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.