I cried after the 2004 election.
It devastated me (and 59,028,109 others). I was left sitting in a corner, clutching a bottle of booze that would never cut education spending or send other unlucky 20 year-olds off to die.
But now revitalized by summer, and a refreshingly large drop in the president's approval ratings, there is hope. There is a better future.
We can impeach the president.
More than that, we have to impeach George Walker Bush. He is doing incredible damage to our country and world.
As he demonstrated by appointing John Bolton to the U.N. ambassador's position during the congressional recess Bush is more than willing to side-step and ignore the other branches of our government if he can not get his way.
Let's not forget that public officials serve at the pleasure of the people. Impeachment, charging an official with a crime while in office, is the first step to removing Bush from office, an idea that fills me with pleasure.
Frankly, Bush just does not care about the average American.
His 'stay the course' attitude may satisfy some, although it is an increasingly small contingent of the populace, but as the current morass in Iraq shows his shortsightedness is harming the world.
His refusal to talk to Cindy Sheehan about why her son died, and instead advising her that he is sensitive to her issues but "it's also important for me to go on with my life" as if she were an angry ex-girlfriend, was not only morally callous but indicative of a leader who does not care about the people he is supposedly representing.
Even worse than that is the sad fact that Bush has never attended a single funeral for a soldier killed in Iraq. He has no problem sending soldiers to die, but apparently a big problem acknowledging their sacrifices.
I suppose we should not be surprised since this is the same administration that until recently did not allow any photos of the caskets of dead soldiers to be released publicly.
Of course none of these are impeachable crimes like Treason, Bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors as outlined in Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution.
Thankfully Bush and company have committed more than enough impeachable offenses, and now we have proof of them.
That proof resides in the now infamous Downing Street memos. These memos (downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html and timesonline.co.uk) are records of briefings given by top UK intelligence officials about the Bush administration's preparations for war with Iraq in 2002.
They illustrate in bold detail a Bush administration that was determined to overthrow Saddam, "through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," presumably because real reasons for an invasion did not exist.
These memos could be dismissed as heresy, as Bush has attempted to do, if it was not for a startling fact unearthed after the invasion was over.
There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, the stated reason along with links to terrorism (also uncorroborated) for the invasion.
George Tenet resigned as director of the CIA on June 4, 2004 in an attempt to show that the WMD fiasco was really the fault of bad intelligence.
Everyone in the government was the victim of this 'bad intelligence' and now this mistake could be forgotten. However, these memos show that the intelligence was not at fault, our elected officials were.
Bush and his administration lied to the American people. Worse than that, they manipulated and abused their positions of power, and should be punished for it.
They violated international conventions and irrevocably tarnished this nation's reputation. Presidents have been impeached for far less.
Nixon was going to be impeached for abusing his position and misusing governmental agencies to cover up the Watergate break-in, an acceptable extrapolation of the 'high crimes and misdemeanors' clause.
The same applies to Bush, but on a staggeringly more important level. He misused the Department of Defense, the people in our military, the treasury, the trust of the American people and the goodwill of the entire world.
Let's all say it together:
Mr. President, we want our over 1,700 countrymen and women back.
We want the at least 100,000 Iraqis killed since the invasion back.
And we want you gone.
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Information from washingtonpost.com and seattlepi.nwsource.com
