Impeachment Souffle: Still off the table?

Although key to a balanced diet, House keeps impeachment off the menu

"…impeachment was something that we could not be successful with, and that would take up the time we needed to do some positive things to establish a record of our priorities and [Republican] short-comings. The president isn't worth it. He's not worth impeaching. We've got important work to do." Asked whether the Constitution is worth it, she replied, "Well, yeah, the Constitution is worth it if you can succeed."

-- Nancy Pelosi, from a 7/5/07 article by David Lindorff

The usual excuses
So much for that silly oath of office, eh Nancy? Last anyone heard, Ms. Nancy and Uncle Harry were so busy saving America through the really important legislative work they've been doing – indiscernible though it may be to the naked eye – that impeachment has had to remain on the sideboard and off the table, slowly congealing under one of those clear plastic cake covers.


As they tell us, there's no time for impeachment because it would detract from their laser-like focus on doing the people's business. Which, translated into our native tongue, is a frank admission that Congress can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

Then there's the "we don't have the votes" excuse. Keep in mind that this administration has never been called out on TV (which remains the sole or primary source of "news" for 92 percent of Americans) for its corruption, criminality, cronyism, unconstitutional power grabs, and commission of everything from the customary outrage du jour to high treason.

I have a feeling that if the American people were actually allowed to hear even a partial list of the outrages perpetrated in their names and with their tax dollars, the votes to convict would miraculously show up in the form of ass-chewed Senators whose constituents have told them to vote for conviction or look for another job next election.

My personal favorite is pleading with the more furious among us to give the investigations time to work. Never mind that subpoenas are routinely ignored, testimony is laughably incoherent, administration insiders routinely lie even on the rare occasions when they're placed under oath – and there are no consequences for any of this.

But rather than admitting they're not up to the job, we're told that these spineless incompetents in the House and Senate Judiciary committees – who managed to bungle a prima facie case for treason against at least three of these vampires, then have the nerve to wring their hands in anguished futility over those shockingly uncooperative BushCo meanies – are just keeping their powder dry for the coming showdown.

Which I suppose means High Noon on Pennsylvania Avenue is on the way, in which leading Democrats will, as is their custom, bring Neolithic tools to counter BushCo's M-4s and mobile rocket launchers.


Unacceptable but unaccountable
Meanwhile, the outrages keep on coming: impeachable offenses keep piling up; the latest figures report that our liberating presence in Iraq has murdered more than a million civilians and created between two and four million refugees; Iran is the next jewel in the PNAC's crown; Syria is in line for an oratorical upgrade in BushCo's demonization campaign; domestic repression is edging its way toward the golden age of Stalinism; and Cheney may have just become the world's newest nuclear power (Minot AFB; six cruise missiles; background here: missing nukes).

So don't buy the lies. Impeachment is the only effective way to curb this insane rush to bring about The Rapture. And despite the bleatings from the Democratic leadership, there are at least five really good reasons to impeach Bush and Cheney right now, along with the rest of this hideous administration:

1 Simple justice says they must be held accountable for their crimes, and punished to the full extent of the law.

2 Their totalitarian agenda must be exposed so that the American people understand the magnitude of their unprecedented criminality.

3 Somebody has to put a stop to their murderous agenda before they can nuke Iran or shed any more blood in Iraq or Afghanistan.

4 They must serve as an example of what will happen to the next right wing cabal if it tries to replace representative democracy with fascism.

5 Then there’s impeachment as the last means of self-defense. It’s getting a bit urgent, and all the pieces are in place to install a pure fascist dictatorship.


The Commander Guy: lord of all he surveys
Below are links to three presidential directives that the usually vigilant corporate media managed to miss, excerpts from particularly odious provisions within each of them, and articles or blog postings explaining their significance.

This is the most recent, signed July 17, 07, and sanctions property and liquid asset seizure for pretty much anyone BushCo deems a pain in the ass. Here's the text of the directive:

How to legally steal your stuff

Here's three particularly awful parts:

(c) "…the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States."

(B) "…undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people."

Sec. 5. "I (therefore) determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order."

And here’s comment on what this actually means in real life:

Outlawing the anti-war movement

The following is a link to two earlier directives, signed May 9, 07, both of which provide the framework and excuses for implementing martial law (which is what declaring a national state of emergency means to these swine). Note that Bush is to be the sole guarantor of the continuance of Constitutional law under these conditions, and that he’s the only one who gets to define what constitutes grounds for declaring a state of emergency.

Lock up the usual suspects

A couple of looks behind the curtain:

(b) "Catastrophic Emergency" means any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions;“ (NOTE: which means Katrina II, a California quake, a flood in the Midwest, a massive power outage, etc.)

(18) "The Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall provide secure, integrated, Continuity of Government communications to the President, the Vice President, and, at a minimum, Category I executive departments and agencies.” (NOTE: The shadow government stays in the loop.)

(6) "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government.” (NOTE: This is in recognition of Bush's well-documented veneration for Constitutional law.)

Comment on this blueprint for totalitarianism includes this article detailing the rise of fascism under Bush:

Imperialism and fascism are on the rise in the USA

This one is specific to the DHS and National Security directives:

Bush anoints himself ensurer of Constitutional government in emergency

This one deals with fabricated "false flag" attacks ascribed to "terrorists" (more on that below) as a pretext for nuking Iran:

Bush directive for a "catastrophic emergency" in America: Building a justification for waging war on Iran?

So we’ve already seen that the events that would trigger these security state actions are pretty arbitrary, and are defined by Little Lord Hissyfit himself. Meanwhile, there has been a great deal of “buzz” about upcoming terrorist activities against “the homeland.” Predictably, our free press is all over this one, since it gives them yet another opportunity to wave their pompoms and cheer on the Bush Death Machine.

