Kucinich Files Impeachment Articles against Cheney

Article I

The Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, has purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the U.S. Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests.

Article II

The Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, has purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in order to justify the use of the U.S. Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests.

Article III

In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of Vice President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has openly threatened aggression against the Republic of Iran absent any real threat to the the United States, and done so with the United States' proven capability to carry out such threats, thus
undermining the national security of the United States.

The full text of H. Res. 333 is now available here along with supporting documentation.

It's a good start, but we're waiting and hoping for more:

Article IV war profiteering
Article V treason
Article VI obstruction of justice
Article VII malfeasance of office

Mad! Mad! Mad!

"Fredo has become a festering canker on Bush's ass, rendering his espression of "confidence" an exquisite shade of petulant. Bush radiates peevishness like an arrogant frat boy."

- M. Peach






Bush Rebuffs GOP Pressure For Gonzales to Step Down

By Peter Baker and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers

President Bush yesterday stood by his embattled friend, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, defying the broad bipartisan consensus emerging in Washington after this week's Senate hearing that Gonzales has so badly damaged his own credibility that he should resign.

Bush expressed "full confidence" in Gonzales through a spokeswoman and praised his "fantastic" service, in hopes of quashing speculation that the attorney general would be pushed out. But a wide array of Republicans described Gonzales with phrases such as "dead man walking," and even some White House aides privately voiced hope that he will step down on his own.

The continuing erosion of Republican support suggested that Gonzales lost ground during a day of often-hostile questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee, rather than repairing the damage caused by the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys. Nearly every committee Republican appeared skeptical of Gonzales's handling of the firings and their aftermath. Telephone calls yesterday to dozens of GOP lawmakers, lobbyists, and current and former Bush administration officials found almost no support for the attorney general.

"Congressional confidence in his ability has eroded severely," said Rep. Adam H. Putnam (Fla.), the third-ranking House Republican leader, who yesterday became the latest to call for Gonzales's resignation. "There is widespread concern among my colleagues about the leadership shown by the attorney general. . . . This has now reached the point where it's larger than any one man."

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a Judiciary Committee member, said Gonzales should "have a frank discussion with the White House," adding: "If he and the president decide that he cannot be an effective leader moving forward, then he should resign. As he said during the hearing, 'It's not about Al Gonzales.' The bottom line is that he must do what is in the best interest of the Department of Justice."

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All Roads Lead To Rove?

"There's enough evidence to indicate that Karl Rove was involved up to his eyeballs."
- David Iglesias, former U.S. attorney


Questions remain about who engineered the firings of U.S. attorneys

By Margaret Talev and Ron Hutcheson
McClatchy Newspapers

The Senate Judiciary Committee's grilling Thursday of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was rich in human drama but failed to resolve Congress' central questions.

After thousands of pages of documents and hours of testimony from Justice Department officials, it remains unknown who in the Bush administration conceived the plan to fire eight U.S. attorneys and why.

Gonzales' testimony Thursday left senators convinced he wasn't behind the plan or its execution and in fact knew far less than a department head should have about the details. Former and current members of Gonzales' staff who've been interviewed by congressional investigators also have said their roles were limited or nonexistent.

Absent another explanation, the signs point to the White House and, at least in some degree, to the president's political adviser, Karl Rove.

David Iglesias, the former New Mexico U.S. attorney and one of the eight fired last year, said investigating the White House's role is the logical next step - one that would follow existing clues about Rove's involvement.

"If I were Congress, I would say, `If the attorney general doesn't have answers, then who would?' There's enough evidence to indicate that Karl Rove was involved up to his eyeballs."

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Trump: Bush is the Worst President in History

First The Donald, and now Lido:

""We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff. We've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane... But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when politicians say `Stay the course.'

"Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out."

‘They don’t know where the hell they’re going’

Three Generals Spurn the Position of War 'Czar'
Bush Seeks Overseer For Iraq, Afghanistan

By Peter Baker and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but at least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined the position.

Retired Marine General John Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job, said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq.

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going. So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks.'

- Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan (ret.)

Sheehan, a 35-year Marine, served on the Defense Policy Board advising the Pentagon early in the Bush administration and at one point was reportedly considered by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He now works as an executive at Bechtel Corp. developing oil projects in the Middle East.

In an interview yesterday, Sheehan said that Hadley contacted him and they discussed the job for two weeks but that he was dubious from the start. "I've never agreed on the basis of the war, and I'm still skeptical," Sheehan said. "Not only did we not plan properly for the war, we grossly underestimated the effect of sanctions and Saddam Hussein on the Iraqi people."

In the course of the discussions, Sheehan said, he called around to get a better feel for the administration landscape.

"There's the residue of the Cheney view -- 'We're going to win, al-Qaeda's there' -- that justifies anything we did," he said. "And then there's the pragmatist view -- how the hell do we get out of Dodge and survive?"

