Why Bush impeachment doesn't make front page of LA Times, NY Times, or Washington Post

Yesterday, Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush in the House of Representatives.

Click each image to see full front page:

He provided substantial evidence of criminal activity, evidence that included the president's own public statements that were prima facie confessions of criminal guilt, from admitting he ordered wiretaps and torture, admitting privately to ordering the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, to lying about the threat from Iraq and Iran in spite of overwhelming intelligence to the contrary, lying about available intelligence warning of the 9/11 attacks, to his forcing bureaucrats to lie about the cost of his Medicare drug bill and global warming, to the endemic cronyism from Iraq to Enron to Hurricane Katrina.

This did not merit front page coverage of the nation's top newspapers, the Washington Post, New York Times, or Los Angeles Times. The Washington Post had a small blurb on it their Washington news round up.


This all in spite of this being only the third time in American history a president was impeached, and the very first poll on impeaching Bush a few years back showed the same public support for it as there was for impeaching Nixon the day before he resigned and nearly double the peak support for impeaching Bill Clinton.

All of these papers equaly ignored Kucinich's articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney.

The newspapers do have one good excuse for not covering this: the Democratic leadership in Congress has said impeachment is "off the table," so Kucinich's resolution will likely go nowhere.

But that in itself is worthy of story. Nine years ago, we impeached a president for lying in a sexual harassment civil suit deposition. That could have prevented the plaintiff from getting a fair trial though the point is moot given that the judge threw out the case and Clinton had an ironclad alibi for his whereabouts at the time Paula Jones claimed the incident occurred.

By contrast, Bush's lies, imcompetence and corruption has cost the lives of thousands of our troops in an unnecessary war in Iraq, arguably thousands in a preventable terrorist attack, the lives of a million Iraqis and loss of much of the thin goodwill we enjoyed in the Middle East. It has also cost us our reputation as a model of respecting human rights and international law. And of course it has and will cost us trillions for his war, most of it going into the pockets of cronies who have a habit of doing poorly or not doing at all the no bid contracts we are given.

Apparently, Kucinich doesn't understand the difference between the seriousness of the offenses of Clinton and Bush.

Clinton's real offense was being competent and not completely subservient to the wishes of the wealthy and powerful (though he came close with NAFTA) compared to his Republican predecessor. Bush's offenses were merely against American taxpayers and voters, who matter only to the extent that they need to be snookered into ignoring government of, by, and for the wealthy, and against the powerless people of Iraq, who do not matter at all.

Another congressman condemns Bush's Iraq OIL THEFT law

I can count on one hand the number of Democrats who have spoken honestly about the oil theft law Bush is forcing on Iraqis, but unfortunately, I can think of just as many who lied, evaded, or literally ran away from questions about it.

At least there is one more now, Rep. Joe Sestak from Pennsylvania.

Americans need to understand that invading another country to steal their natural resources is a clearcut war crime that will earn us even more hatred from Iraqis and those in the Persian Gulf than we already have.


Via Thinkprogress:

Sesktak Warns Iraqi Oil Law Contains ‘Undue Ability Of U.S. Oil Companies To Control Iraqi Profits’

Alternet’s Joshua Holland reported recently, “If passed, the Bush administration’s long-sought ‘hydrocarbons framework’ law would give Big Oil access to Iraq’s vast energy reserves on the most advantageous terms and with virtually no regulation.” The framework law proposes to hand over effective control of as much as 80 percent of the country’s oil wealth.

A recent poll showed that all Iraqi ethnic and sectarian groups across the political spectrum oppose the principles enshrined in the oil law, and 419 Iraqi oil experts, economists and intellectuals recently signed their names to a statement expressing grave concern over the bill. The head of the Iraqi Federation of Union Councils said recently, “If the Iraqi Parliament approves this law, we will resort to mutiny.”

While the Bush administration has prodded the Iraqi government to pass the oil-sharing agreement, few members of Congress have voiced alarms over the details in the current bill. Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) recently told ThinkProgress that more attention needs to be paid to the oil legislation. “Who knows what’s in that,” he said. Sestak continued:

The indications from a draft of several months ago that the Kurds were using, is that…there is an undue ability of our oil companies to control the Iraqi profits by controlling the infrastructure and the wells that are there.