DHS head Michael Chertoff spoke of his “gut” feelings about an impending attack recently (although most attributed his stomach pangs to a pastrami and Swiss sandwich of questionable vintage). Here’s Keith Olbermann’s take on Chertoff’s intestines:

Al Qaeda in Michael Chertoff's Stomach: The Terror of a "Gut Feeling"

However, unlike Chertoff, whose resume includes his utter uselessness during the Katrina aftermath, this guy might be worth paying attention to. A former Reagan administration insider credited, so to speak, with the invention of “Reaganomics,” author and national syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts is no flaming lefty propagandist. And if he’s concerned, we should be as well.

My wake-up call: Watch for another 9/11-WMD experience


About those false flag ops
A “false flag” operation is an extreme act of governmental propaganda that can consist of mass violence like 9/11, or a manufactured incident – such as the Gulf of Tonkin "attack" – perpetrated by elements in the US security apparatus and blamed on the contemporary US whipping boy and his shadowy band of swarthy evil doers.

So on 9/11 Osama was immediately identified as the chief perp -- although the entire 9/11 myth is seen in more enlightened and informed parts of the world as simply a crude ploy and convenient fairy tale to enable BushCo's resource and power grabs. And that Gulf of Tonkin incident blamed on the North Vietnamese leadership? History now tells us it never happened.

The intent of false flag operations is to manufacture consent for the next governmental outrage -- like bombing Afghan or Vietnamese civilians -- further demonize the designated bad guys, scare the hell out of the public, encourage rabid unquestioning patriotism and provide popular support for actions alleged necessary to prevent similar atrocities in the future -- which generally means a military attack on the usual disposable brown people, public acceptance of things like torture and "extraordinary renditions," along with suppression of political dissidents at home. Roberts says this about the possibility of BushCo pulling off another one of these false flag black ops:

“Alternatively, false flag “terrorist” strikes could be orchestrated in the US. The Bush administration has already infiltrated some dissident groups and encouraged them to participate in terrorist talk, for which they were arrested. It is possible that the administration could provoke some groups to actual acts of violence.”

In the case of the 9/11 “attacks,” reprisals included invading Afghanistan and Iraq, occupying both, causing massive civilian casualties and incidentally providing the muscle for the US to deploy a huge, permanent military presence in the heart of oil country.

And US citizens got their own reprisals: Patriot Acts I and II, the Military Commissions Act, dozens of "signing statements" Bush uses to ignore any parts of legislation he doesn't feel like complying with, the recent executive orders detailed above, NSA spying, FBI spying, the TIPS program which seeks to deputize at least five million domestic snitches to do the NSA's dirty work for them… All kinds of stuff that so enthralls and delights the Third Reich leadership that they're doing the wave in their particularly warm corner of hell.

So… still think impeachment isn’t appropriate? Martial law, asset seizures, unending proxy wars for the benefit the petroleum industry, oceans of civilian blood flooding the Middle East, ever-increasing war budgets designed to enrich arms manufacturers while stealing money to fund what remains of the New Deal, the end of the great democratic republic experiment, terror terror all the time...

“It Can’t Happen Here,” as Sinclair Lewis titled his novel that demonstrates the exact opposite, and chronicles a rapid US devolution from representative democracy to fascist dictatorship.


Dancing to the PNAC tune
Oh, sure it can. In fact, the whole thing is spelled out in the right wing think tank Project for a New American Century's (PNAC) 2000 manifesto called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century." You can download it as a PDF file by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom and you'll find the link to the report.

Before you read it, it might be interesting to look at the signatories at the end of the document. You'll recognize quite a few names, such as Stephen Cambone, Robert, Fred and Donald Kagan, the ubiquitous William Kristol, "Scooter" Libby and Paul Wolfowitz.

PNCA members past and present who didn't sign that study but who pop up elsewhere in various propaganda pieces include: Elliott Abrams, Madeleine Albright, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Gary Bauer, Bill (morality czar) Bennett, William F. Buckley, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Steve Forbes, Frank Gaffney, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Charles Krauthammer, Barry McCaffrey, Richard Perle, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle (for comic relief?), Zalmay Khalilzad (former ambassador to Iraq and now to the UN), Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Weyrich, James Woolsey and Dov Zacheim (credited with losing about $1.3 trillion while comptroller at the Pentagon).

The deep thinkers on these lists, judged solely by the massive death and destruction their actions have visited on the planet over the decades, are indictable as war criminals by the International Court at The Hague.

Taken together, they seem to comprise the advance force for malevolent invaders from some distant planet, coming soon to eliminate all disposable brown and black people (ongoing), demolish all interdependent ecosystems (with gusto), plunder poor countries for raw materials (check), create history's most overdrawn debtor nation (check), harness invisible rays to destroy the critical thinking capacities of Americans (see talk radio), use TeeVee to keep Americans focused on celebrity worship and sex scandals (check) and enslave the latest endangered species, the middle class, through debt and job insecurity (check).

In other words, sow the seeds for an Orwellian world based on constant war, official lies that must be believed, flexible revisionist history, the requirement for strict doctrinal and ideological conformity, banning of books, sexual repression, public displays of universal hatred for a designated demon, domestic spying as a given, super-patriotism as social control mechanism -- and the ever-present threat of a trip to Room 101, where the harshest punishments imaginable are reserved for dissenters or those engaging in "anti-social" behavior.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Just give these maniacs time to put a few more minor pieces in place and we'll suddenly find our thoughts enclosed by virtual razor wire, our savings donated to the GOP, our houses sold to pay for the voracious war machine, our jobs exported, our families broken up -- and Orwell's vision finally realized: As O'Brien says to Winston Smith, "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

Then imagine your face under some BushCo fascist thug's boot. Think maybe it's time to fight back?

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