Home > Cindy Sheehan: “Bush’s Presidency Is Illegitimate!”
Cindy Sheehan: “Bush’s Presidency Is Illegitimate!”
by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 31 January 20061 comment
Movement Wars and conflicts Governments USA Cindy Sheehan
Washington, D.C. - Cindy Sheehan is back in town! I’m sure that big bully in the White House, President George W. Bush, will be shaking in his cowboy boots when he hears that news. When Sheehan, the popular anti-Iraq War activist, showed up at Crawford, Texas, last summer, Bush refused to meet with her. He seemed cowed by her mere presence at a vigil (a/k/a “Camp Casey”) so close to his once-secluded ranch. Sheehan was then demanding a face-to-face meeting with the Spymaster Bush, whose latest version of the USA Patriot Act, makes carrying “an unauthorized sign” at a national political convention a federal crime. She wanted the arrogant chief executive to come clean about the real reasons for the Iraqi war. “No more lies from the White House,” she told the media at “Camp Casey.” Her son, Army Specialist, Casey Sheehan, age 24, was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004, in Baghdad’s Sadr City.
The latest occasion for Sheehan’s appearance in our nation’s capital was a public forum, which was held at the Bus Boys and Poets Bookstore, at 14th and V Streets, NW, on Monday, Jan. 30, 2006. The event sponsored by a number of local, and national, progressives groups, like “Democracy Rising,” “ImpeachPAC,” “Backbone Campaign,” and “Censure Bush,” dealt with the “I” word - the impeachment of Bush and his vice-president-in-mayhem, Dick Cheney, for committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.” (1)
Sheehan was one of six panel members at the forum. She cut right to the chase in her opening remarks. Sheehan said, “George Bush’s presidency is illegitimate! He was elected by the Supreme Court [in 2000]. And, even if we believe he won in 2004, (laughter from the audience), there were many [incidents of] election irregularities, voter manipulation, voter fraud and voter suppression. I suggest changing the discourse [for today’s agenda] from impeachment to eviction. He’s a tenant destroying our house, a squatter. And number two,” Sheehan continued, “when Bush abrogated to himself the [war-making] powers of the U.S. Congress to invade Iraq, I believe that was unconstitutional. (2) We also shouldn’t support any member of the Congress, who let their [war-making] responsibilities be abrogated by Bush.”
Serving on the panel with the feisty Sheehan were: Kevin Zeese, activist and an Independent candidate for the U.S. Senate from the state of Maryland; ex-U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark; journalist David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org; Ann Wright, an ex-U.S. diplomat; and Marcus Raskin, educator and longtime anti-war activist going back to the days of the Vietnam conflict. Zeese also served as the moderator for the event.
In his comments, Clark, who was the U.S. Attorney General in the administration of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, said that both Bush and Cheney needed to be impeached, particularly for their “war of aggression” against Iraq. He labeled them, “the greatest threat to peace, justice, the rule of law, the environment and to the U.S. Constitution, that the people face today. The survival of life on the planet is at risk.” Çlark added that the public needs to get involved now and that this process is the “most important obligation of a citizen of the U.S. at this moment.”
Wright who had the courage to resign her State Department diplomatic post, in March, 2003, rather than support the immoral and illegal war in Iraq, also champions the impeachment procedure. She said, “We the people need to take our country back. We need to demand accountability from this present administration and one of the ways to demand that accountability is this thing called - impeachment.”
In his remarks, Raskin traced the history of major U.S. conflicts going back to WWI. He said that after WWII, the U.S. led the fight for the creation of the UN and for the adoption of a Charter that prohibited “wars of aggression.” He said that the trials at Nuremberg, Germany, contributed to that movement for change. Raskin had to leave immediately after giving his remarks to teach a class at a local college, so the audience didn’t have a chance to quiz him on his feelings about the culpability of others in the Bush-Cheney Gang, like the ex-Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, a notorious Neocon, for the Iraqi War. The latter by common consent is considered the prime “architect” within the administration of that unjust and blood stained conflict. Wolfowitz is now, incredibly, the President of the World Bank, as a result of an appointment to that high paying and prestigious sinecure from Bush. (3) It would have been interesting to get Raskin’s opinion of Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld, too, on the public record.
