More on impeachment

Did you know that the merits of impeaching President Bush were actually debated on March 11, 2003?

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss and debate immediately putting into the U.S. House of Representatives Bills of Impeachment against President Bush Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and then Attorney General John Ashcroft in order to head off the impending war.

So explains Francis A. Boyle in his article, "The national campaign to impeach President George W. Bush". Interestingly, the emergency meeting was presided over by Congressman John Conyers who is now leading the efforts to get some answers regarding the Downing Street Memo. Actually, of course, the impeachment movement of 2003 went nowhere because it was judged to jeopardize the possibility of Democrats winning the presidential election of 2004. But it was debated.

Here's how Boyle concludes his article:

The Athenians lost their democracy. The Romans lost their Republic. And if we Americans did not act now we could lose our Republic! The United States of America is not immune to the laws of history!
...
Certainly, if the U.S. House of Representatives can impeach President Clinton for sex and lying about sex, then a fortiori the House can, should, and must impeach President Bush Jr. for war, lying about war, and threatening more wars. All that is needed is for one Member of Congress with courage, integrity, principles and a safe seat to file these currently amended draft Bills of Impeachment against Bush Jr., Cheney, Rumsfeld, and now Attorney General Albert Gonzales, who bears personal criminal responsibility for the Bush Jr. administration torture scandal. Failing this, the alternative is likely to be an American Empire abroad, a U.S. police state at home, and continuing wars of aggression to sustain both -- along the lines of George Orwell's classic novel 1984. Despite all of the serious flaws demonstrated by successive United States governments that this author has amply documented elsewhere during the past quarter century as a Professor of Law, the truth of the matter is that America is still the oldest Republic in the world today. “We the People of the United States” must fight to keep it that way!

I don't think Prof. Boyle's prediction is at all unreasonable. I do, indeed, fear for the Republic.