An Unlikely Conversation With The Cowards in Congress

Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose you were a member of Congress...
But I repeat myself. — Mark Twain

THE DIALOGUE

What
shameful toads you are! Yes you, our elected lawmakers. Yes you,
the folks we sent to Washington in our names. Yes you, the most
spineless, cowardly and craven Congress people in history. Yes you, the
most bullied, gutless and shameful herd of legislators ever elected.
And you know exactly who you are.

Where
in hell is your integrity? Where in hell is your self-respect? 
You’ve been led by your submissive noses to do the bidding of liars and
warmongers. You’ve been suckered into applauding some of the most egregious crimes ever committed by a US government. You’ve become such a pitiful collection of sniveling sycophants. And you know damn well who you are.

What’s
that? You want to know what you’ve done? Of what odious crimes are you
guilty to evoke such striking condemnation? Is that what you’re
asking? Is that what you really want to know? You’re joking,
right? Do you want the American people to believe have no idea
what this is all about? What nonsense that is.

But,
for the sake of discourse, let’s accept your ignorance for the
moment. For starters, let’s take a look at two provisions in that
forgotten document, the Constitution of the United States. 
Perhaps their significance will ring a bell somewhere in your pathetic
and paralyzed minds.

We can begin with Article 1, Section 8. Here, the Constitution clearly states that you, and only you, have the right to declare war. Did you get that? Only Congress can take on the awesome responsibility
of causing death and mayhem when there is a need to go to war. Only the
Congress of the United States has the Constitutional power do that.
Keep that in mind as we go on.

Next,
let’s do a replay of an Article you knew only too well a few years ago:
Article II, Section 4. It says that the President, Vice President and
all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office
on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high
crimes and misdemeanors. Remember that one?

Do
you remember how you fell over one another to speak at the podia of
your respective Houses to condemn Bill Clinton’s private affair with
Monica Lewinsky? You came out from under every piece of woodwork
in the Capitol with such pompous indignation. You came from both
political parties to wail to your constituents about the sexual
indiscretions of a sitting President. And then you impeached him.

Yes,
you were divided, but you crossed party lines to demand a trial for
perjury and obstruction of justice. Keep that in mind, too.

You
still don’t understand, do you? Of course, you don’t. You still
want to know what it is you’ve allegedly done. You have no clue at all.
You cannot see that your guilt has nothing at all to do with anything
you have done. Rather, your collective culpability lies in your INACTION, your SILENCE, your ACQUIESCENCE and your docile SURRENDER to the administration of PNAC

as fronted by George W. Bush. Your cowardice is reflected in your
complicity in his crimes against this nation and the world, and your
refusal to stand up and denounce the secrecy, the duplicity, and the
blatant lies that have brought the United States to this terrible
moment in its history.

You
forfeited whatever integrity you might have had as you timidly allowed
a curtain of fear and intimidation to fall over Washington and the
nation. You knew that, but you probably don’t want to deal with
it. Denial is salvation for some, and you probably needed to feel
self-righteous about your role in Congress and your loyalty to your
voters. Some joke. In fact, you are little more than cheap
imitations of true public servants. And you know without any doubt at
all who you are.

You
still don’t have a clue as to what this is all about, do you? 
That, too, is nonsense. You do know, you really do, but feigning
ignorance is clever and effective. So let’s lay it out for you in
simple terms that even you can understand Maybe, when you take a
close look, at the facts, you will look in the mirror with a little
more skepticism. Maybe, just maybe, you will see yourselves as
the lemmings you are. And maybe, just maybe, a few among you will reach
back to see if your backbones have any chance of regeneration.