I mean they [U.S. oil companies] are going to get much more, if the draft is correct, of profits than we would under a normal oil sharing agreement, of these oil companies to a country like Saudi Arabia or others. Heaven forbid that at the end of this time, after all this, if we find out that there’s undue advantage given to our oil companies.

FULL TEXT

Send a note of thanks to Sestak and contact your representative and senators and tell them stop Bush from giving Iraq's oil to his cronies.

CONTACT SESTAK

FIND & CONTACT YOUR REP & SENATORS

OIL THEFT motive for IRAQ WAR resources

Impeaching only Cheney good on principle AND politics

It is fairly obvious that the only reason the Democrats are holding back on impeachment is they are afraid it will hurt their political chances in 2008, whether they remove Bush or not.

The Democrats want Bush and Cheney in place so 2008 will be a referendum on their corrupt, destructive government. If they are removed, they will be history, and for Americans, history is anything that isn't in the current news cycle, and only a handful of eggheads care about history.

They also mistakenly believe the rest of us are so stupid we can't tell the difference between the politically motivated impeachment of Bill Clinton and trying to remove the most dangerous, reckless, and corrupt president in our history.

However, if they impeached Bush & Cheney and they was NOT removed, they would not only still be in place, but the media would be forced to cover the hearings and a lot of the public would be hearing about their impeachable offenses. That would make the anti-republican tsunami even greater in '08.

But it would also make the Bush & Cheney offenses so obvious, enough republicans would vote to impeach,just to get the albatross off their neck, and they would be removed.

While I would prefer to see both removed, and sent to prison here or sent to the Hague, impeaching just Cheney could meet the needs of our constitutional system for accountability, and still leave an emasculated Bush in place as the political punching bag they want. With Cheney gone, half of Bush's brain would be gone.

And impeaching just Cheney is exactly what Dennis Kucinich proposed in his bill.

The objection to this is it may give Bush a chance to give one of the GOP candidates for president some prestige by appointing them as VP, and possibly catapult some seeming moderate to the GOP nomination who might otherwise not have made it through the gauntlet of American Taliban voters (if Bush appointed a far righty, that would be the best of all possible worlds since the guy would have the same pedestal, but be doomed in the general election no matter what). A 'moderate' VP would have a real problem as long as Bush was in office though--he would have to defend the corruption, destruction, and failure of his boss, so his appointment would only be a gift if Bush resigned or was impeached himself.

I doubt that Bush would do something as selfless as resign just to help the party.

Impeachment: the next election vs. history

If impeachment proceedings are started, Republicans might be relieved and vote quickly to impeach for exactly the reason Pelosi is holding back: once Bush and Cheney are out of office, they will be out of mind, exactly the way Nixon and Agnew were after they resigned. 1976 between Carter and Ford was a squeaker when it should have been a landslide in the face of Nixon's crimes and foot-dragging on ending the Vietnam War. Nixon might have been in the minds of those who read and discussed politics, but not the broad masses of people.

Another unfortunately parallel is LBJ in 1968. Though he won in a landslide in 1964, Vietnam forced him to step aside in 1968. Since he was still in office election day, what people disliked about him wasn't an abstract memory but something as immediate as that night's evening news (back when it was still worth watching). Even though Humphrey moved to an anti-war position, Nixon not only wiped him out, but an even further right candidate, George Wallace, got a big chunk of the vote.

Both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are older than me and remember these pieces of history.

While this analysis is accurate as far as determining the outcome of the next election, if it gives Bush and Cheney a pass on impeachment, the damage to our constitutional system may be permanent, and their sins will be swept under the carpet, and history rewritten that much more easily.

Most Americans are still only vaguely aware of the impeachable offenses of Bush and Cheney given the page A14 treatment they get in newspapers and near blackout on TV news. Those same outlets could elevate him to at least an average president over time if not the near deity status of Reagan.

By contrast, if he is impeached, fifty to a hundred years from now, Bush and Cheney will be members of a very small historical club that includes Clinton, Nixon, and Andrew Johnson. When grade school kids look at the list of charges against Bush and Cheney in their history books, they will wonder what all the fuss was about the other three, and when a future president takes more than half a step in the same anti-democratic, militarily aggressive direction, people will remember that grade school text and pull back on his leash hard.

