Body Politic

The Case For Impeachment (So Far)

by Larry Beinhart, June 25, 2008

Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush on June 10, 2008. It was on C-SPAN, it was covered by the AP, and the story is available on the websites of the major news organizations. The New York Times buried it in the National Briefing on page A21. The other major papers treated it likewise. It wasn’t featured in the network or major cable news shows, except Keith Olbermann’s. If you already knew to look for it, you could find it. But otherwise, you would never know it had happened. It had been rendered invisible.

The articles were referred to the Judiciary Committee. According to NPR and several other mainstream news sources, this is a way to bury them. They’ll be put on the shelf until after next January. It’s too bad.

The actions of the Bush Administration deserve full and open debate. With members of the administration forced to answer subpoenas and to testify under oath.

Does anyone even remember why we went to war? Officially? House Joint Resolution 114, signed into law on October 16, 2002, is the bill that authorized the war.

It states explicitly that we were going to war because:

Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda and other terrorists.

Iraq was therefore implicitly tied to 9/11.

Iraq posed an imminent threat.

It has now been established that all those things were false.