What do DU'ers think about this Downing Street Memo Article

[Kevin Spidel]

Knowing PDA has taken a lead on this issue and helped launched www.afterdowningstreet.org and that Norman Solomon is a dear friend of PDA, I would like your feedback to this article. (to the admins of DU: Norman sent this directly to me, and I have not found it in full anywhere online, thus the full article is posted.)

Here is my take...

Impeachment hearings... I know the reality. As the Political Director for PDA, I get his argument, and share his take. But, the ONLY way to get investigations on this matter is to legally explore the idea of Impeachment. NOT to get Impeachment hearings, but to get the fact out. The facts are important. We can not marginalize the facts with a debate about impeachment yet. We need to put these issues out there in the mainstream public. And the best way to do that is not debate impeachment hearings, but debate the straight up facts behind the Downing Street Minutes. That said... what are your thoughts on this article...

--------------------------
Impeachment Fever and Media Politics

By Norman Solomon


If you think President Bush should be impeached, it’s time to get serious.

We’re facing huge obstacles -- and they have nothing to do with legal standards for impeachment. This is all about media and politics.

Five months into 2005, the movement to impeach Bush is very small.
And three enormous factors weigh against it: 1) Republicans control Congress. 2) Most congressional Democrats are routinely gutless. 3) Big media outlets shun the idea that the president might really be a war criminal.

For now, we can’t end the GOP’s majority. But we could proceed to light a fire under congressional Democrats. And during the next several weeks, it’s possible to have major impacts on news media by launching a massive educational and “agitational” campaign -- spotlighting the newly leaked Downing Street Memo and explaining why its significance must be pursued as a grave constitutional issue.

The leak of the memo weeks ago, providing minutes from a high-level meeting that Prime Minister Tony Blair held with aides in July 2002, may be the strongest evidence yet that Bush is guilty of an impeachable offense. As Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote in late May:

* “First, the memo appears to directly contradict the administration’s assertions to Congress and the American people that it would exhaust all options before going to war. According to the minutes, in July 2002, the administration had already decided to go to war against Iraq.”

* “Second, a debate has raged in the United States over the last year and one half about whether the obviously flawed intelligence that falsely stated that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was a mere ‘failure’ or the result of intentional manipulation to reach foreordained conclusions supporting the case for war. The memo appears to close the case on that issue stating that in the United States the intelligence and facts were being ‘fixed’ around the decision to go to war.”

The May 26 launch of www.AfterDowningStreet.org comes from a coalition of solid progressive groups opting to take on this issue with a step-by-step approach that recognizes the need to build a case in the arena of media and politics. The coalition is calling for a Resolution of Inquiry in the House of Representatives that would require a formal investigation by the Judiciary Committee.

“The recent release of the Downing Street Memo provides new and compelling evidence that the President of the United States has been actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people about the basis for going to war against Iraq,” attorney John C. Bonifaz recently wrote to Conyers. “If true, such conduct constitutes a High Crime under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution: ‘The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.’”

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the sole power to declare war -- and the argument can be made that White House deception in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq amounted to a criminal assault on that constitutional provision. But “high crimes and misdemeanors” is a very general term. And history tells us that in Washington’s pivotal matrix of media and politics, crimes of war have rarely even registered on the impeachment scale.

In 1974, President Nixon avoided impeachment only by resigning soon after the Judiciary Committee, by a 27-11 vote, approved a recommendation that the full House impeach him for obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal. Only 12 members of the committee voted to include Nixon’s illegal bombing of Cambodia -- and his lies about that bombing -- among the articles of impeachment.

Another war-related impeachment effort came in response to the Iran-Contra scandal. You wouldn’t have known it from media coverage or congressional debate, but the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra maneuvers were part of a Washington-driven war that enabled the U.S.-backed Contra guerrillas to terrorize Nicaraguan civilians, killing thousands in the process. When Rep. Henry Gonzalez, a Democrat from Texas, pushed for impeachment of President Reagan (and, for good measure, Vice President George H. W. Bush) in 1987, he stood virtually alone on Capitol Hill.

Gonzalez was back on high moral ground the day before the first President Bush launched the Gulf War. On Jan. 16, 1991, the maverick Democrat stood on the House floor and announced he was introducing a resolution with five impeachment charges against Bush. The National Journal reported: “Among the constitutional violations Bush committed, according to Gonzalez, were commanding a volunteer military whose ‘soldiers in the Middle East are overwhelmingly poor white, black and Mexican-American or Hispanic-American,’ in violation of the equal protection clause, and ‘bribing, intimidating and threatening’ members of the United Nations Security Council ‘to support belligerent acts against Iraq,’ in violation of the U.N. charter.”