Impeachment postcard to send Congress

Articles of Impeachment at ImpeachBush.org

Text of Kucinich's impeach Cheney bill H Res 333






impeach impeachment postcard president george w bush dick cheney iraq war wmd terrorism oil congress osama bin laden representative habeas corpushurricane katrina 9/11 september 11 9/11 commission venezuela haiti corruption occupation halliburton coup nancy pelosi john conyers professor smartass iraq petitionletter propaganda corporation fascism democracyhr 333 war on terror muslim dennis kucinich opinion public relations foreign policy al qaeda false flag cointelpro northwoods terrorist worst president ever failure war criminal 1976 election 1968 election karl rove lyndon b johnson abu ghraib torture torture memo nazi smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

TWO in Congress tell the truth about OIL theft motive for Iraq & coming Iran wars

I can count on one hand the number of congressmen and senators who have spoken honestly about the Hydrocarbon Law Bush is forcing on the Iraqis that gives up to 80% of their oil wealth to big oil corporations--and I'd have a couple of fingers left over.

One is Jim McDermott from Washington State. He connects the obvious dots from our overthrow of the secular, democratically elected president of Iran in 1953 with Bush & Cheney salivating over attacking Iran today:

Under Mossadegh, the Iranian government decided to reclaim Iran's rightful ownership of its national oil treasure, which had been exclusively controlled by the British who were taking 85 percent of the profits.

Oh, and by the way, the U.K. also kept the books secret, merely telling Iran what its 15 percent take was.

As soon as Mossadegh began to reclaim Iran's oil treasure, it was all over. Operation Ajax was set into motion.

The U.S. embassy in Tehran provoked phony internal Iranian dissent, while the Brits engineered an Iranian financial crisis by orchestrating a global boycott of Iranian oil. We brought down the Iranian government and installed the Shah.

***

Overthrowing Iran in 1953 was all about oil. Invading Iraq was all about oil. And the new secret plot against Iran is all about oil.

Oil is the only benchmark this president and vice president want, and they will keep American soldiers fighting and dying until an oil law is passed in Iraq that gives Western oil companies control of the spigot.

It is time to unmask the latest doomed plot to overthrow Iran and past time to get out soldiers out of Iraq.

FULL TEXT

Dennis Kucinich has made statement after statement on this, despite being ignored and ridiculed by the press, which is ironic since he is one of the few talking to the American people like adults and letting us in on the real debate instead of patronizing us with horror stories of boogie men like Republicans or the Hallmark platitudes of most Democrats.

On May 10th, he explained why the oil benchmark in the Iraq appropriation bill is probably a bad idea (it also happens to endorse a war crime).

"There has been a broad deception about the content of the hydrocarbon law, a deception which has taken in members of Congress and the media. Misdescribed tactically as a revenue sharing plan, it is in fact a radical plan to privatize Iraq's oil.

"The law before the Iraq Parliament contains 3 vague lines about revenue sharing and 33 solid pages of a complex legal restructuring, facilitating the privatization of Iraq's oil resources. The sharing will not be 1/3 of 100%. The sharing is more likely to be 1/3 of 20% at most, after private oil interests take their cut. The stage is being set for theft on a historic scale.

"Iraq may have as much as 300 billion barrels of oil to be tapped. At a market value of $70 a barrel, the value of its oil may approach $21 trillion.

"In the past twenty four hours the Vice President made an extraordinary trip to Baghdad to urge the Iraqi Parliament to stay in session to pass a "hydrocarbon law" which provides for "revenue sharing." Today, President Bush explicitly mentioned that he could come to an agreement if it included a benchmark for "sharing oil reserves." This is the tone of the legislation which the House passed tonight.

"The legislative debate between the Congressional Democrats and the Republicans misses the point of the key issue regarding the invasion, occupation and long term US presence in Iraq - - oil.

"The attempted theft of the oil assets of Iraq under the guise of a plan to end the war will keep the war going long into the future.

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Kucinich released another statement May 24.

On the day before, Kucinich took an hour on the floor of the House to explain the details of what Bush and Cheney are trying to do with Iraqi oil.

An article in the DC insider publication The Hill sums up establishment Washington's response to Kucinich's speech:

His declarations went largely ignored. No one sought to intervene, and when he was done, the House quickly moved to a non-controversial bill revising the boundaries of The Carl Sandburg Home National.

FULL TEXT

That was meant as an insult to Kucinich, but it is really an insult to democracy, to the Iraqis, to our troops, to us, and to anyone who would put people ahead of profits.


