IMPEACHMENT: Where we’re headed

Tuesday, 31 July 2007, 11:45 am
Column: Michael Collins

I contend that there is real action on impeachment and that it’s occurring right now, before our very eyes. The actors are not singling out my favorite charges – a war based on lies and election fraud. But they’ve laid the basis for some serious damage to the administration through impeachment charges against the president.

When the owners of any organization or enterprise are profoundly and consistently dissatisfied with the performance of an executive, the executive is gone and gone quickly. We’re at a point where the purported owners of this government, the citizens of the United States, can no longer tolerate inaction on the removal of the woefully inept and corrupt Bush administration.

I base this statement on a single piece of data and an infrequently stated extrapolation. Bush has an approval rating of 25% and disapproval of 66%. When he gets to 20% he’ll have only those who believe Dreyfus was guilty and Nixon innocent. Bush got there as a result of the American people doing their own homework. The corporate media has been of little assistance. They fail to cover important stories or cover them for one instant then lose interest, focus or both. My extrapolation from the 25% figure is that the citizens of the country have developed their own sources of information and analysis.

Their conclusion is correct. Bush is a total incompetent, he’s a danger to the nation and the world, and he needs to be removed along with the rest of his crew.

The Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress can’t come to grips with this. They’ve offered up lame excuses like: impeachment will distract form the important work at hand; impeachment will bog us down until the presidential election; we don’t have the votes; etc. Fine, that’s terrific but they can’t repeat these lame excuses for much longer.

There are those in Congress who know impeachment needs to happen. They’ve taken three steps so far to develop a powerful case.

1) The foundation: an illegal act committed in a way that disgraces the perpetrators of the act. .The disgraceful illegal acts combine the attempt to extort a signature from a gravely ill man for a program that violates the law. These were described in detail by former Deputy Attorney General James Comey in mid May. (See Comey’s Evidence of a Crime). Bush ordered Gonzales and Card to the hospital bed of ailing and heavily medicated John Ashcroft. He did so because the acting A.G., James Comey, refused to sign off on an illegal surveillance program with universal suffrage. In fact, the warrantless surveillance was so objectionable, there was a mass resignation scheduled at the Department of Justice to protest it.

Despite the fact that Ashcroft’s wife objected to any visitors, Bush called her and arranged an opportunity for his operatives to cajole an approval signature for a program that most called illegal. Illustrating the White House desperation, they sought the signature of a man who was clearly not oriented enough to sign; who, by formal procedure, was not the attorney general; a man whose signature would be meaningless. This dreadful behavior by Bush and his operatives is tied to a crime waiting to be punished the warrantless surveillance of citizens. Great foundation.

2) The set up: drag Gonzales in front of the same committee, in front of the same Senator who elicited the Comey narrative, and make the Attorney General look like a liar. (See IMPEACHMENT: “Did the President Tell You to Go?”) Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) questioned the former White House operative, now chief law officer, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on July 23, 2007. In the intense interrogation sequence linked above, Gonzales was pushed hard on the question of who ordered the hospital visit to obtain the signature. Everyone knows who ordered it, Bush. But this questioning was vital to illustrate the huge lies told by Gonzales on this particular point. Why? This utterly tasteless act in behalf of the president was in behalf of an illegal program, warrantless domestic surveillance.

3) The confirmation: Mueller confirmed that there was indeed controversy over the warrantless surveillance program; that the meeting in the hospital discussed that controversial program. This confirmed that Gonzales lied to the Senate committee when he stated that there was no controversy in the administration over the very same program. The circle is complete.

The Washington Post July 27, 2007 summarized the charge of lying carefully developed by the Democrats on the Committee on the Judiciary through the narrative interrogation of Sen. Schumer (D-NY):

“Among examples of what Democrats called Gonzales' untruthfulness was his insistence in his statement to the Judiciary Committee Tuesday that his hospital visit with Ashcroft was not related to an internal administration dispute about the president's secret warrantless eavesdropping program.”

Then the confirmation from Mueller (also in the July 27 Washington Post):

“In his own sworn testimony Thursday, Mueller contradicted Gonzales, saying under questioning that the terrorist surveillance program, or TSP, was the topic of the hospital room dispute between top Bush administration officials.”

But there’s more. From Comey's May 15 testimony, we’re reminded of the dramatic connection between Comey and Mueller:

He (Comey) reported a phone exchange with FBI Director William Mueller: “Director Mueller instructed the FBI agents present not to allow me to be removed from the room under any circumstances.”

Sure, Bush should be impeached for the Iraq war and he certainly should be for election fraud from 2000 on. But that’s not going to happen any more than Nixon was going to be impeached for attacking Cambodia.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY)

The Bush impeachment will emerge from a crime that allows massive, surveillance of millions of citizens for concerns about a very few, which involved taking advantage of a gravely ill man in order to obtain a meaningless signature that might just cover up that crime. And don’t forget that the White House occupant and operatives felt so guilty and exposed for this surveillance program, the FBI director had to instruct his agents on the scene to disobey anticipated orders of anyone (i.e., from the White House) instructing them to toss Comey out of the room.

If this carefully developed and powerful scenario isn’t what the Senators are planning (and I believe it is), then it should be. It’s outstanding on multiple levels and the public would both understand and accept it as grounds for removal.

Permission to reprint in whole or in part with a link to this article in American Politics Journal and attribution of authorship.

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