Zeese, who is also a trial attorney and experienced in criminal law, suggested making Bush “radioactive” for all Americans, by pointing out the truth about how he has “broken the law over and over again. We need to make this an issue that Republicans care about, as well.” He said impeachment is an “American issue and that the Constitution isn’t red or blue. The Constitution stands for checks and balances and it’s time to bring that back into focus...The Republicans are changing their views on the war.” He underscored how Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), once a strong War Hawk, now opposes the Iraqi War “because he was lied to” by this administration. Zeese, along with others on the panel, condemned Bush for his spying, via the NSA, on Americans, in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Bush was also ignoring the requirements of the FISA law to obtain an eavesdropping warrant from a federal judge. ”Our Constitution is under attack,” Zeese said. “We need to create the vision of the country that we want and to work for that vision. Forget the party labels, individuals are what counts. We need to stand up for what we believe in and we will get there.”
Swanson, who serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, detailed the historical and documentary record that demonstrates beyond cavil that Bush had “intentionally lied” to the Congress about Iraq, and Saddam Hussein, before launching the invasion of that beleaguered country in March, 2003. He emphasized that the Bush-Cheney Gang’s taking the nation to war “based on lies is the highest crime possible.” (4) Swanson had just returned for today’s forum from Los Angeles where he, and Wright, too, spoke at an anti-Iraqi War function in the area.
In her final remarks, Sheehan summed up the proceedings at the Forum rather concisely. She said this: “We should also be talking about the immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. We need to focus on that, too. We can’t wait until [the] 2006 [elections]. We have to go out and demand that Congress do its job...We’re using depleted uranium in Iraq...We’re torturing people. We’re flying them [around] in airplanes to torture them... We should be talking about morality. Killing to serve any purpose is barbaric. It’s wrong. It’s immoral. The invasion and occupation of Iraq doesn’t fit any standards of the just war theories...We’ve seen some good stuff happening [on Capitol Hill.] We’ve seen Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) turn around. But, the Congress isn’t going to change, unless we make them.” (5)
Notes:
1. Article II, Sec. IV of the U.S. Constitution.
2. Under the U.S. Constitution, only the Congress has the power to declare war, Article I, Sec. 8 (11).
3. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/041101fa_fact
4. http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/
5. Photos from the Impeachment Forum can be found at: http://homepage.mac.com/bhughes2/PhotoAlbum177.html
© William Hughes 2006
William Hughes is the author of “Saying ‘No’ to the War Party” (Iuniverse, Inc.). He can be reached at: liamhughes@comcast.net.
Forum posts
1 February 2006, 01:29
State of the Union Subterfuge 2006
A User’s Guide to the War Train
subterfuge \SUB-tur-fyooj\, noun:
A deceptive device or stratagem.
Going to Hell on a War Train:
Stank of the Nation 2006
Ozone and fear smell sharp like blood
an acrid undercurrent of inevitability
as the wheels squeal and brakes burn
crashing in a slow-motion tumble
Dangers pile up in deadly drifts
as the train plows blindly into night
following the flow of neon and pavement
toward the rim of a Grand Canyon
Speeding up rather than slowing down
even as wildfires rage all around
the conductor jams the crank ahead
warning sirens screeching by
We loaded the 15 tons of fuel with tax
what did we get- another day of shame
and deeper in debt to a corporate game
smash and grab our last glimmers of hope
Storm clouds roll in with thunder
carrying a clinging stench of decay
from the south and the oceans
yet the train races into oblivion
Madcap flickers of figments in windows
prove the passengers preoccupied
watching pretend people acting heroic
as they fly by trenches full of bodies
This train was bound for glory
once upon a time in a book
now it’s full speed toward hell
the demon driver a silly crook
In the wind we wished for home fires
roasting sweet treats and meats
instead the stench of the nation
is bombed bits of buildings and blood
P.S.:
We’ve witnessed the wickedness of war
yet we follow warlords’ rules
killing after killing and corruption
shall our epitaph read: "Death by Fools"?