A SHORT LIST OF OFFENSES

• George W. Bush came to the Presidency and immediately appointed a cadre of convicted felons and their associates from the Iran Contra era to many extremely important government positions. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• Members of the Project for a New American Century,
  proponents of preemptive wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were
  immediately given more than a dozen strategic positions in the new Bush
  government. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• After 9/11, George Bush refused - for eighteen months - to investigate the causes of the worst attacks in history on American soil. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• Condoleezza Rice lied to the nation about never having imagined the use of hijacked airliners as weapons. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• Rice,
  Bush and Cheney had to be coerced to testify before the Kean
  Commission. Rice refused to testify under oath, and Bush and Cheney
  testified for a very limited time and only as a team. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• Rice
  admitted to the Kean Commission that the August memo had warned about
  possible attacks on AMERICAN soil by Al Qaeda, and yet the President
  remained on vacation at his ranch for the remainder of the summer. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• George Bush manipulated intelligence information in order to gain support for his plans to attack Iraq. That is an impeachable offense. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• Colin Powell lied to the United Nations in a fabricated presentation designed to gain support for a preventive attack against Iraq. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice lied over and over and over to the nation about Saddam Hussein’s WMD’s, his connection to Al Qaeda, and his plans to attack the US. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• George
  Bush wrested away your power to declare war by lying to the Congress
  about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. He promised to use
  military force as a last resort, after all other options had been
  exhausted. He lied to Congress. That is an impeachable
  offence. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• George Bush handed Haliburton, Dick Cheney’s former company, multi billion dollar, no-bid contracts in Iraq. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• George
  Bush sent Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted felon, and his source for false
  WMD information to Iraq with and team of 800 armed thugs. They
  staged the infamous statue toppling, and bilked American taxpayers out
  of billions of dollars in regular payments to set up a pro Bush interim
  government. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• In
  May of 2003, George Bush declared major conflict ended in Iraq. His
  mission was accomplished. Since then horrific chaos, death and
  destruction have followed. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• The
  Pentagon refused to allow photographs of returning flag-draped coffins,
  and refused to count civilian deaths in Iraq. Yet, they managed
  to stage the rescue of Jessica Lynch, which was exposed as a
  fabrication. AND YOU NEVER SAID WORD
• Our
  young men and women in Iraq were dying and being maimed because they
  had no armor on their Humvees to protect them from roadside bombs. They
  were sent to die without adequate body armor, radios, night goggles and
  flashlights. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• Tens
  of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians were killed by our so-called
  smart bombs and illegal weapons, including napalm and depleted uranium
  shells were used as standard weapons. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• Photographs
  and eye-witness testimony from the ICRC and other agencies proved that
  the US was breaking international law by torturing prisoners in Iraq,
  Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The problem was systemic and condoned
  at the highest levels of government. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• Private
  airliners were being used by the Pentagon to transport prisoners for
  interrogation in other countries that condone and practice horrific
  methods of torture. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• George
  Bush and his cohorts changed the rationale for going to war over and
  over, manipulating their mantras as each lie was exposed and new
  reasons were needed to justify their illegal war. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• There
  was no plan to keep the peace, no plan to stop the looting, no plan to
  deal with an insurgency despite the warnings of so many in the
  military. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• The
  chaos, increased, the deaths and the destruction grew, and the
  insurgency proved to be unending. But your President told you we
  were making progress. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• The Downing Street Minutes were leaked to the public months ago. The content of these nine documents made it clear that George Bush had planned an invasion of Iraq at all costs, and that he planned to ‘fix’ intelligence information to gain support for his war of choice. That is an unquestionable high crime that merits impeachment. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• The
  Downing Street Minutes remain ignored by the White House, and neither
  the Congress nor the media have demanded answers from the President.
  Rep. John Conyers was refused a meeting room for an airing of these
  important documents and had to hold his hearing in a tiny basement
  room. Such disrespect was unprecedented and inexcusable. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.

This,
dear Congress people, is the short list. But even in its brevity, it is
a powerful indictment of your villainous roles in tacit support of the
affairs d’etat of the Bush administration. But, to really get to
you, to really make you sit up and look at yourselves with some pangs
of conscience, the list needs a powerful finale, - one that makes all
the other items almost pale by comparison. So here it is:

• In
  March of 2003, someone in the White House committed a serious felony.
  He or she or they leaked the identity of a CIA operative to the press.
  This was done to punish Joseph Wilson, a man who had dared to expose
  George Bush’s lie about yellow cake uranium sales to Saddam Hussein.
  Despite the seriousness of this crime, George Bush did nothing to try
  and discover who was responsible. In fact, he refused to conduct
  any investigation of his own staff to uncover a felony under his roof. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• After
  three months of ignoring a crime by someone in the WH, the CIA demanded
  an inquiry of what they termed a crime. Only then was the case given to
  WH buddy and supporter, then AG John Ashcroft. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• Finally,
  after five months had passed, the case was handed to a Special Counsel
  working on behalf of the Justice Department. Two years and millions of
  dollars after the Novak article outing Valerie Plame appeared, George
  Bush has yet to call Karl Rove aside and demand an explanation. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.
• Two
  years and millions of dollars after the article appeared, George Bush
  has yet to come forward and tell us what he knew and when he knew it. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD. YOU STILL REFUS TO UTTER A SINGLE WORD!

ENDING THE CONVERSATION

So
there it is, folks. There is your non-response, your silence, your
inertia in the face of the actions that have brought this country to
its most divisive state since the Vietnam conflict. There is a
short list of your kow-towing to an administration that has made our
country hated all over the globe, and turned our leaders into
international targets of ridicule and disgust.

There
it is, folks, and if the shoe fits, you know what to do. Your silence
has been both appalling and immoral. You are as responsible for the
death and destruction in Iraq as the Bush/PNAC warmongers, and your
legacy will mark you as the lackeys and bootlickers you are.

But
everything changed with 9/11, you claim. We wouldn’t dare question the
President, you say. We would surely have been called traitors,
or appeasers, or even worse....liberals. We had to go along with him, you
insist. And in a way, you’re right.

9/11
did change things. It separated the cowards from those with
principle and conviction. The latter, sadly, were far outnumbered
in Congress by the former. But that is how history is always
made. The few who dare, take the risks. And those few earn a
lasting and much admired place in history. Not so, you.

Yes,
for certain, you know who you are. But more important, so do the
American people. They have watched you cower and crawl and
promote the crimes of your President and his handlers. Despite
the silence of the media and their complicity along with yours, the
truth is gradually seeping into the consciousness of the public. 
If there is any justice in the world, you will answer to them for your
cowardice.

Public
opinion polls must be making you nervous right now. You men and women,
who represent us in the hallowed halls of Congress, have lost the
confidence of more than 63 percent of the voters! In truth, you have
not lost it; you have systematically and cravenly destroyed it. 
You made choices, and hopefully, you will have to answer for
them. You saw what was happening, you learned the truth, you were
witness to the crimes and the treason, and you sat back and did
nothing. You saw the evil grow and spread. AND YOU NEVER SAID A WORD.

Next
November, the voting public will have its turn (that is if we solve the
election fraud situation that has dominated elections since the 2000
coup d’etat.) They will either thank you for your honorable work,
or will remove you from office for your betrayal of their trust. 
Start worrying now, because your time is short. On Election Day,
2006, the full House and one third of the Senate are up for election.
On that day Americans will have a chance to have the very last word. If
there is any justice, that word to you will be goodbye.

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