As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have
belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is
to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president. . . .
Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They
have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national
and international law. They have lied to the American people time after
time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved
country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are
truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.
From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the
product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially
challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation.
In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout
the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has
been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible
venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number
mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000
Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The
financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is
expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed
from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9
trillion -- by far the highest in our national history.
All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that
the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in
violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and
property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse
of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the
Geneva Conventions of 1949. . . .
[Massachusetts law school Dean Lawrence Velvel will chair a Steering
Committee to pursue the prosecution for war crimes of President Bush and
culpable high-ranking aides after they leave office Jan. 20th.--Sherwood
Ross, "Steering Committee To Seek
Prosecution of Bush For War Crimes," YubaNet, October 14, 2008]