State of the Union 2006
Rest in Peace
Coretta Scott King
B.Z.B. Evans
Ministry of Mutation
http://wonderkind.blogspot.com
http://peoplejudgebush.org/
History will Judge Us by our Corruption or our Courage
Regardless of the rhetoric being spun out of Washington, DC that we "must win" the war in Iraq, and the insurgents must die, along with all the terror-mad men who hate us, if we are to survive these times with any shred of dignity we must face the facts laid out before us by the rest of the world. We are suffering under the most criminally corrupt regime of corporate pirates to ever seize power in the industrial world, and we are being robbed blind as they distract all of us with far-flung manipulations of terror and sacrifice our children. War-profiteers such as the world hasn’t seen since the days of the Roman Empire.
In reality, the investigations and disclosures about the events of the 9-11 attacks are still being quashed and censored, even in the face of victims families protests, as are the apparently criminal lies of aggression which resulted in the Bush regime launching military deployment to oil-rich islamic lands. In reality, the "insurgents" are mostly people in desperate situations who have lost relatives to gargantuan military weapons doing desperate things for revenge or what they believe is survival. In reality, the "terrorists" are mostly ideologically committed young people who feel the US is challenging them to a global duel of historic proportions, which is exactly what the Bush regime has done since the day they seized the White House with the help of several Bush-appointed justices.
As tragic and bloody as their "war on terror" (an Orwellian nightmare) is, remember it is all a well-planned vast distraction. How disoriented do we feel some days when we spend so much of our energy focused on some burning country half a world away whose language we do not speak and culture we barely understand? Meanwhile, back at home, the Bush corporate cronies are busy gutting every environmental protection and social program fought for in the last century, robbing consumers at the pumps, clear-cutting forests, building secret mega-weapons, deploying God knows what new spy technology, and generally undermining what we once considered a "democracy." And the very idea that anyone will "win" the war in Iraq is a corruption in itself. Humanity has already lost itself in the bombed-out gardens of Babylon.
At some point we the people, in order to retain any sanity, will have to face these crooks and put a stop to it. Find their soft underbellies, where they claim to have a heart, plastic or otherwise. Hit them in the profiteering and expose their reptilian lies. Demand justice, and the truth for which so many thousands have died. Allow the investigations of the Bush-Bin Laden-Rumsfeld-Saddam-CIA-Saudi-Cheney-Halliburton-Enron-Unocal-9-11 web of deception to be realized, and it will be like banishing the wicked witch and her flying monkeys. Begin envisioning these war criminals behind bars.
Our world will not only be happier for it, but will actually have a chance for survival, rather than armageddon.
B.Z.B. Evans, Irregular Unit 008
Burning Bush http://burnbush.blogspot.com
How to Translate "War"
We should ask ourselves if
"war" is a universal idea or
an undiagnosed mental disorder
see the bloody invasions blasting
history becoming one long crime
a wasting contagion on the world
now in the final hours
like a fat drunken giant
fighting flies and wasps
with a sledgehammer
The last national challenge:
translate "patriotic"-
to extraterrestrials
before "blasting away"
B.Z.B. Evans
BombShelter 2013
http://godbot.blogspot.com
State of the Union Subterfuge:
What Bush Will Say, What You Should Know
by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney
Amanda Terkel and Payson Schwin / American Progress Report
Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution says: "The President shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Tomorrow at 9 p.m. ET, President Bush will do just that, delivering his fifth State of the Union address. Below we tell you what to expect and what you need to know.
Alternative Energy
What Bush Will Say: "I agree with Americans who understand being hooked on foreign oil is an economic problem and a national security problem." [1/29/06]
What You Need to Know: For five years, President Bush has consistently steered the nation away from alternative fuels and towards greater dependence on polluting imported fossil fuels.
BUSH HAS INCREASED DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL: Sixty-six percent of oil consumed in the United States comes from foreign sources, up from 58 percent in 2000. Americans now spend $200,000 a minute on foreign oil, and more than $25 billion annually goes to Persian Gulf states for oil imports.
BUSH ENERGY BILL CONTAINED LITTLE ON RENEWABLE ENERGY: The energy bill supported and signed by President Bush dropped a provision that would have required utilities "to generate at least 10 percent of their electricity through renewable fuels by 2020."Â? The proposal, championed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), was "was a low-cost, market-driven approach to cutting demand for fossil fuels and easing air pollution."
