Bush and Cheney: “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”
And who’s the leftwing flagburner who said that? Would you believe Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff when he was Secretary of State. Last Thursday he said “The language in the Constitution about impeachment is nice and precise — it’s high crimes and misdemeanors. You compare Bill Clinton’s peccadilloes for which he was impeached to George Bush’s high crimes and misdemeanors or Dick Cheney’s high crimes and misdemeanors, and I think they pale in significance.”
Wilkerson wasn’t actually pushing for impeachment; he made that statement on a radio program in response to a question. Earlier in the program he had said “This administration doesn't know how to effect accountability, in my opinion.”
Wilkerson also said he thought the Founding Fathers intended for impeachment to be used more often. He said “I do believe that they would have thought had they been asked by you or whomever at the time of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia 'Do you think this will be exercised?' they would have said 'Of course it will, every generation they’ll have to throw some bastard out.’ That’s a form of accountability too. It’s ultimate accountability.”
When he was asked about the high crimes of the Bush Administration, Wilkerson said the American public was duped into supporting the Iraqi war: “I think we went into this war for specious reasons. I think we went into this war not too much unlike the way we went into the Spanish American War with the Hearst press essentially goading the American people and the leadership into war. That was a different time in a different culture, in a different America. We’re in a very different place today and I think we essentially got goaded into the war through some of the same means.”
Bravo.
Labels: Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Hearst, high crimes and misdemeanors, impeachment, Iraq, Lawrence Wilkerson, Spanish American War
posted by Tom Harper @ 8:59 PM
20 Comments:
Yes, bravo.
But I'm waiting for specifics from people like him, and of course Powell himself. And waiting.
Well, Wilkerson is probably now under extensive surveillance by now, and the administration is probably trying to cook up ways to discredit him or get him into trouble. Bravo indeed, it takes guts for someone as high-up as he was in the political food chain to say such blasphemous things! Like for others before him, there is probably a body bag somewhere with a toe tag already filled out with Wilkerson's name on it. I'm sure Bush has at least thought of lining up such bags for Michael Moore, Keith Olbermann and Stephen Colbert. Heh!
I think the big word here is "accountability". Bu$hCo doesn't feel that it needs to be accountable to anybody, not even the people they were "elected" to serve, and not even said peoples' elected Representatives and Senators.
The Bush administration is a sham. It used trickery to get into power, it used trickery to get us into the Iraq War, and it uses trickery to evade having to be accountable for its crooked behavior. Bush's low approval ratings must have something to do with what a truly great Republican, Abraham Lincoln, once said:
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
Bush has definitely fooled some of the people just about all of the time (the "religious right"), and all of the people some of the time (i.e. things that happened after "9-11", like the Patriot Act, Gitmo, and the Iraq War to name a few). Now, the American people are realizing they have been fooled en masse for the past 6+ years, and they are pissed off about it. And it's about time.
Good to read about higher-echelon GOP types speaking out re. the bums currently running our country. Thanks for posting this!
Candace: Yes, specifics would be nice too. But a lot of Republicans and conservatives have at least taken this important first step. Hopefully some of them will follow through.
Snave: Yeah, Wilkerson needs to watch his back. He might be finding a horse's head on his pillow. Blasphemizing the Bush Administration is a no-no, especially when it comes from one of their own.
Accountability, there's a concept. Even the people who totally agree with Bush have got to be appalled -- on some level -- with the complete lack of accountability of this administration.
....or Dick Cheney’s high crimes and misdemeanors
And in the supreme irony of ironies, Cheney may also have gotten a blowjob. If that's what ultimately brings him down, I'm going to cry...and laugh my head off.
It's about damn time someone said SOMETHING intelligent, now if they would just DO something intelligent I might not be sooo angry! The fact that these Bastards refuse to accept their faults totally pisses me off! Nice post!
Bravo indeed.
Ahhh the truth will set you free, i guess the tide for this administration has well and truly turned. It is about accountability and what could make this administration more accountable than an impeachment, great stuff.
Kvatch: Cheney getting a BJ, I hadn't heard about that. But yeah, that would show that the Republicans are a bunch of godless hedonists with no values. Impeach.
Funkytown Fighter: At least a few of them have owned up to their mistakes. And yes, the next step will be for them to actually do something.
Prague Twin: Ditto.
Damien: Yup, an impeachment, regardless of whether there's a conviction or not, would certainly bring out the accountability.
My question is why now? This should have been brought out years ago, it just might be too late.
There seems to be nothing the House and Senate will be able to do until more Republicans are cleared out of this government.
These folks are Bush protectors-- just as most republican voters. They cried the loudest to impeach Clinton over sex, now they want everyone to walk in the dark and let this MAN, get away with murder and God know what else.
'Reformed characters' like this rarely do anything for me. They were assholes when they had some sort of power and without it, now they come up with these criticisms. It's a bit late, I think.
A lot of the time, I'll just put it down to PR, or if they're genuine, it just means that they probably were leaning this way when they were in power and were too gutless to challenge the state of things and do something.
