way for a good new one (his guy).

The director was telling me to back off and "move on."

SOME OF WHAT THEY'VE DONE

Sorry. Even though I'm personally left of Dennis Kucinich, I recently gave a modest sum of money to the director's candidate. I can chew gum and walk at the same time. But I can't move on and off impeachment.

I think it is essential to legally remove Bush and Cheney before they finish their second terms and before they wreak yet more unimaginable imperial and plutocratic havoc.

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