BUSH ENERGY BILL WILL NOT REDUCE RELIANCE ON FOREIGN OIL: The same energy bill failed to take any steps that will substantively reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. Specifically, the final version "rejected a Senate provision that required reduction of oil consumption by one million barrels per day by 2015." Under the bill, "our need for imported oil will continue to grow for as long as models are able to project."
Warrantless Domestic Spying
What Bush Will Say: "The terrorist surveillance program is necessary to protect America from attack." [1/26/05]
What You Need to Know: President Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program undermines the fight against terrorists and violates the law.
LAWLESS SPYING THREATENS LEGITIMATE TERRORIST INVESTIGATIONS: When laws are broken, the legal system imposes consequences. Revelations about the National Security Agency wiretapping program throw into doubt a wide range of investigations and prosecutions in the fight against terrorism. In criminal cases that can put terrorists behind bars, judges now have to worry that evidence was based on illegal wiretaps. According to several FISA judges quoted by the Washington Post, there are serious concerns that "legally suspect information" acquired through warrantless surveillance was used to obtain FISA warrants, potentially rendering the warrants illegitimate. More broadly, convicted terrorists will be emboldened to challenge their prosecutions, perhaps giving them the opportunity to operate freely once again. [Washington Post, 12/21/05]
LAWLESS SPYING WASTES VALUABLE INVESTIGATIVE RESOURCES: According to the New York Times, a massive amount of time and resources were devoted to the warrantless domestic spying program but obtained minimal results. The FBI was bombarded with long lists of phone numbers generated by the NSA program. According to a senior prosecutor: "It affected the F.B.I. in the sense that they had to devote so many resources to tracking every single one of these leads, and, in my experience, they were all dry leads." Long after 9/11, "the N.S.A. material continued to be viewed as unproductive, prompting agents to joke that a new bunch of tips meant more calls to Pizza Hut." [New York Times, 1/17/06]
LAWLESS SPYING THREATENS THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES: The Bush Administration is claiming executive power far beyond our historical understanding. Among recent examples: the administration claims it can wiretap without a warrant in the United States, contrary to federal law (FISA); it can torture, contrary to international law and the recent McCain Anti-Torture Amendment; and it can hold a U.S. citizen in detention forever, with no judicial review, simply because the President labels the citizen an "enemy combatant." These positions constitute a direct attack by the executive branch on the checks and balances designed to protect our nation’s democracy.
Making Tax Cuts Permanent
What Bush Will Say: "Of course, we’ll talk about fiscal policy in my State of the Union, talking about the Congress to be wise about how we spend the people’s money and to make the tax cuts permanent." [1/26/05]
What You Need to Know: Making President Bush’s tax cuts permanent would harm the economy and worsen the nation’s poor fiscal health.
TAX CUTS WILL COST $3.4 TRILLION OVER TEN YEARS: The cost of making the tax cuts permanent will be $3.4 trillion through fiscal year 2015, according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates. This includes the cost of extending the Alternative Minimum Tax relief associated with these tax cuts. [Congressional Budget Office, 1/26/06]
DEFICITS CAUSED BY TAX CUTS NEGATE ANY POTENTIAL ECONOMIC BENEFITS: Studies by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JTC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and CBO all confirm that deficits undermine economic benefits of the cuts. In their analysis of the 2003 tax cuts, JTC found that any economic benefits of the tax cuts would "eventually likely to be outweighed by the reduction in national savings due to increasing Federal government deficits." Four of the five models they used showed a negative effect on real GDP by the next decade, while the fifth showed no impact at all. CBO and OECD studies confirmed the tax cuts would raise deficits and hurt growth. [American Progress analysis, 1/26/05; CBO, October 2005]
PERMANENT TAX CUTS OVERWHELMINGLY FAVOR THE WEALTHIEST: Estimates based on data from the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center show that if the tax cuts are made permanent, the top 1 percent of households will gain an average of $71,420 a year when the tax cuts are fully in effect, reflecting a 6.5 percent change in their after-tax income. By contrast, people in the middle of the income spectrum would secure just a 2.1 percent increase in their after-tax income, with average tax cuts of $870. [Tax Policy Center, 12/20/05]
Katrina Reconstruction
What Bush Will Say: "I’m going to remind people we show the character and compassion of America by taking focused action...to help devastated areas of our country that have been — areas that have been devastated by natural disasters." [1/26/05]
What You Need to Know: The Bush administration has bungled the reconstruction efforts and is failing to support New Orleans’ reconstruction plan.