You would think that now that 2 Repubs have brought up the "I" word (Wilkerson & Hagel) that Dems would follow suit. Other than Kucinich, I am ashamed of my party.
Let's Talk, Benjamin: I agree that these people aren't to be admired or respected. I'm glad more and more Bushites are coming out and admitting they were wrong, but they're a day late and a dollar short. Most of them have already reaped the benefits of taking part in this mass sleaze operation, and now after the fact they can repent and say how "shocked!" they are at what happened.
Lizzy: I'm of 2 minds about impeachment (don't get me wrong, I want that shitstain out of the White House yesterday). It's probably too late in Bush's term for it to happen. Bush is much more skillful than Clinton at stalling and stonewalling, and he can just keep this thing in limbo until January '09. On the other hand, if somebody breaks the law they need to be prosecuted. So the wheels of justice -- impeachment in this case -- need to turn, whatever the outcome is.
There's an inertia among Democrats. One of the first things Nancy Pelosi said when the Dems got control of Congress was, "Impeachment is off the table." I never understood why she said that. Never understood why she didn't keep it in reserve as a sword hanging over the administration's head.
The Republicans are certainly not in touch with the American people, but I think the same disease afflicts the Democrats these days. I hear people talk favorably of impeachment all the time. The news media ignores this talk, but now and then it leaks through and you'll see mention of it in a newspaper or on Air America and occasionally it even pops up on cable news.
A Zogby poll last year showed that by 52% to 43%, Americans supported impeachment over the illegal wiretap issue. An unscientific MSNBC poll had 88% of respondents in favor of impeachment. A CNN poll in August of last year had 30% in favor of impeachment. Several other polls have it hovering right around 30% or a little higher. Even if only one out of three favor impeachment, that's a heckuva lot of people.
I think lots of people haven't closely followed all the Bush scandals, the lies, the tragedy of this unnecessary war, the dereliction of duty over Katrina, the attack on the Constitution and all the rest. If they had, I think those numbers in favor would be much higher. The low voting turnout shows just how engaged Americans really are with politics.
But Bush clearly needs to be impeached. I just wish Congress had the cajones to do it. We all should be keeping up the pressure by tell our Congressional representatives we want Bush to be brought to justice.
Newsguy: It's true that both parties are pretty much out of touch with the public. The other day I read that the Democrats in Congress are backing away from that lobbying reform bill that they were so gung ho about when they were the minority party. They're the lesser of 2 evils, but basically politicians are politicians.
Those poll numbers are pretty impressive, especially when you consider how the "media" keeps underplaying all the Bush scandals. Every time a new Bush scandal erupts, the previous scandal drops out of the headlines. Combined with the public's short attention span, this works like a charm. Bush always has just one scandal that's in the current public consciousness.
Cajones in Congress? Nah. They're just interested in furthering their own careers; nothing else matters.
Truthfully,
We have only had two Impeachments out of 40 something Presidents. Both were Vengeful and Immature. Those who were around then may remember how drawn out the Nixon was trying to give him time to either cooperate or resign.
I am more scared of the recall law in California. I can see that happening more often.
Otherwise we tend not to impeach. Years from now the Truth will come out and we can all go and deface the GW Bush Library.
At the same time it will be found out that Bush will have Brain Damage from his earlier Alcoholism and the Conservatives can use that as the same excuse they did with Reagan's Alzheimer's.
Erik
Erik: Deface the GW Bush Library? How much graffiti can fit onto the lone copy of My Pet Goat?
It’s true, whether or not GWB gets impeached, the truth will ultimately come out about him. That recall law in California makes it that much more ironic. Gray Davis wasn’t guilty of anything except being lazy and ineffective. If that’s a crime we might as well just recall the entire government right now. The Republican power structure knew that Davis was vulnerable; he had barely gotten re-elected, and he was running against a rightwing candidate who ran the most inept campaign in history. So we have Gray Davis getting recalled even though he wasn’t even accused of any crime; and Bush staying in office even though he's probably committed high crimes (and we’ll only be able to find out through the impeachment process).
Well I called the speaker's office and requested that impeachment not only be put back on the table but that the serious investigations needed to make it happen be made the top priority.
I know I am by no means the only one that has, so we shall see if the Democratic party can be responsive to the will of the people.
If they cannot they'll find themselves discarded in the ash bin of history with the fascist Republicans.
It's not too late to impeach, but with a slim majority it's much harder an that's why investigations need to be wide (not just DOJ), deep and public.
Republicans need to have teir noses rubbed in the poop to make them aware that they are going to me marked by what this administration and marked permanently.
1138: That's true, the Republicans need to have their noses rubbed in all the shit that they've enabled these past 6 years. And like you said, the same thing will happen to the Democrats who just sit there uttering platitudes instead of doing something.
Did you hear what happened at the G.W. Bush Library?
No, what?
Somebody stole the book!
Defacing the G.W.Bush Library will probably be easy because it will involve defacing that one book.
Snave: LOL. At least the GWB Library won't take up much space. It'll fit in a little cubbyhole behind his mountain bike.
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