Home >> United States & Canada >> Elections & Politics  Email  Print Reasons to Impeach President George W. Bush Gina-Marie Cheeseman - 9/27/2007 President George W. Bush has committed offenses which are injuries to the American society, and especially to American democracy, the system of government our Founding Fathers created. Among the President’s offenses are the “initiation and continuation of the Iraq war,” the authorization of warrantless wiretapping, and authorizing the use of torture on detainees.
The Center for Constitutional Rights compiled a book titled, Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush. William Goodman, the Center’s legal director, wrote the introduction to the book. Goodman begins his introduction by stating that the U.S. is “confronted with a grave constitutional crisis.” The constitutional crisis is due to a “president staunchly committed to acquiring unprecedented amounts of power” which he uses in ways “that conflict with the Constitution…international law, and the common understanding of morality.”
As part of his inauguration, President Bush repeated the presidential oath of office. He pledged to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The oath serves to “guard against presidential excess or wrongdoing.” It also defines the job of the president. Failing to preserve, protect, or defend the Constitution violates the oath. If the president “intentionally” subverted or undermined the Constitution then he perverted the oath.
The Iraq War: An impeachable offense
Misleading the country about Saddam Hussein’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs, or the lack thereof, is an impeachable offense for it violates the presidential oath. The Congress voted for the Bush administration to use force against Iraq based on misleading intelligence which ran contrary to what the majority of the U.S. intelligence community reported. While doing investigations for The Constitution in Crisis Rep. John Conyers found “substantial evidence” that the Bush administration “misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war with Iraq.”
Bush addressed the UN General Assembly on September 12, 2002. During his address he stated, “With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors.” By mentioning Iraq in one sentence and the attacks on September 11 in the next, Bush implied Iraq had something to do with attacks.
During his UN address Bush made several misleading statements concerning Iraq’s capability to produce nuclear weapons. He claimed that if Iraq acquired “fissure material” it would have the ability to “build a nuclear weapon within a year.” The intelligence community believed Iraq would not have the capability to build a nuclear weapon until the end of the decade, yet Bush continued to make statements about Iraq’s nuclear capability.
Bush insisted that Iraq “made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.” The aluminum tubes were allegedly purchased in Niger. Joseph Wilson, former ambassador to Iraq and Gabon, made a trip to Niger to confirm the allegations. He wrote an editorial for the New York Times about his experience and what he discovered. During the trip he met “people associated with the country's uranium business” and concluded that “Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq.” According to Wilson, Niger’s uranium business “consists of two mines…run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests.” For the government of Niger to remove uranium they would have had to “notify the consortium” which is monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.” There is “simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.”
A few weeks after the UN address Bush spoke to Congressional leaders, telling them the “Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons.” Two days later Bush repeated the same statement in his weekly radio address. The month of October 2002 Bush made numerous statements about Iraq possessing biological and chemical weapons. The statements are misleading because the intelligence community only produced estimates. The Defense Intelligence Agency took the position that “There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons or where Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.”
During 2003 Bush continued to make misleading statements about Iraq. In his 2003 State of the Union address Bush made many claims concerning Iraq, namely Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and supported terrorist networks (including al-Qaeda). Two days before U.S. military forces invaded Iraq Bush declared in an address to the nation that Iraq “has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda.”
A March 18 letter from Bush to the Congress declared using “armed forces against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries” taking actions necessary against terrorists “including those nations, organizations or person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” The day of the invasion President Bush declared, “The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.”
Bush’s Warrantless Wiretapping
The New York Times published a story in December 2005 that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to engage in warrantless electronic surveillance of telephone calls and emails. On December 17, 2005 President Bush admitted to authorizing the NSA program.
Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978 as a way to guard against the type of abuses of presidential power which President Nixon engaged in, that is, using federal agencies to conduct electronic wiretapping on critics of his administration. Lesser administration officials gave testimony to a Senate investigating committee or spoke to the press about illegal wiretaps placed on the phones of four journalists and thirteen government officials. Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State [verify] ordered the wiretapping. The Articles of Impeachment against Nixon site his authorization of illegal wiretapping as an impeachable offense.
