John Dean on 6/6/03: "Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?"

[NV1962]

Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?

By John W. Dean
FindLaw Columnist
Special to CNN.com

(FindLaw) -- President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a joint resolution authorizing the use of U.S. military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake -- acts of war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away -- unless, perhaps, they start another war.

That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.

Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.

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So what are we now to conclude if Bush's statements are found, indeed, to be as grossly inaccurate as they currently appear to have been?

After all, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and given Bush's statements, they should not have been very hard to find -- for they existed in large quantities, "thousands of tons" of chemical weapons alone. Moreover, according to the statements, telltale facilities, groups of scientists who could testify, and production equipment also existed.

So where is all that? And how can we reconcile the White House's unequivocal statements with the fact that they may not exist?

There are two main possibilities. One, that something is seriously wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems difficult to believe. The other is that the president has deliberately misled the nation, and the world.

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Sen. Bob Graham -- a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- told CNN's Aaron Brown, that while he still hopes they finds WMDs or at least evidence thereof, he has also contemplated three other possible alternative scenarios:

One is that were spirited out of Iraq, which maybe is the worst of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were trying to avoid, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could be in the hands of dozens of groups. Second, that we had bad intelligence. Or third, that the intelligence was satisfactory but that it was manipulated, so as just to present to the American people and to the world those things that made the case for the necessity of war against Iraq.

Sen. Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN "there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration."

Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times, he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Graham requested that the Bush administration declassify the information before the Senate voted on the administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq.

But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only addressed "findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the Administration, by cherrypicking only evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion.

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To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.

(source)

Now I have a few questions. After abdicating its responsibilities in the run-up to the war in Iraq, should Congress now also abdicate its responsibility for holding the executive branch accountable when it mocks the Law, deliberately pushing it beyond the breaking point?

When a government is granted unquestioning immunity from prosecution, when it clearly appears to have deliberately corrupted means to an unjustified end, can we get rid for once and for all of hollow notions like "due diligence", "checks and balances", "justice", "honor and duty", and yes: "democracy"?

Is the solution here yet another collective exercise in self-delusion sold as "national healing", with a successor President absolving and pardoning the preceding crew, praise the Lord and God bless America?

If your answer to the three questions above is "yes", I'll have whatever you are smoking.

[aquart]

1. I'm still not healed from the last "national healing."

[pat_k]

2. Anything we say is impeachable, is impeachable. Just need the political will

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=3149277&mesg_id=3156923

Impeachment is a political process, not a judicial process.

Even if this criminal administration weren't abusing power to break our laws (e.g., War Crimes and FISA for starters -- http://january6th.org/charges.html">more here) and nullify our most treasured principles, we could impeach for intolerable neglience and incompetence.

I've often heard people claim "You can't impeach for stupidity." That is flat wrong. If we concluded that a President's stupidity constituted an intolerable threat to the future of the nation, we could impeach for stupidity.

All that is required is the political will.

We have so many offenses against the letter of the law, the intent of the law, the principle of consent (the sole moral principle on which our constitution is founded), and on and on, the failure of Congress to impeach is mind-boggling. Absolutely mind-boggling.