Reply #14: Great question about an important issue.

[H2O Man]

Just the reminder of Agnew being VP is important. He was a snake. His downfall was in large part due to his taking funny money as governor, before he was VP. The other part was that those looking to remove Nixon knew the congress was unlikely to go for an impeachment if they knew Agnew was going to become president.

It was a strange situation: I believe that Agnew was done in by thoseon the far right, rather than democrats. His taking bribes from contractors is an indication of his connections to what we call "organized crime." The timing of it was eye-opening, indeed.

The comparison of Cheney's funny business with Haliburton and other energy companies is on target. Yet, because the president is able claim executive privilege, and because the congress has not taken it to the most serious level of investigation possible, there is little chance of it resulting in all the documents ever becoming public ... as we have so unfortunately seen.

The Downing Street memo is a smoking gun. It is, in many ways, as much of a smoking gun as the majority of the infamous tapes made by Nixon. In and of itself, it should be enough to result in an investigation by the House. If we can accomplish that much, we are in business .... the impeachment business. And I think that it is safe to say any congressional investigation of Bush would include Cheney, as far as why we went to war with Iraq.