A Democratic engineered emergency supplemental bill to continue funding the occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan to the tune of $162 billion is expected to win bipartisan support, aides to leaders in the House said late Wednesday.

The bill, as currently drafted, does not contain any conditions for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq nor does it restrict how President Bush can conduct military operations. The legislation ensures both wars are funded well into 2009 and comes nearly two years after Democrats won majorities in Congress and the Senate largely on promises to resist handing the Bush administration “blank-checks” for Iraq and a pledge to immediately bring U.S. troops home.

A spokesperson for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was unavailable for comment.  

…

Congressional leaders intend to hand the legislation to the Senate Thursday. The White House indicated Bush will sign the legislation into law if it passes both Houses, which Democratic leaders said is the likely outcome.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told Reuters the bipartisan legislation tackles “important domestic needs” in addition to the war funding. Hoyer and House Minority Leader John Boehner, (R-Ohio), announced the compromise between their political parties.

The latest round of funding comes two weeks after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued a scathing prewar Iraq intelligence report that accused Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other senior administration officials of knowingly lying to the public and Congress about Iraq’s arsenal of chemical and biological weapons as well as its ties to the terrorist group al-Qaeda in order to win support for a U.S. led invasion.

Democrats Give White House Another Blank-Check For Iraq

By Jason Leopold, The Public Record, Wednesday, June 18, 2008  

Another “FYI” post for those who are fed up to here with all the impeachment talk.

Congress, under the leadership of the esteemed Nancy F’ing Pelosi and Harry “we don’t have the votes” Reid, is apparently doing exactly the job they think they were hired to do.

Congress Responds to Kucinich Impeachment Bill

Congressman Dennis Kucinich has introduced articles of impeachment to the US Congress citing all of the known reasons that current Head of State, George W. Bush should not only be impeached, but also brought up on War Crimes.

Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly stated that impeachment is off the table, as has Sen. Harry Reid.

Upon hearing the 35 pages of crimes committed by Bush, Pelosi and Reid fell into hysterical laughter at the prospect that any Congressman or Senator would pretend to do their jobs. Issuing a joint statement in response to Kucinich, they said, “What does he think this Congress is going to do, work? Fulfill the will of the people? He has lost site of our real purpose as leaders. Our job is not to conduct oversight on illegal presidential acts. It is not our position to investigate these truths. We will let history judge the president and us. We can’t waste time on matters of importance.” Pelosi then excused herself saying she had more pressing issues such as “naming new Post Offices” to deal with.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, last year received articles of impeachment on VP Dick Cheney, and he has let them die in committee. Conyers insisted; “there are many more issues that are more important which we will not investigate, why put this ahead of them? It’s not like the American people expect us to legislate or put a stop to such actions. The people of this country are just fine with a corrupt leader and incompetent Congress.”

In a surprise statement, failed presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton said, “Leave poor George alone, he is doing the best with what he has to work with. It’s not his fault that his IQ is 39.”

Sen. Joe Leiberman made it as clear as he could say, “President Bush has done no wrong, he is just misunderstood and his mommy and daddy have abandoned him in his time of crisis. He is only following orders of the far right and confused religious groups of which I am chairman.”

An “FYI” post. The 35 articles are quite dry and time consuming to read.

Elizabeth de la Vega has done a wonderful job of simplifying them for easier consumption and understanding, and they enumerate all of George Bush’s crimes since he took office.

Maybe more people will understand these articles and comprehend the nature of Bush’s offenses now, not having to wade through the legalese.

de la vega translates them into plain english that no one has any excuse for not getting, now.

Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment: A Three-Part Guide

By Elizabeth de la Vega

The Public Record

Saturday, June 14, 2008

It is entirely possible to be a reasonably well-informed citizen of the United States and not know that on June 9, 2008, Representative Dennis Kucinich (D. Ohio) took to the floor of the House of Representatives and spent over four hours reading thirty-five Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush.

