Why Congress Needs To Open Cheney Impeachment Hearings

By James Donahue

House Resolution 333, submitted last year by Representative Dennis Kucinich, calls for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney on charges of violating his constitutional oath, manipulating the intelligence process to deceive the people and fabricating a threat of weapons of mass destruction to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The 11-page resolution accuses Cheney of purposely deceiving the nation about an alleged relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It states that Mr. Cheney is now openly threatening aggression against Iran even though there is no proof of any real threat to the United States.

Efforts by Kucinich to force a vote on the impeachment resolution in November failed so the document continues to lie dormant in committee. In the meantime, Congressman Robert Waxler has introduced new legislation calling for the impeachment of both Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush for abuses of power.

Waxler, who has been conducting an online campaign to get his resolution off the ground, reports at least 140,000 names on a supporting petition, with more being added daily.

To date, Congress under the Democratic leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has been reluctant to move on the impeachment issue. Pelosi has stated that impeachment will not be “on the table.” She wants legislators to center their efforts on other key issues instead of wasting their time on impeaching two lame-duck executives who will be out of office within the next year.

In the meantime, however, efforts to uncover mounting evidence of fraud and multiple misdeeds by the Bush Administration have been blocked by executive moves to prevent Congress and the Senate from access to key documents, including e-mails and other correspondence.

The latest flap involves the decision by Bush and his cronies to ban most senators from reading documents that offer legal grounds for warrantless surveillance. At question is a proposal calling for telecom immunity which has been termed a “legal doctrine for presidential lawbreaking.” It appears that Mr. Bush is advocating immunity for telephone companies that turn over private telephone records for government scrutiny because telecom immunity also gives Bush immunity.

It is a complex issue, but an important one. Under the doctrine of Congressional ratification, approval of this proposal linked to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, would retroactively “legalize” much of the secret misdeeds believed conducted by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney since they took office in 2001.

Such an action by Congress might make it difficult, if not impossible, for future lawmakers to uncover records needed to bring warcrime charges against Bush and Cheney, or find them guilty of any misconduct whatsoever.

Now, as these two scoundrels continue to press the nation into a possible new military assault against Iran, there is a critical need to open the records and get to the root of this issue. And it appears that the only way to do this is to launch impeachment hearings.

Such hearings will not only force open the vault to expose all of the corruption we believe has occurred under the Bush reign, but it will serve to bring to an abrupt halt any further moves toward a bombing attack against anybody, without full congressional approval. They also would clear the names of both Bush and Cheney if their actions under the cloak of national security are found to be in the best interests of the nation.

Why do we advocate impeaching Cheney first? It is because Mr. Cheney appears to be the instigator behind much of the actions by this administration. It also occurs to us that if we impeach Bush first, and the movement is successful, Mr. Cheney would be next in line to be president. The thought of a President Cheney, even if it is for a few weeks, is scary.