FISA governs domestic intelligence gathering, providing a secret court to issue warrants so the government can conduct electronic surveillance if probable cause can be shown that the target is a the agent of a foreign power. Section 105 (f) of FISA allows a warrant to be issued retroactively, three days after the surveillance is conducted, in emergencies. During a war, section 111 allows electronic surveillance without warrants for the first fifteen days. It is a crime to conduct electronic surveillance without warrants, as chapter 119 of FISA spells out. The Center for Constitutional Rights published a book titled, “Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush.” In ‘Article I’ of the book the breadth of the FISA program is spelled out:
FISA…allows for court authorization of such [electronic] surveillance only when the government produces evidence that the individual who is a target is an agent of a foreign power or foreign terrorist group.
“Unreasonable searches and seizures” are prohibited by the fourth amendment of the Constitution, and the fourth amendment establishes “probable cause” must be proved in order for a judge to issue a search warrant. It also must be established that the target of the search is involved in criminal activity. Constitutional and international lawyer Bruce Fein stated in an October 2003 Washington Monthly piece that “President Bush has flouted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) for five years by directing the National Security Agency to target American citizens on American soil for electronic surveillance on his say-so alone.”
Authorization of torture: an impeachable offense
The Constitution in Crisis report found that “the Bush Administration has not only countenanced, but also paved the way, for torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and other violations of international treaties.” The Center for Constitutional Rights found that Bush has “abused his power and to faithfully execute the laws of the United States by allowing his administration to condone torture, failing to investigate and prosecute high-level officials responsible for torture, and officially refusing to accept the binding nature of a statutory ban on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross released a February 2004 report about the treatment of detainees by coalition forces. The report listed the following human rights violations committed by coalition forces:
* Brutality of those captured, which included serious injury and even death.
* No notification of arrest to the families of the detainees.
* Use of physical and psychological coercion during interrogations.
* Solitary confinement for long periods of time in cells that lacked exposure to daylight.
* “Excessive and disproportionate use of force” against detainees.
* Confiscating and seizing property of detainees.
* Exposing detainees to dangerous tasks.
* Keeping detainees in places where they were not protected from shelling.
The human rights organization Amnesty International released a May 2006 report which revealed evidence of “widespread torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of detainees held in US custody in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Iraq and other locations.”
Two lawyers, Mark Denbeaux and Joshua Denbeau, who visited Guantanamo detainees released a report. The first report revealed that fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies. Only eight percent of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters, 40 percent have no affiliation with al Qaeda, and eighteen percent have no affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban. Sixty percent are detained “merely because they are associated with a group or groups the Government asserts are terrorist organizations.” U.S. forces only detained five percent of the detainees, and eighty-six percent were first arrested by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance. The eighty-six percent were handed over to the U.S. when the “United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.”
The Geneva Convention, the International Bill of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights all ban torture. Article two of the Geneva Convention prohibits “cruel treatment and torture,” article thirteen requires that “Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated,” and article 78 states that prisoners of war have the right to know why they are being detained.
Article five of the International Bill of Human Rights states that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Article nine prohibits “arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile,” and under article ten detainees have the right to a “fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.” Article 30 shoots down any of the Bush administration’s defenses for committing human rights abuses: “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.”
Article seven of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits “torture…cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Article nine prohibits “arbitrary arrest or detention” and requires detainees to be “informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest.” It also gives detainees the right to a “trial within a reasonable time or release.”
American law also prohibits torture. The eighth amendment of the constitution bans “cruel and unusual punishment.” The Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 “Provides for damages against anyone who subjects another to torture of extrajudicial killing under the authority or color of law of a foreign country.” The Alien Torte Statue “Permits non-citizens to bring claims for violations of customary international law norms that include torture and extrajudicial killing.”
|
