"Outside Washington, however, an "impeachment from below" movement is gathering steam. The President's troop surge into Iraq and his refusal to consider exit strategies has caused many to react like GOP Senator Chuck Hagel, who has observed, "The President says...he's not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true. You can impeach him." Hagel's remarks go to the heart of the surge in interest in impeachment: It stems from Bush's ongoing disregard for the demands of the electorate, the Congress and the Constitution. Legitimate impeachment initiatives are organic responses to the realities of a moment rather than purely legal procedures. Talk of impeachment gains traction when it becomes clear that an Administration is unwilling to respect the system of checks and balances or the rule of law. This explains why the allegation that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, apparently with White House approval, pressured US Attorneys to politicize prosecutions has added so much fuel to the fire, with activists like Vermont's Dan DeWalt now saying, "I don't have any trouble getting people to agree that impeachment is necessary.""
* we haven't heard much from Simon lately - but he has some good new posts up - including good stuff about the murder of david kelly. why havent we heard that elsewhere?
* odd cnn chyron:
"war in iraq: parks and gardens bloom in iraq"
3 comments:
Hi Luke - thanks for the mention. (I still check in here most days just to keep an eye on things going on ;-)
Over here things have gone pretty quiet about the whole WMD fiasco. Chris Ames, a talented researcher and journalist, is keeping the ball firmly rolling with a new(ish) website at Iraq Dossier.Com.
He's leading the way with Freedom of Information Act requests for the very earliest draft of the infamous September WMD dossier, which by all accounts seems to have been written by one of the Foreign Office's so-called 'spin-doctors', rather that (as is suggested by such luminaries as former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and WMD Intelligence Inquiry supremo Lord Butler) John Scarlett and his Joint Intelligence Committee (the JIC).
As it stands right now the matter of the due release of this highly sensitive document, which is is potentially far more politically damaging than any of the earlier Downing Street Memos ever were, is currently with the supposedly independent-from-political-influence Information Commissioner. He shortly has to finalise his decision concerning the release of the missing (allegedly John Williams authored) first draft of the dossier. This document will conclusively show that Blair and Co have consistently conspired to bury the truth about the origins of the Dossier which led a great many UK MPs to vote for the war against Saddam on the grounds of his purported Weapons of Mass Destruction. My take on this is that the IC hasn't got much choice other than to release this document, and sometime sooner rather than sometime later, lest his credibility will be badly damaged otherwise. I also kind of suspect that as and when the document gets released, the serious media here are going to jump up-and-down-ten-to-a-dozen all over it. Serious stuff then. Anyone for another smoking gun?
The Smoking Gun
An Important Day For Truth Seekers
thnx for that simon. fp'd. good to hear from you.
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