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Edited on Wed Nov-07-07 07:18 AM by AntiFascist
the Deeper Issues
Yesterday Dennis Kucinich took the initiative and offered a privileged resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. His motion allowed him to read his articles of impeachment into the Congressional record. Steny Hoyer, as Majority Leader, then moved to table the resolution immediately and most Democrats followed suit -- voting yay on this motion, which they obviously felt would pass easily.
There was much discussion and voting was delayed for 1 hour as more and more Republicans began switching their votes from the yay to the nay column. Ultimately the motion did not pass, then Hoyer acted quickly to motion that the resolution be sent back to the Judiciary Committee, where it is speculated that leadership hopes it will die of neglect. This motion passed, and the brief period of turmoil in Congress ended.
We all pretty much know where Democratic leadership is coming from: Nancy Pelosi still does not want impeachment on her table and Conyers is continuing to agree with her, now complaining that this may disrupt the other judiciary committee investigations.
There has been much speculation that Republicans were trying to outsmart Democrats by embarassing them with Kucinich and the loony left's waste of time. No doubt this is what far right wing pundits are saying about the ordeal, celebrating it as a victory for the GOP. No doubt, also, that Democratic leadership will play along with this, complaining that the push for impeachment would be political suicide and that the Democratic party cannot afford to waste the political capital it has gained by working together with Republicans on other issues. The nation has already been through one useless impeachment in recent history and we simply cannot afford another, they will say.
The fact of the matter is: a majority of Americans want to see Cheney impeached and his approval rating, along with that of Congress, is barely making it into the double digits. More and more, the non-right wing mainstream media commentators seem to be pointing out that something is terribly wrong with our government and that there is a growing disconnect with the vast majority of Americans.
Let's take a brief look at what has been happening to the direction of our government over the course of the Bush administration. When Bush Junior took power there was a power grab by the neoconservative movement - basically neocons felt that the selection of Bush represented a golden opportunity to establish American dominance around the world, as well as to stake out our permanent claim on Middle Eastern oil resources. Neoliberals played along with this, allowing Bush to preemptively declare war and viewing this as an opportunity to spread democracy throughout the "swamp" of the Middle East, also providing greater security to our ally Israel.
As it has played out, the war on Iraq has generally been viewed as a monstrous disaster resulting in the deaths of 100,000s of innocents and also resulting in the destruction of US reputation around the world. Our military has been seen as participating in deviant acts of torture and we have a mercenary army which can murder with few repercussions. The war has resulted in the recruitment of far more terrorists than before which may pose an even greater threat to Israel and western nations in the future. One of our key allies in the Middle East, Pakistan, is in the process of losing its democracy while Iraq is seeing its government fractured and its leaders under constant threat. The US is losing its predominance as the favored oil currency, causing the value of the US dollar to fall farther and farther with respect to other world currencies.
Meanwhile, certain neoliberals continue to claim that America is victorious in Iraq, and we continue to be led down the path of war - this time against Iran in pursuit of that elusive terror ring responsible for offering nuclear technology and WMDs to our enemies. A CIA agent and her front company responsible for tracking that terror network has been outed and their extremely valuable work has been shut down. Whistle-blowers are now shedding light on the fact that this terror network may also be tied in with drug running operations that have corrupted leaders in our own government, and are utilizing financial networks left over from the Iran/Contra scandal, a scandal that was covered up as the neoliberals (responsible for founding the DLC) took power during the period between Bush I and Bush II presidencies. All of the evidence leading us into the war in Iraq has not only been misleading, but some of it may have been fabricated by other facets of the criminal networks of corruption relating back to Iran/Contra.
Now, once again, we are seeing neoliberal Democratic party leaders ignoring this obvious corruption and crime, even to the point of supporting a nominee for Attorney General who will likely allow the Administration to continue to operate outside of the law. This, in a nutshell, explains the history of the behavior of our party leadership and how they have enabled the neocon movement ever since the end of the administration of George H.W. Bush.
I'm not going to speculate on why this is taking place, or what conspiracy theories, if any, may be in play. I simply wanted to lay out the bare facts and also indicate where this is likely all headed with the next administration, unless something is done about this immediately. The power to do something has always resided with the People and it is up to us to decide whether or not this is the time to wake up and press our leaders, and the judiciary committee, into action.
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