Even worse, it is not merely possible, but likely, that the vast majority of people who have been more than willing to ignore or ridicule those charges have not read them.  Or, if they have read them, they have found the allegations and citations so overwhelming they just switch off their minds.  Perhaps surprisingly, I understand this phenomenon quite well. I spent many years attempting to present complex and disturbing information to people in the context of criminal indictments and cases.  And the truth is that legal documents are confusing to everyone, including lawyers. Much as I hate to admit it, for example, I have never been able to plow through our family will, so for all I know, our very meager estate has been designated by my husband to be held in trust for the care and feeding of ferrets.

But the House Judiciary Committee does not, of course, have the luxury of being so cavalier.  For the past seven years, we have watched as evidence of President Bush’s deceit, contempt of Congress and abuse of power has piled up like rank seaweed on a beach.  We cannot, in this summer of 2008, simply step around it and pretend it’s not there. There is a constitutional process to follow and we must follow it.  If the threat of terrorism is not a reason to disregard the constitution – and it is not – then surely neither is an election.

So I have decided to offer some help, a modest contribution in the one area I know best: the presentation of charges.  It’s a Three-Part Guide to the Articles of Impeachment.  There is nothing fancy here — no sarcasm, no vitriol and no cynicism.  Part I is a chart that itemizes the Articles of Impeachment with a subheading and a longer description. Part II is also a chart which itemizes U.S. and international laws that are implicated by the charges in the Articles of Impeachment.  (Quite properly, not every impeachable offense is based on a specific legal violation.)  In Part III I present an opening statement setting forth – just as a prosecutor would do before a trial – what the evidence would show with regard to these allegations.  

Forward them around, if you would.  At the very least – before we decide to ignore it –we should all clearly and unflinchingly apprehend the nature and scope of this executive misconduct and its consequent human misery and damage to our country.

Part I:   kucinich-bush-articles-of-impeachment.pdf

Part II: kucinich-bush-articles-of-impeachment-violations.pdf

[Updated June 27, 2008 4:00 AM PST]

Part III: Opening Statement to the House Judiciary Committee Regarding the Articles of Impeachment

I want to speak to you about the Articles of Impeachment Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced on June 9, 2008.  There are, as you know, thirty-five of them and they allege violations of just about as many U.S. and international laws.

When I first sat down to write this statement, I planned to discuss the evidence and the law that relates to some of those violations, just as I would do if I were presenting a case to a jury at the beginning of a trial. But I’ve decided not to do that. Instead, I am going to follow the wise counsel Abigail Adams gave to her husband John and just speak plainly.

I believe that most of you know what the evidence would show.

You know that the President has admitted violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. You know that the President of the United States has admitted committing a crime, but there has been no consequence.

You know that the President has caused his subordinates and agents to refuse to comply with duly-authorized subpoenas from Congress. It has happened over and over again.

And many of you are lawyers, some former prosecutors and even judges: You know what the law says about criminal responsibility. Under the law of the United States, anyone who “willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another” or who “aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures” the commission of an act is just as culpable as the person who commits the act. That is not some strange legal theory — it’s what your professors would have called “black-letter law.”

I’m thinking about this elementary rule of criminal law as I write today — June 26, 2008. Because I’m listening to some of you question the infamous former Office of Legal Counsel Attorney John Yoo and the Vice-President’s lawyer David Addington. And even as you ask tough and often heated questions about secret legal opinions memos and definitions of torture, I have no doubt most of you know that none of this horrific reign of terror on the part of the United States would have occurred if President Bush had not signed a memo on February 7, 2002 declaring that Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners would not be protected by the Geneva Conventions.

I know, in other words, that most of you are well aware that the President is responsible — factually, legally and as a matter of common sense — for the torture and abuse of prisoners that has occurred as a result of his authorization.