OIL motive for IRAQ WAR resources

dennis kucinich jim mcdermott benchmarks iraq oil contracts oil concessions hydrocarbon law iraq war privatization oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican timetable occupation support the troops hydrocarbon law withdrawal kucinich professor smartass iraq insurgency propaganda corporation democracy war on terror worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news

KUCINICH hammers Democrats for ignorance & inaction on Iraq oil theft law

Why is Dennis Kucinich one of only a small handful of our elected representatives who is talking about the primary motive for the war and an oil law Bush is forcing on the Iraqis that will inspire more animosity toward our troops?

Kucinich said the following in response to a Washington Post story that said Bush is now open to some benchmarks:

“Of course the President isn’t ruling out punishing the Iraqi government for not reaching benchmarks, because his Administration has deceitfully linked concepts of reconciliation and equitable oil revenue sharing to passage of the Hydrocarbon Act which leads to privatization of Iraq’s oil wealth.

“Democrats have denied they are for anything which privatizes Iraq’s oil, which means they may be largely unaware of what is in the bill because of Mr. Bush’s deception.

“This entire matter about control of Iraq’s oil would be a farce, if it were not so tragic in its implication. First, Congress wanted benchmarks because the President wanted them. Now the President wants benchmarks because Congress wants them. Who is the father of this baby?!

“Meanwhile Congress prepares to continue to fund the war while the White House crafts a bipartisan consensus to force Iraq to show “progress,” meaning Iraq gives up control of its oil. This war will never end if Iraqis believe we are trying to steal their oil, and, given the substance of the Hydrocarbon Act, how could they believe anything else?”

http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/0518-04.htm

OIL motive for IRAQ WAR resources

benchmarks iraq oil contracts oil concessions hydrocarbon law iraq war privatization oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican timetable occupation support the troops hydrocarbon law withdrawal kucinich professor smartass iraq insurgency propaganda corporation democracy war on terror worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news

Iraqi parliament EXACTLY RIGHT to go on vacation

There seems to be a bipartisan bitching point about the Iraqi parliament going on a two month vacation, but the Iraqis are doing exactly the right thing.

Remember when the Texas legislature was doing that mid-census redistricting, and Democrats fled to deprive them of a quorum?

Iraqis may have figured out that is the best way to deprive Bush of the Hydrocarbon Law that will rob Iraq of its oil wealth.

If the Iraqis bring it to a vote now and defeat it, Bush will figure out some way to dissolve parliament and install a govenment that wil do his bidding. Maliki has already said if the Hydrocarbon Law doesn't pass, he will be out of job because Bush will withdraw his support. For Maliki and the parliament, it's not hard to imagine that displeasure coming in the form of a terrorist attack or a death squads making some midnight visits with a list of those who voted against the bill.

If the Iraqi parliament votes FOR the Hydrocarbon Law, that midnight visit will be from the insurgents.

So rather than make a decision that could cost them their lives either way, they go on vacation, and put it on the back burner.

And every day, Bush and his war get less popular here, and therefore Bush is less powerful. In two month, the polite suggestions for a withdrawal timetable in the Democratic bill could have solidified with public support into a mandatory timetable, and Congress may have gotten around to investigating the role of oil companies in lobbying for the overthrow of Saddam, and drafting the plan for privatizing everything in Iraq that probably constitutes a war crime under the Geneva and Hague Conventions.
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/search?q=geneva
(scroll down for relevant excerpts)

Maybe some Democrats besides Dennis Kucinich, Jim McDermott and a handful of others will decide to show us the courtesy of talking honestly on camera about the role big oil played in this war.

Like the memo Condi got telling her to cooperate with the energy task force in “the review of operational policies towards rogue states such as Iraq and actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2007/03/juhasz-wh...

I think the Iraqi parliament has even passed a non-binding resolution of their own on the withdrawal of our troops, just like the slow boil tactic used by Democrats in Congress.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51624

Maybe Bush will end up keeping his promise about democratizin' Iraq--but he won't be happy if he does.

OIL motive for IRAQ WAR resources

iraq oil contracts oil concessions hydrocarbon law vacation iraq war privatization jim mcdermott oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican antonia juhasz greg palast GOP dennis kucinich condi occupation colonialism hydrocarbon law withdrawal kucinich professor smartass iraq peak oil propaganda corporation democracy war on terror worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news