johnheuer's blog

Five Years and Counting

Five years ago George Bush announced the invasion of Iraq, justified by the threat imposed by the Iraqi regime. It turned out that Saddam was a toothless tiger, despite our assistance to him for decades. The Bush/Cheney regime justified an invasion of Iraq based on the threats of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, because they knew that the American people would not rally behind the cause of “democracy building” in Iraq. The administration launched this war on a platform of deception.

Dear Speaker Pelosi,

As you may be aware, several citizens attended your November '07 address at Meredith College in Raleigh prepared to challenge you on the theme of the lecture series “Ethical Leadership.” The program issued for the event advertised a rigorous discussion of the lecture theme.

Those of us who came to Meredith to challenge your leadership were threatened with arrest if we attempted to display signs, distribute literature, or strayed outside our designated “Free Speech” pen, defined by a circle of orange traffic cones set up out of view of the hall where you were speaking.

As a member of the Grass Roots Impeachment Movement, I came to Meredith to ask you these questions:

If you take impeachment off the table, are you not placing yourself in complicity with, and accessory to the impeachable crimes ascribed to George Bush and Dick Cheney?

And if, as speaker of the house, leader of the majority party who sets the agenda in the house of representatives, you have the power to take impeachment off the table, how can you argue that you lack the power to take war funding off the table?

Madame Speaker, you can’t have it both ways. If you prevent impeachment hearings, you may as well re-register yourself as a Republican, since you are essentially providing the Bush administration the same protection as the 109th Republican Congress.

If you claim to want to end the US occupation of Iraq, but refuse to stop occupation funding, then you are violating your trust as a servant to the people, and are as guilty as Bush and Cheney.

The Constitutional remedy for high crimes and misdemeanors committed by our chief executives is impeachment. If Bush and Cheney are protected by this Democratic Congress from hearings on impeachable crimes, we can never expect that any future administration will be held accountable for lawlessness.

Madame Speaker, you can show us the way and endear yourself to generations of Americans if you remove this veil from your eyes and the eyes of your fellow citizens. We need impeachment hearings NOW!

Conyers Endorses Impeachment

On Tuesday, 5/29, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers told an overflow crowd at Detroit’s Central United Methodist Church that he supports the national movement to impeach Bush and Cheney. See story at www.miimpeach.org.

The Detroit town hall meeting followed a unanimous resolution by the Detroit City Council to impeach Bush and Cheney. As part of this national movement, North Carolinians will gather 6/1 in Charlotte, home of NC 12th District Congressman and Judiciary Committee member Mel Watt (D), to demand impeachment hearings.

Gary Kamiya has written an authoritative guide to Americans’ reluctance to press for impeachment of Bush and Cheney, despite overwhelming disaffection with the war on Iraq. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/22/1362/

The article, originally posted at salon.com, lays out the case that Americans are shy toward impeachment because of our own complicity in this administration’s crimes. This is especially true of the fledgling Democratic Congressional leadership.