In the past, attempts to impeach presidents for war crimes have sunk like a stone in the Potomac. If this time is going to be different, we need to get to work -- organizing around the country -- making the case for a thorough public inquiry and creating a groundswell that emerges as a powerful force from the grassroots. Only a massive movement will be strong enough to push over the media obstacles and drag politicians into a real debate about presidential war crimes and the appropriate constitutional punishment.

______________________________________

Norman Solomon’s new book, “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” comes off the press in June. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com

[understandinglife]

1. We have no intention of allowing "it" to "sink like a stone." Period.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3742495

Time for folk in the republic to stop being spectators and assume their rightful position as members of the board of directors of those we employ and pay to be our government.

Bush and his neoconseter regime have broken more laws, committed more atrocities than all the previous executive administrations of the USA, since the creation of the republic, combined.

Time to bring them before a court of law and prosecute.

Time to start being "America" again.

Time to make sure that future generations participate rather than be spectators.

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us - how ever long it takes, the day must come when tens of millions of caring individuals peacefully but persistently defy the dictator, deny the corporatists cash flow, and halt the evil being done in Iraq and in all the other places the Bu$h neoconster regime is destroying civilization and the environment in the name of "America."

[Carolab]

2. Billboards, newspapers ads, flyers, EVERYWHERE

and popups on the internet, bumper stickers and T-shirts reading:

"What about the Downing Street Memo?"

or "Did you get the memo?"

www.downingstreetmemo.com

[BigBearJohn]

5. Let's promote it as "MEMOgate" -- it has a nice "ring" doesn't it?

[Carolab]

6. Yes, but why not be more direct? Just name it what it is.

And point them to the website.

[ima_sinnic]

12. no. "-gate" just trivializes it. Watergate was its own scandal

--and it was hardly anything compared to everything that the Downing St. memo encompasses.

[Kevin Spidel]

13. Remember its not just the memo

their Minutes. How about Minutegate, or downinggate :)

[Karenina]

14. This is a good example of how

in our dumbed down, fast food world, LANGUAGE MATTERS. This is not just a little jotted note from somebody's desk. We're talking Minutes of the Downing Street Memo Meeting. The OFFICIAL RECORD of WHO said WHAT.
Doesn't roll off the tongue? OK, here it is:

[stevedeshazer]

3. The article is great

I've read a lot of Norman Solomon's stuff, and this is as good as the rest.

His take on the constitutionality of Bush's war is dead on in my view, but as always these days, the question is how to get the media to get on board in the face of massive government pressure to suppress any real news in favor of "irritainment."

I'm of the view that anything that publicizes the Downing Street minutes is good news, but I remain skeptical that any one thing will turn back the black tide of Bushco, Inc.

[BigBearJohn]

4. What a great answer to those who mock Conyers effort to shine the light

of day upon these major transgressions! There IS a purpose.

[dooner]

7. Like it, but...

Great situation analysis, but what's the plan?

The last paragraph falls short of offering a new solution... isn't this what is already underway and has yet to get much response from the media?

[IndianaGreen]

8. Why bother with impeachment? The Constitution was suspended by Bush

We have every right to put Bush on a plane to The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity. The Brits can do the same to Blair.

But for those that want to follow the legalities, Bush and Blair conspired in early 2002 to tailor intelligence to support their war plans against Iraq. Under our Constitution that falls under high crimes and misdemeanors clause. Article of Impeachment must be introduced in the House. The GOP majority will kill it, but there is no way they can keep that out of the news!

[LunaC]

9. Urge Congress to Investigate Bush's Iraq War Lies

(Yup, another petition.....apologies if it's a dup)

I urge Congress to adopt this Resolution of Inquiry: Whereas considerable evidence has emerged that George W. Bush, President of the United States, has engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people as to the basis for taking the nation into war against Iraq, that George W. Bush, President of the United States, has manipulated intelligence so as to allege falsely a national security threat posed to the United States by Iraq, and that George W. Bush, President of the United States, has committed a felony by submitting a false report to the United States Congress on the reasons for launching a first-strike invasion of Iraq: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary is directed to investigate and report to the House of Representatives whether sufficient grounds exist to impeach George W. Bush, President of the United States. Upon completion of such investigation, that Committee shall report thereto, including, if the Committee so determines, articles of impeachment.

Sign here:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/39

[Swamp Rat]

10. NOW, they can be charged via RICO.

Conspiracy to commit genocide and theft of the Iraqi national treasury, just for starters... then there's the mass murder of Americans on 9/11, massive theft and fraud, assassination... I say try everyone involved in corporate media, Halliburton, etc. with abetting every single crime too.

The worm has turned and it's gonna get real ugly, but they will not get away with it in the end. Jesus told me so. ;)

[radfringe]

11. as long as

the Rubbericans (repug rubber-stampers) continue to drink their kook-aid and maintain control there will be no impeachment.