[ql06] CONSTITUTIONAL
- From: Sheldon Erentzen <sheldon.erentzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ql06@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 11:34:11 -0400
This is a checks and balances issue and I have no idea where it fits in
terms of our course work but it does make for interesting reading.
There is mention made to the concept of "Strict construction" that we
learned in criminal law. This argument is relevant insofar as Bush could
argue that he didn't commit a crime a la Nixon and Clinton i.e.--he
didn't lie to a court. MacArthur argues that lying to Congress should be
an equivalent offense. The american constitution is very vague about
impeachment offenses:
Section 4. The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the
United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and
conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
It's the "high crimes and misdeameanors" thing.
The current public perspective seems more concerned with propriety
(which let's face it was the main issue with Clinton) than with possible
criminality (Reagan--Iran-Contra; Bush--WMD)
Sheldon
Impeach Bush now
Unmasking a CIA agent is bad, lying to Congress worse. With each U.S.
death in Iraq, the case against the President grows stronger, says JOHN
MacARTHUR
By JOHN MacARTHUR
UPDATED AT 11:04 AM EDT Thursday, Oct. 9, 2003
Now that the U.S. government's chief weapons inspector in Iraq has, in
effect, confirmed an obvious truth -- that President George W. Bush and
his closest advisers promoted a non-existent nuclear and chemical
weapons threat from Iraq to justify a war -- an obvious question
presents itself: Why aren't Americans talking seriously about impeachment?
After all, Mr. Bush now stands plausibly accused of the lofty crime of
subverting the Constitution of the United States -- that is, lying to
Congress about an imminent danger to the American people in order to
collect enough votes to authorize his corporate/imperial project in
Iraq. Yet, outside of a few brave remarks from Senator Robert Graham,
and the considered opinion of Watergate stool pigeon John W. Dean,
almost nobody dares speak the "I" word.
Is the notion really so preposterous? Reasonable people can disagree
about the "intent" of the founding fathers when they wrote the clause
that states that "the president . . . shall be removed from office on
impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery and other high crimes
and misdemeanors."
But one doesn't need to be a constitutional scholar to interpret the
meaning of a civil covenant that leaves plenty of room for political
manoeuvre.
Indeed, the genius of James Madison and his colleagues lay not so much
in their literal specificity, but in their deliberate ambiguity.
Depending on the era and circumstances, one man's high crime is Bill
Clinton lying about sex with Monica Lewinsky in front of a grand jury;
another's is Richard Nixon's involvement in (and lying about) the
Watergate burglary cover up. Lately, my idea of a high crime is lying to
Congress, before the authorization for war was voted last Oct. 11 -- a
time when the administration was touting an atomic bomb threat from
embargo-starved Baghdad.
Those who imagine there might be some "strict constructionist" guide to
launching an impeachment should consider Alexander Hamilton's
elucidation of the Senate's purview in the event of an impeachment
trial. "The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which
proceed from the conduct of public men, or, in other words, from the
abuse or violation of some public trust," he wrote. "They are of a
nature which may with particular propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as
they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself."
Can there be any greater violation of the public trust than to bear
false witness to the people's representatives in pursuit of short-term
political gain? Can there be injuries more immediate to society than to
send American citizens to their death on a fraudulent pretext? With each
shooting of a U.S. soldier in Iraq, the case for impeachment grows stronger.
Until now, most critics of the administration have focused on the
President's alleged lie in his January 28th State of the Union address
about Iraq's phantom uranium purchases from Niger. Distracted by the
current furor over who in the administration leaked the name of Joseph
Wilson's CIA-employed wife, the attack dogs are forgetting an important
point -- that lying after Oct. 11, the day the Senate passed the war
bill -- isn't as politically (or, I suspect, legally) significant as
lying before the vote, when the rush to war could have been halted.
Anyway, Mr. Bush's alibi -- that the British were the source on Niger
"yellowcake" -- is tough to get around, since Tony Blair seems
mafia-like in his devotion to lying to protect his friend George Bush.
But look at what Mr. Bush was saying on Sept. 7, 2002 when he appeared
at a press conference with Mr. Blair at Camp David. The British Prime
Minister had just invoked "the threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of
mass destruction, chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons
capability," and added for emphasis "that threat is real." And then,
significantly: "We only need to look at the report from the
International Atomic [Energy] Agency this morning showing what has been
going on at the former nuclear weapons sites to realize that."
Mr. Bush took the ball from Mr. Blair and ran for darkness. In response
to the question, "Can you tell us what conclusive evidence of any
nuclear -- new evidence you have of nuclear weapons capabilities of
Saddam Hussein, Mr. Bush replied, "We just heard the Prime Minister talk
about the new report. I would remind you that when the inspectors first
went into Iraq and were denied -- finally denied access, a report came
out of the Atomic -- the IAEA that they were six months away from
developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."
Well, there wasn't any new report from the IAEA. Nor had there ever been
one specifying a timetable for Iraq's acquisition of an atom bomb. A
prosecutorcould do a lot with that.
And 9/7 was only the start. By the time the congressional resolution was
drafted and ready for a vote, Mr. Bush, either personally or through his
surrogates, had asserted an al-Qaeda connection with Saddam that didn't
exist, and had larded his first lie about the "six months away" menace
with all sorts of other A-bomb claptrap, my personal favourite being the
attempted purchase of "high-grade" aluminum tubes (they were intended
for conventional rockets).
These are big lies. And if Mr. Bush suborned his henchmen to lie on his
behalf, as Richard Nixon did in Watergate, it would seem an equally
grave crime against the Constitution.
I'm sorry that Senator Graham is such a realist. "The fact is. . .Tom
DeLay and the other [Republican] leadership of the House are not going
to impeach George W. Bush," Mr. Graham told a TV interviewer in July.But
not all the Republican members of the House are so cynical, nor so
politically self-destructive. If Mr. Bush continues to fall in the
polls, GIs keep dying, and l'affaire Wilson leads to the appointment of
a special counsel, the rodents might start fleeing the sinking ship,
seeking cover in the vagaries of Article II, Section IV.
Then Mr. Bush's question, "What more evidence do we need?" might finally
take on the significance it deserves.
John R. MacArthur is publisher of Harper's Magazine.
© 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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