Impeachment Fever and Media Politics
By Norman Solomon

If you think President Bush should be impeached, it's time to get
serious.. READ MORE [1]

We're facing huge obstacles -- and they have nothing to do with
legal standards for impeachment. This is all about media and
politics.

Five months into 2005, the movement to impeach Bush is very small.

And three enormous factors weigh against it: 1) Republicans control
Congress. 2) Most congressional Democrats are routinely gutless. 3)
Big media outlets shun the idea that the president might really be a
war criminal.

For now, we can't end the GOP's majority. But we could proceed to
light a fire under congressional Democrats. And during the next
several weeks, it's possible to have major impacts on news media by
launching a massive educational and "agitational" campaign --
spotlighting the newly leaked Downing Street Memo and explaining why
its significance must be pursued as a grave constitutional issue.

The leak of the memo weeks ago, providing minutes from a high-level
meeting that Prime Minister Tony Blair held with aides in July 2002,
may be the strongest evidence yet that Bush is guilty of an
impeachable offense. As Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on
the House Judiciary Committee, wrote in late May:

* "First, the memo appears to directly contradict the
administration's assertions to Congress and the American people that
it would exhaust all options before going to war. According to the
minutes, in July 2002, the administration had already decided to go
to war against Iraq ."

* "Second, a debate has raged in the United States over the last
year and one half about whether the obviously flawed intelligence
that falsely stated that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction
was a mere `failure' or the result of intentional manipulation to
reach foreordained conclusions supporting the case for war. The memo
appears to close the case on that issue stating that in the United
States the intelligence and facts were being `fixed' around the
decision to go to war."

The May 26 launch of www.AfterDowningStreet.org comes from a
coalition of solid progressive groups opting to take on this issue
with a step-by-step approach that recognizes the need to build a
case in the arena of media and politics. The coalition is calling
for a Resolution of Inquiry in the House of Representatives that
would require a formal investigation by the Judiciary Committee.

"The recent release of the Downing Street Memo provides new and
compelling evidence that the President of the United States has been
actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United
States Congress and the American people about the basis for going to
war against Iraq," attorney John C. Bonifaz recently wrote to
Conyers. "If true, such conduct constitutes a High Crime under
Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution: `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.'"

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the sole
power to declare war -- and the argument can be made that White
House deception in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq amounted to a
criminal assault on that constitutional provision. But "high crimes
and misdemeanors" is a very general term. And history tells us that
in Washington 's pivotal matrix of media and politics, crimes of war
have rarely even registered on the impeachment scale.

In 1974, President Nixon avoided impeachment only by resigning soon
after the Judiciary Committee, by a 27-11 vote, approved a
recommendation that the full House impeach him for obstruction of
justice in the Watergate scandal. Only 12 members of the committee
voted to include Nixon's illegal bombing of Cambodia -- and his lies
about that bombing -- among the articles of impeachment.

Another war-related impeachment effort came in response to the Iran-
Contra scandal. You wouldn't have known it from media coverage or
congressional debate, but the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra
maneuvers were part of a Washington-driven war that enabled the U.S.-
backed Contra guerrillas to terrorize Nicaraguan civilians, killing
thousands in the process. When Rep. Henry Gonzalez, a Democrat from
Texas , pushed for impeachment of President Reagan (and, for good
measure, Vice President George H. W. Bush) in 1987, he stood
virtually alone on Capitol Hill.

Gonzalez was back on high moral ground the day before the first
President Bush launched the Gulf War. On Jan. 16, 1991, the maverick
Democrat stood on the House floor and announced he was introducing a
resolution with five impeachment charges against Bush. The National
Journal reported: "Among the constitutional violations Bush
committed, according to Gonzalez, were commanding a volunteer
military whose `soldiers in the Middle East are overwhelmingly poor
white, black and Mexican-American or Hispanic-American,' in
violation of the equal protection clause, and `bribing, intimidating
and threatening' members of the United Nations Security Council `to
support belligerent acts against Iraq,' in violation of the U.N.
charter."

In the past, attempts to impeach presidents for war crimes have sunk
like a stone in the Potomac . If this time is going to be different,
we need to get to work -- organizing around the country -- making
the case for a thorough public inquiry and creating a groundswell
that emerges as a powerful force from the grassroots. Only a massive
movement will be strong enough to push over the media obstacles and
drag politicians into a real debate about presidential war crimes
and the appropriate constitutional punishment.
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