Dave Lindorff's top ten reasons to impeach President Bush (From his website: This Can't Be Happening:
10 Reasons to Impeach Bush...And One Reason Why the Cowardly Democratic Leadership Shouldn't Be Afraid to Do It
As prospects grow for a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives, and perhaps even the Senate, this November, the idea of impeachment is gaining attention. Yet even as polls show increasing numbers of Americans supporting the idea of removing Bush from office before the end of his term, Democratic Party leaders keep backing away.
This is not simply bad politics. It is cowardly, wrong and dangerous.
Let's look at the facts.
President Bush has committed grave offenses against the Constitution and against the people of the United States. Among these offenses are:
1. Initiating a war of aggression against a nation that posed no immediate threat to the U.S.--a war that has needlessly killed 2500 Americans and maimed and damaged over 20,000 more, while killing between 50-100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children.
2. Lying and organizing a conspiracy to trick the American people and the U.S. Congress into approving an unnecessary and illegal war.
3. Approving and encouraging, in violation of U.S. and international law, the use of torture, kidnapping and rendering of prisoners of war captured in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the course of the so-called War on Terror.
4. Illegally stripping the right of citizenship and the protections of the constitution from American citizens, denying them the fundamental right to have their cases heard in a court, to hear the charges against them, to be judged in a public court by a jury of their peers, and to have access to a lawyer.
5. Authorizing the spying on American citizens and their communications by the National Security Agency and other U.S. police and intelligence agencies, in violation of the First and Fourth Amendments and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
6. Obstructing investigation into and covering up knowledge of the deliberate exposing of the identity of a U.S. CIA undercover operative, and possibly conspiring in that initial outing itself.
7. Obstructing the investigation into the 9-11 attacks and lying to investigators from the Congress and the bi-partisan 9-11 Commission--actions that come perilously close to treason.
8. Violating the due process and other constitutional rights of thousands of citizens and legal residents by rounding them up and disappearing or deporting them without hearings.
9. Abuse of power, undermining of the constitution and violating the presidential oath of office by deliberately refusing to administer over 750 acts duly passed into law by the Congress--actions with if left unchallenged would make the Congress a vestigial body, and the president a dictator.
10. Criminal negligence in failing to provide American troops with adequate armor before sending them into a war of choice, criminal negligence in going to war against a weak, third-world nation without any planning for post war occupation and reconstruction, criminal negligence in failing to respond to a known and growing crisis in the storm-blasted city of New Orleans, and criminal negligence in failing to act, and in fact in actively obstructing efforts by other countries and American state governments, to deal with the looming crisis of global warming.
Each one of these offenses (and it is not meant to be a complete list) would be sufficient on its own to require the president’s removal from office, and in some cases, where an actual statutory crime can be charged, his subsequent indictment and trial. Together they cry out for impeachment and removal.
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