Impeachable Ewe

Deep Throat finally revealed himself yesterday as W. Mark Felt, the number two man of the FBI at the time. The talking heads hired by the mainstream media characterized him as a "disgruntled employee" angry he was passed over for promotion, a "traitor," as "dishonorable," with a few calling him "hero" and "patriot." Whatever his motivation, Mr. Felt did pass information to Woodward and Bernstein that showed that the Nixon Administration was shoulder deep into dirty tricks they hoped would steal an election.

The timing of the revelation by Mr. Felt was one of those wonderful moments in history when facts, forces, and ideals seem to coalesce into some sudden insight. The "I" word returned to the American vocabulary.

In an op-ed piece written jointly by Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese, we find the following:

Regarding unmanned bombers highlighted by Bush, the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center concluded they could not carry weapons spray devices. The Defense Intelligence Agency told the president in June 2002 that the unmanned aerial bombers were unproven. Further, there was no reliable information showing Iraq was producing or stockpiling chemical weapons or whether it had established chemical agent production facilities.

When discussing WMD the CIA used words like ''might" and ''could." The case was always circumstantial with equivocations, unlike the president and vice president, e.g., Cheney said on Aug. 26, 2002: ''Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

The State Department in 2003 said: ''The activities we have detected do not . . . add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing . . . an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons."

The National Intelligence Estimate issued in October 2002 said ''We have no specific intelligence information that Saddam's regime has directed attacks against US territory."

The UN, IAEA, the State and Energy departments, the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center, US inspectors, and even the CIA concluded there was no basis for the Bush-Cheney public assertions. Yet, President Bush told the public in September 2002 that Iraq ''could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given." And, just before the invasion, President Bush said: ''Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

Their conclusion is that we have clear grounds for impeachment, and I tend to agree.

When combined with the information now leaking out to the Times of London (see my previous post here) that the US and Great Britain were busy fixing facts and dropping bombs as early as May, 2002, we see that a war plan was being put into place to go to war against Iraq for reasons that had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. We were lied to.

I don't particularly like quoting Ralph Nader for anything as important as this, mainly because his campaigns in 2000 and 2004 are part of the reasons we are where we are, but at least he's right this time.

But wait, there's more!

Now, a couple of human rights groups are urging other nations to bring war crimes charges against officials of our government: In a thought provoking article on Alternet, we learn that the US has violated the Geneva Accords in many different ways:

The Bush Administration's legal troubles don't end with Sanchez or Gonzales. They go right to the top: to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush himself. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International USA say there is "prima facie" evidence against Rumsfeld for war crimes and torture. And Amnesty International USA says there is also "prima facie" evidence against Bush for war crimes and torture. (According to Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, "prima facie evidence" is "evidence sufficient to establish a fact or to raise a presumption of fact unless rebutted.")

In other words, we can try perjuring presidents and cabinet members here, showing that the United States of America is truly a country based on laws, or we can allow our neighbors to try them at the Hague.

I say, let's urge the House of Representatives to demand that the Administration answer the charges raised by the Downing Street Memo and subsequent revelations. If the Administration refuses, then Articles of Impeachment should be drafted.

It's time.