You also know that the President has himself deceived us and caused others to deceive us about this torture and so many other things: nuclear weapons in Iraq, Iraq and 9/11, the alleged threat from Saddam Hussein, a possible threat from Iran, illegal detentions, nuclear weapons, money, death and injury to our own soldiers, government contracts, the response to Hurricane Katrina, our civil liberties, our voting rights, the cost of Medicare, the firing of U.S. Attorneys, the very air that we breathe.

And throughout nearly eight years of these frauds and machinations, we have heard parsings of White House statements, and arguments about “literal truth” ad nauseum –even though, as most of you know, these legal-sounding discussions were almost entirely beside the point and, of themselves, a sham. The law of fraud is very clear and well-established. It makes no difference whatsoever whether the President did or did not make statements that were literally untrue. Literal truth is only a defense to a perjury charge. It is irrelevant to the crime of fraud which — reflecting our everyday experience — prohibits all kinds of deceit: false pretenses, outright lies, representations that are misleading even if they are literally true, deliberate concealment of material information, half-truths, and statements made with reckless indifference to the truth. These are principles that prosecutors advocate to jurors every day as they try to convict people who have used fraud to steal government funds, take families’ homes, or deprive the elderly of their life savings.

I believe that most of you — from both sides of the aisle — understand and appreciate all too well what the nature and scope of this President’s law-breaking, deceit and abuse of power has been. And it is precisely because you know all of these things that you would like nothing better than to just forget about it and move on.

Please do not do that.

Why do I say this? Because the continued success of government in this country, including, of course, the criminal justice system, depends upon a most fundamental and simple precept: No person is above the law. When I first started as a prosecutor, judges would sometimes phrase it more archaically: The law is no respecter of persons. But however it’s phrased, this basic premise has never changed. In the United States of America, regardless of a person’s station in life or political affiliation, he is entitled to be judged — and must be judged — according to the same laws as every one else.

What happens to this fundamental principle if after all these congressional investigations revealing widespread fraud, legal violations and gross misconduct by the President, Congress decides to do nothing?

What happens is that you will have chosen to up-end the bedrock upon which this nation has stood for over two hundred years. You will be telling the world that the 110th Congress has decreed that the President of the United States is not subject to the same laws as every one else. From now on, this radical, if unspoken, about-face will never be far from the minds of prosecutors, defense attorneys, defendants, victims and jurors when they hear a judge declare that a verdict must be rendered in accordance with the law, and without bias or sympathy towards either side. All of us who depend upon the fairness of the criminal justice system — and upon whom the fairness of that system depends — will know, in short, that it’s rigged.

Now, am I suggesting that every time anyone introduces Articles of Impeachment against the President, Congress is obligated to proceed forward with them? Absolutely not. But it does fall to you — if you are to fulfill your oaths as defenders of the Constitution — to consider them carefully in light of the applicable law, just as any responsible prosecutor would do when deciding whether to proceed with an investigation.

If you fail to do this — if you put this roiling mess on the back burner and walk away from the stove — you will have made a staggeringly-radical and consequential decision to undermine the Constitution and the criminal justice system. And you will have made this choice without discussion or debate — without, in fact, doing anything at all. It would be, I’m sorry to say, a shameful display for this Fourth of July, 2008.

—–  
Copyright © 2008 Elizabeth de la Vega

Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience. During her tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and chief of the San Jose Branch of the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of California.  

The author of  “United States v. George W. Bush et al,”  she may be contacted at [email protected] or through Speakers Clearinghouse.

 

Yesterday, June 09, 2008…

Ohio Congressman and former Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush Monday evening, stating the commander-in-chief is guilty of numerous crimes, including launching a war on false pretenses, and spying on American citizens, and should be removed from office.

“The House is not in order,” Kucinich said to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who has said impeachment “is off the table.”

Pelosi pounded her gavel.

Kucinich came up with 35 good reasons to remove George Bush from office.

Out of those 35 articles, #’s 9 and 10 are worth very close reading in spite of the dry legal language.

Article IX.

