Cheney Impeachment Impractical, Impossible, and Ignorant

Yes, we’ve heard since 2000 that President Bush should be impeached, and probably for as long that Vice President Cheney should be impeached. We hear it exclusively from people who are uber-partisan, seeking personal political gain, or ignorant of the facts, but we do hear it. Congressman Dennis Kucinich was nice enough to actually draft and submit three articles of impeachment for Vice President Cheney (I guess he and his supporters either want President Bush to stay President or don’t feel he’s committed any high crimes and misdemeanors after all). Since the articles were formally submitted, few people who keep track of the historical record or who are left of Howard Dean have taken the time to actually read Congressman Kucinich’s rantings. This weekend, I did, and I found the articles to be purely partisan, lacking factual substance, and (in the case of Article III) lacking common sense.

Article I basically says that Vice President Cheney (ignoring President Bush and the tens of thousands of others-including Democrats-who saw Saddam’s unresolved disarmament issues as a threat) pressured analysts, and manipulated intelligence to effectively trick the nation into invading Iraq. This simply didn’t happen, and it’s been investigated several times.

… I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance. And never — not in a single case — was the explanation, “I was pressured to do this.” The explanation was, very often, “The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there’s another explanation for it.”

And each case was different, but the conversations were sufficiently in depth and our relationship was sufficiently frank that I’m convinced that, at least to the analysts I dealt with, I did not come across a single one that felt it had been, in the military term, “inappropriate command influence” that led them to take that position.

– 1/28/04 Dr. David Kay testimony to Senate Armed Services Committee

Article II basically says the same thing except in terms of ties between Saddam’s regime and the Al Queda network of terrorist groups. This too has been investigated and found to be false. Not only has post-invasion intelligence found that there was a close working relationship between the regime and Al Queda terrorist groups, but American soldiers and Marines fought and killed thousands of such terrorists during the invasion. Moreover, while some pre-war claims of ties between the two were incorrect, the vast majority proved to be factual and corroborated by detainees and captured documents.

Article III is just plain ignorant. It claims that Vice President Cheney committed high crimes and misdemeanors on a scale compelling his removal from office because he made threatening statements towards Iran. Per the United Nations charter this is not allowed, and since the Constitution binds the US to treaties (like the UN charter), then VP Cheney is in violation of the Constitution by extension. Of course, Article III flat out denies that Iran is responsible for attacking Americans which would warrant threats in return.

….but there’s a lot more to it than just this little summary. For a detailed look, please check out the actual articles and the case against each as well as links which nullify each one several times over. Surely there will be people who prefer to comment on the very idea of impeachment (for/against), but the case for and against are made in the link to this article, and it is highly suggested reading for those who prefer to attack the case against impeachment.