KATRINA RECONSTRUCTION HAS BEEN SLOW AND BUNGLED: If New Orleans is to thrive, let alone survive, people must be able to return. They cannot do so under current conditions. The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson accurately notes, "the longer the city sits empty and ruined, the less likely its renaissance becomes. Who but the president can break the logjam?" Whole sections of New Orleans still "resemble a moonscape," and only around one-fifth of the city’s original population has resettled. Despite Bush’s claims that New Orleans is "a heckuva place to bring your family," many "neighborhoods still are abandoned wastelands of uninhabitable homes and sidewalks piled with moldy garbage."
KATRINA RECONSTRUCTION FUNDING HAS BEEN TAINTED BY POLITICS: The $29 billion in aid passed last month was tainted by politics: the package "gave Mississippi about five times as much per household in housing aid as Louisiana received," a "testimony to the clout" of Bush’s political ally, conservative Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R).
ADMINISTRATION REJECTED RECONSTRUCTION PLAN: President Bush said at last week’s press conference, "It’s important for New Orleans and the state of Louisiana to work together to develop a state recovery plan. ... The plan for Louisiana hasn’t come forward yet." In fact, Louisiana did come up with a plan - which the White House rejected. Rather than supporting the "most broadly supported plan for rebuilding communities," Bush instead backed $6.2 billion in block grants that Congress provided last year. Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA), whose legislation would have established the Louisiana Development Corp. to purchase flood-damaged property, called the block grants "unacceptable." "Clearly the $6 billion isn’t enough," he said. "It ignores the vital recovery in the parishes of Orleans, St. Bernard, Cameron and parts of Plaquemines."
WHITE HOUSE STONEWALLING KATRINA INVESTIGATIONS: Congressional investigations into the administration’s inadequate response to Katrina have stalled because the "Bush White House is now refusing to turn over Hurricane Katrina related documents or make senior officials available for testimony." Recent news reports revealed that only days before Katrina hit, "the White House received detailed warnings about the storm’s likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property." One House investigator said the committee will find a "disturbing inability by the White House to de-conflict and analyze information," but with the White House stonewalling the investigations with claims of executive privilege, the administration’s mistakes will not be known for years to come.
via www.allenroland.com
ONLY THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY
¨÷¨÷¨÷¨M¨÷¨÷¨Ü¨÷¨÷¨T¨÷¨÷¨Ã¨÷¨÷¨N¨÷¨÷¨Ê¨÷¨÷¨X¨÷¨÷¨÷¨÷¨
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and never will."
Frederick Douglass
Wealth heaped on wealth,
nor truth nor safety buys,
The dangers gather
as the treasures rise.
Samuel Johnson
"When the people fear the government you have tyranny...
when the government fears the people you have liberty."
— Thomas Jefferson
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The Impeachment of George W. Bush
The time has come to call for the impeachment of President Bush: Any President who maintains he is above the law—and acts repeatedly on that belief by http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/holtzman
Activists to Impeach Bush, Impeach Bush Meetups, events, clubs and ...Meet nearby Activists to Impeach Bush! Come to an Impeach Bush Meetup to join their appeal to Congress to impeach George W. Bush for high crimes and ...
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"Society is like a stew. If you don’t keep it stirred up, you get alot of scum on top."
— Edward Abbey
"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death."
— Adolf Hitler
"A long dispute means that both parties are wrong."
— Francois Voltaire
News of the Strange & Supernatural
http://metamagic.org/strange
Metamagic World News
http://metamagic.org/worldnews
BZB’s BriarPatch
http://briarholler.blogspot.com
GaiaWurm SurfReport
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Burning Bush
http://burnbush.blogspot.com