FAILING TO PROVIDE TROOPS WITH BODY ARMOR AND VEHICLE ARMOR



In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed”, has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, has been responsible for the deaths of members of the U.S. military and serious injury and trauma to other soldiers, by failing to provide available body armor and vehicle armor.

While engaging in an invasion and occupation of choice, not fought in self-defense, and not launched in accordance with any timetable other than the President’s choosing, President Bush sent U.S. troops into danger without providing them with armor. This shortcoming has been known for years, during which time, the President has chosen to allow soldiers and Marines to continue to face unnecessary risk to life and limb rather then providing them with armor.

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and Commander in Chief, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

Pelosi pounded her gavel.

House Democrats sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey [.pdf] Friday requesting that he appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether White House officials, including President Bush, violated the War Crimes Act when they allowed interrogators to use brutal interrogation methods against detainees suspected of ties to terrorist organizations.

The letter, signed by 56 Congressional lawmakers, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, who is leading an investigation into the administration’s interrogation practices, says the International Committee of the Red Cross conducted an independent investigation of interrogation practices at Guantanamo Bay and “documented several instances of acts of torture against detainees, including soaking a prisoner’s hand in alcohol and lighting it on fire, subjecting a prisoner to sexual abuse and forcing a prisoner to eat a baseball.”

“We believe that these events alone warrant action, but within the last month additional information has surfaced that suggests the fact that not only did top administration officials meet in the White House and approve of the use of enhanced techniques including waterboarding against detainees, but that President Bush was aware of, and approved of the meetings taking place,” the letter, dated June 6, says. The Justice Department is reviewing the letter, a spokesman said.

However, Mukasey has defended the administration’s interrogation policies, and with seven month to go before a new president is sworn into office, it appears unlikely that Mukasey will act on the Democrats’ request.

House Democrats Want Bush Administration Investigated for War Crimes

Jason Leopold, The Public Record, Sunday, June 08, 2008

President Bush and Vice President Cheney knowingly lied to Congress and the public about the threat Iraq posed to the United States in the months leading up to the invasion of the country in March 2003, according to a long-awaited report released Thursday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Separately, a second report said former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld set up an intelligence office within the Defense Department known as the Office of Special Plans “without the knowledge of the Intelligence Community or the State Department” to promote alleged links between Iraq and al-Qaeda and cooked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons cache.

Douglas Feith, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and a main architect of the Iraq war headed the Office of Special Plans.

“Before taking the country to war, this administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence,” said committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, D- W. Va.

The Senate report is the first document to state that Bush and Cheney knowingly made false allegations about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator who was executed in December 2006.

“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate,” Rockefeller said in a statement.

Senate Report: Bush, Cheney Knowingly Lied About Prewar Iraq Intel

By Jason Leopold

The Public Record

Thursday, June 05, 2008  

Most who know me know it’s not often I am left speechless at some piece of news or a story illuminating the depths of amorality to which the people who created the Debacle in Iraq have fallen, or perhaps in their case have actually risen, as it may well be that they had to have been as low or lower than the lowest slime mold to have conceived and executed their plans in the first place.

But it leaves me nearly unable to focus my thoughts and words to occasionally read the writing of the victims of their propaganda and manipulations of reality.

In any rational world George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, along with many others, would be sitting in prisoners docks now, and would have been for some time already.

This was posted this morning at six AM at OOIBC by Decline and Fall, a civilian currently working for a defense contractor in Iraq. In Fallujah as far as I know.

I’m reposting it here without D&F’s knowledge, though I doubt he will have any objection. I’ll let him know I’ve done so after I post it here. He crossposted it from his own blog, Decline and Fall.

It might be a nice idea to leave some comments there as well, if unlike me you are not left completely speechless by it. His full post is on the flip here….

“Impeachment is off the table,” said Pelosi, D-Calif. “Democrats are not about getting even. Democrats are about helping people get ahead.”
…
She used the word “bipartisan” at least eight times in her few minutes before the media, and said that she had promised the president that she would cooperate with him as much as possible.

