Yesterday we wrote a quick piece about impeding illegal wars in Darfur and other places by prosecuting our own, by impeaching Dick Cheney and George Bush.
Today we quote a recent column on the topic by Jimmy Breslin, who wrote "How the Good Guys Finally Won," a 1976 book about how impeachment inquiries exposed crimes by the Nixon administration, and led to the president's resignation.
People, particularly these politicians, these frightened beggars in suits, seem petrified about impeachment. It could wreck the country. Ridiculous. I've been around this business twice and we're all still here and no politician was even injured. Richard Nixon lied during a war and helped get some 58,500 Americans killed and many escaped by hanging onto helicopter skids. Nixon left peacefully. Mike Mansfield of Montana, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said on television that the Senate impeachment trial of Nixon would be televised and there would be no immunity. That meant Nixon would have to face the country under oath and if he lied he would go to prison. He knew he was finished as he heard this.
It opens with the appointing of an investigator to report to the House on evidence that calls for impeachment. He could bring witnesses forward. That would be all you'd need.
Say impeachment and you'll get your troops home.
As we wrote yesterday, no crime on the scale of Darfur, or Iraq, is possible without lies. End the lying and you end the crime.
The Democratic leadership now is against impeachment (it is "off the table," in Speaker Pelosi's famous phrase), as Cheney and Bush will be gone soon anyway. That's not the point. Political expediency has no place in the discussion. We're talking about stopping illegal wars around the world.
Stephen Burke
for Ithaca Blog
No comments:
Post a Comment