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Bush impeachment calls grow louder
Posted By Adam Robertson
April was one of the deadliest months in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, with hundreds of Iraqi civilians and over 100 American troops killed, further increasing pressure on President Bush, whose “troop surge” plan showed no signs of progress in either halting Iraq’s raging violence or reducing the mounting death toll.
Bush’s repeated threats to veto a Democrat-backed legislation linking war funding to the withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of next March intensified calls for the president’s impeachment over his handling of the war in Iraq.
"There's three ways or four ways to influence a president… One is popular opinion, the election, third is impeachment and fourth is the purse," top U.S. congressional Democrat John Murtha, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Defense, said on CBS's "Face the Nation" program.
Asked specifically if the Democrats were seriously considering the impeachment option, Murtha, who is close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said: "What I'm saying, there's four ways to influence a president ... And one of them is impeachment."
Bush’s critics have long charged that he illegally manipulated intelligence to accuse the Iraqi government of late president Saddam Hussein of secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, thereby creating a false pretext for the war. The White House strongly denies the intelligence manipulation charge, despite the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.
Now, four years into the war, the impeachment campaign is gaining momentum.
A statewide lawyers group recently joined forces with the Maine Campaign to Impeach in an effort to oust President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for their handling of the war in Iraq.
The Maine Lawyers for Democracy, which has 65 members, reviewed the Bush administration’s actions in Iraq and concluded that an investigation and impeachment are needed to hold the administration accountable, according to member Lynne Williams, a Bar Harbor attorney.
"The administration’s actions in deceiving Congress and the nation about the threat posed by Iraq to illegally justify starting the war are particularly outrageous and just the start," Williams said, accusing the Bush administration of violating the UN charter by launching an illegal “war of aggression” against Iraq without cause and by lying and violating the trust of the American people.
So far, about 9,000 Americans have signed an impeachment petition drafted by the lawyers’ group. According to Williams, a petition signed by 10,000 people would be enough to get the attention of the Maine lawmakers and congressmen.
As impeachment calls grow louder, the White House and congressional Democrats face a new showdown over Iraq policy.
A 124-billion-dollar war funding bill approved by the House of Representatives Wednesday and the Senate on Thursday established a non-binding target of completing a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq by March 31, 2008. The legislation is expected to go to President Bush on Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of his now much ridiculed "Mission Accomplished" speech, in which he, standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier off the coast of California, declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq.
As promised, Bush will veto the bill, and although the Democrats control both houses of Congress, they don’t have enough votes to overrule his decision. However, they vowed to come up with a bill that would restrict future U.S. operations in Iraq. One of the proposals, according to Murtha, calls for making the U.S. military presence in Iraq contingent on the Iraqi government meeting specific political benchmarks designed to curb violence, such as reaching a power-sharing deal that would boost the role of Sunnis in the government and an agreement to equitable distribution of oil wealth.
Murtha also suggested limiting the life of a revised war-funding bill from one year to just two months to allow for an earlier congressional review of the situation. "I'd like to look at this again in two months," he said.
Although Murtha’s suggestions could ultimately force Bush to change his policy on Iraq, it seems that the White House has no intention to accept any form of restriction on its military involvement in the war-torn country.
"To begin now to tie our own hands and to say 'We must do this if they don’t do that' doesn’t allow us the flexibility and creativity that we need to move this forward," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on the same program that interviewed Murtha.
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