— Two days after the 2006 midterms, Bill Myers, National Examiner, November 09, 2006

(Also at Out Of Iraq Bloggers Caucus and in Orange)

The Department of Defence defines Al Qaeda as “a radical Sunni Muslim umbrella organization established to recruit young Muslims into the Afghani Mujahideen and is aimed to establish Islamist states throughout the world, overthrow ‘un-Islamic regimes’, expel US soldiers and Western influence from the Gulf, and capture Jerusalem as a Muslim city.”

They’re probably right. I think that’s a good assessment. But, it’s pretty much on a par with defining the objectives of groups like Fred Phelps and his band of christian(?) nutbars, or Aryan Nation, or Ann Coulters or Pat Robertsons followers, and bears no relation to these groups status or non-status as representative of the thinking and intentions of all people in their respective societies – Al Qaeda in Islamic countries, and the groups I mentioned in western Christian societies.

There are crazy fringe fanatics in every society. Al Qaeda is probably a little bigger that the three I just mentioned, but is probably not anywhere the size of the group that supports bush’s hegemonic fanaticism. There are no hordes of billions of insane Islamic killers out there about to wash over us in a tidal wave of massacre.

Maintaining some  perspective is important here, I think. There is a fringe group of fanatics, called Al Qaeda. That is what we are dealing with.

So, what are some things we as a society can do about them? How can we stop them and live peacefully with Islamic countries?

A crippled man rolls into McDonald’s in a wheelchair.

Wheels his way across the floor to the counter, looks up at the sincerely smiling teenybopper, and says “I’ll have a hot fudge sundae, please.”

Teeny leans over the register, peers down at the man with a mixture of a little sympathy, a lot of concern, and utter disdain written all over her face, and says: “Crushed Nuts?”

Man looks up at teeny, surprised that she’s not nearly as dumb as he was sure she would be, and says “No…. crushed spine. Fell asleep one day on the railroad tracks behind a bush.”

We, most of us anyway, come here everyday writing essays commenting and discussing ideas I think with a singular but lofty goal in mind.

To try to effect some positive change on the world we find ourselves in. Mostly on the political landscape of America and it’s effects on the larger world, to try to find some way that the lives of people can be bettered. To try to reclaim the perceived original visions that created America.

To try, each in our own way but with help from each other, to find and give birth to a so far elusive meme, a ripple, that will be so irresistibly powerful that it will spread across our world like a tsunami wiping clean all opposition in its path, take down the most powerful fascist elements ever to gain power in America, and bring about a simple idea for the foundation of society – the valuing of people over money and power.

Yesterday NLinStPaul wrote about Power and in comments I reiterated an idea that came to me about a year ago after it became obvious that the Democrats, with six or so months behind them of a Congressional majority, through passage of the Iraq supplemental funding bill last spring, made it bluntly clear that they were going to do nothing but be enablers of the Bush/Cheney regime and that all of the campaign rhetoric that led to their winning that majority in November 2006 was nothing more than empty sloganeering and deception to garner votes.

I commented in her essay that I think that people already have the power to achieve what we come here to to do, but that we forget that we have that power.

I think that if enough people turned democrats away at the door during the campaigning leading to November and said “come back when you guys have done what you were elected to do last time” and you’ll have my vote… they would do it, because they would be afraid of not winning in november.

It would be the people turning the tables and fearmongering the democrats to make them do what the people want them to do.

It would also scare the hell out of the corporations who are now shifting the bulk of their donations to democrats, because they think that people will vote for democrats out of fear of republicans.

Leverage = power. Dangle the carrot. It’s not that complicated, is it?

If the Democratic leadership were quaking in terror of not winning in November, if they really believed they might lose their Congressional majority and not win the presidency, they might actually start thinking: “Hey wait a minute, these people really want us to defund and end the Iraq occupation, repeal the MCA, and charge Bush and Cheney with war crimes. Fuck – we can win in November! All we have to do is do what we were hired in 2006 to do.”