Powell's Chief of Staff Proposes Impeachment

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/22349

Powell's Chief of Staff Proposes Impeachment
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2007-05-10 17:18. Impeachment

By David Swanson

On Thursday, May 10, 2007, Lawrence Wilkerson, speaking on National Public Radio, proposed impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Here's the audio.

Wilkerson is a Retired Army Colonel, the former Chief of Staff at the State Department from 2002 to 2005 under then Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Vietnam War veteran, the former Acting Director of the Marine Corps War College at Quantico, and currently a teacher of national security at William and Mary College.

The program, On Point, was hosted by Tom Ashbrook, who focused the discussion on a need for greater public accountability for the Iraq War, but who maintained that the public was not outraged or interested. (Ashbrook should read some polls and invite on organizers of the impeachment movement.)

Also on the program was Ken Adelman, who promoted the war and said it would be "a cakewalk". Adelman argued a case for not holding public officials accountable.

Wilkerson said in early comments on the show: "This administration doesn't know how to effect accountability in my opinion." But he did not raise the possibility of impeachment until after a member of the audience had phoned in.

more...

[Dhalgren]

1. Well, Wilkerson is right, across the board (as far as he goes).

But for the American system to work, it needs a couple of different adversarial relationships going at the same time.
The three branches of government have to be fundamentally adversarial toward each other. Not to the point of deadlock, but to the point of jealously guarding each, their own, prerogatives, power, and independence.
There also must be adversarial political parties (not just two, but however many, they must be adversarial). For the People to adequately wield its power in a representative democracy, there must be cross oversight between each party that holds any seats or offices in government. My Party watches your Party, and both our Parties watch the third one, etc.

We do not have too much of that sort of thing right now. We have a lot of bluster and competition for money between the parties, but the actual oversight between the two is very, very onesided.

And branch oversight is very onesided, too...

[RedEarth]

2. Here's more of what Wilkerson said...........

Ashbrook framed the question in terms of alleged limitations of the U.S. political system, and Wilkerson replied: "Well I do think that that's a reality of our system. However, let me back up just a minute and say that I really do think that our founding fathers, Hamilton, Washington, Monroe, Madison, would all be astounded that over the course of our short history as a country, 200 plus years, we haven't used that little two to three lines in Article II of the Constitution more frequently, the impeachment clause. I do believe that they would have thought had they been asked by you or whomever at the time of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia 'Do you think this will be exercised?' they would have said 'Of course it will, every generation they'll have to throw some bastard out'. That's a form of accountability too. It's ultimate accountability."

After an interruption, Wilkerson continued: "The language in that article, the language in those two or three lines about impeachment is nice and precise – it's high crimes and misdemeanors. You compare Bill Clinton's peccadilloes for which he was impeached to George Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors or Dick Cheney's high crimes and misdemeanors, and I think they pale in significance."

Ashbrook asked for some examples of such high crimes and misdemeanors, and Wilkerson replied: "I think that the caller was right. I think we went into this war for specious reasons. I think we went into this war not too much unlike the way we went into the Spanish American War with the Hearst press essentially goading the American people and the leadership into war. That was a different time in a different culture, in a different America. We're in a very different place today and I think we essentially got goaded into the war through some of the same me

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/22349/print

[Decruiter]

3. Thank you dear sir Wilkerson! n/t

Wilkerson stands with Daniel Ellsberg, Scott Ritter and so many more, Doug Rokke, all the IVAW guys, all the VFP, and so many others I'm too tired to list. Those were just the easy names to list. I apolgize in advance for those I've left out.

This war, this endless war, has to stop.

[Vidar]

4. Wilkerson is right.