All three generals who declined the job have been to varying degrees administration insiders. The White House has not publicly disclosed its interest in creating the position, hoping to find someone President Bush can anoint and announce for the post all at once. Officials said they are still considering options for how to reorganize the White House's management of the two conflicts. If they cannot find a person suited for the sort of specially empowered office they envision, they said, they may have to retain the current structure... More

comments from C&L:

On the surface, shaking up the chain of command like this reeks of desperation. The whole endeavor seems geared towards creating a White House photo op, where the president can say, “See? I’m doing something.”

Except he really isn’t. Even if Bush could find someone for this very bizarre job, what, exactly, would the person do? As Kevin Drum explained, “We already have Secretaries of State and Defense, we already have a military chain of command, and we already have an NSC that’s supposed to coordinate all this stuff. Does anyone truly think that a shiny new White House staffer with no budgetary authority, no bureaucratic support, and little in the way of institutional levers of control is going to be able to magically get everyone on the same page sometime in the next few months? It’s a suicide mission.”

Time: “Clearly Unfit To Lead”

"The three defining sins of the Bush Administration --arrogance, incompetence, cynicism-- are congenital: they're part of his personality. They're not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.




An Administration's Epic Collapse

By Joe Klein
Time - Vol. 169, No. 16


The first three months of the new Democratic Congress have been neither terrible nor transcendent. A Pew poll had it about right: a substantial majority of the public remains happy the Democrats won in 2006, but neither Nancy Pelosi nor Harry Reid has dominated the public consciousness as Newt Gingrich did when the Republicans came to power in 1995. There is a reason for that. A much bigger story is unfolding: the epic collapse of the Bush Administration.

The three big Bush stories of 2007--the decision to "surge" in Iraq, the scandalous treatment of wounded veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys for tawdry political reasons--precisely illuminate the three qualities that make this Administration one of the worst in American history: arrogance (the surge), incompetence (Walter Reed) and cynicism (the U.S. Attorneys).

Iraq comes first, as always. From the start, it has been obvious that personal motives have skewed the President's judgment about the war. Saddam tried to kill his dad; his dad didn't try hard enough to kill Saddam. There was payback to be had. But never was Bush's adolescent petulance more obvious than in his decision to ignore the Baker-Hamilton report and move in the exact opposite direction: adding troops and employing counterinsurgency tactics inappropriate to the situation on the ground. "There was no way he was going to accept [its findings] once the press began to portray the report as Daddy's friends coming to the rescue," a member of the Baker-Hamilton commission told me. As with Bush's invasion of Iraq, the decision to surge was made unilaterally, without adequate respect for history or military doctrine. Iraq was invaded with insufficient troops and planning; the surge was attempted with too few troops (especially non-Kurdish, Arabic-speaking Iraqis), a purposely misleading time line ("progress" by September) and, most important, the absence of a reliable Iraqi government.

General David Petraeus has repeatedly said, "A military solution to Iraq is not possible." Translation: This thing fails unless there is a political deal among the Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds. There is no such deal on the horizon, largely because of the President's aversion to talking to people he doesn't like. And while some Baghdad neighborhoods may be more peaceful--temporarily--as a result of the increased U.S. military presence, the story two years from now is likely to resemble the recent headlines from Tall 'Afar: dueling Sunni and Shi'ite massacres have destroyed order in a city famously pacified by counterinsurgency tactics in 2005. Bush's indifference to reality in Iraq is not an isolated case. It is the modus operandi of his Administration. The indifference of his Environmental Protection Agency to the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions was rejected by the Supreme Court on April 2.

On April 3, the President again accused Democrats of being "more interested in fighting political battles in Washington than providing our troops what they need." Such demagoguery is particularly outrageous given the Administration's inability to provide our troops "what they need" at the nation's premier hospital for veterans. The mold and decrepitude at Walter Reed are likely to be only the beginning of the tragedy, the latest example of incompetence in this Administration. "This is yet another aspect of war planning that wasn't done properly," says Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "The entire VA hospital system is unprepared for the casualties of Iraq, especially the psychiatric casualties. A lot of vets are saying, 'This is our Katrina moment.' And they're right: this Administration governs badly because it doesn't care very much about governing."

Compared with Iraq and Walter Reed, the firing of the U.S. Attorneys is a relatively minor matter. It is true that U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, but they are political appointees of a special sort. They are partisans, obviously, but must appear to be above politics--not working to influence elections, for example--if public faith in the impartiality of the justice system is to be maintained. Once again Karl Rove's operation has corrupted a policy area--like national security--that should be off-limits to political operators.

When Bush came to office--installed by the Supreme Court after receiving fewer votes than Al Gore--I speculated that the new President would have to govern in a bipartisan manner to be successful. He chose the opposite path, and his hyper-partisanship has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive failure. I've tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration--arrogance, incompetence, cynicism--are congenital: they're part of his personality. They're not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.