<nettime> VoteToImpeach

[Brian Holmes <brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr>]

Here's an initiative that could work. We should figure out how to do a
parallel one in Europe.. -BH

****

How We Will Reach One Million Votes The Each One, Reach One Campaign Dear
VoteToImpeach Member,

Last month Ramsey Clark appealed to the 250,000 VoteToImpeach members to
help build the campaign. Now, we are launching a new initiative to take
this campaign to the million vote mark.

The framework of the initiative could not be more simple. It is captured
in its name: Each One, Reach One. We are asking all VoteToImpeach members
to commit to getting just one additional person to vote to impeach online.
We know that many members will do more.  But if each of us got one person
to vote this month we would pass the half a million mark, and if we do the
same in the following months, we will have reached the million mark.

These million votes will be taken to the House Judiciary Committee.  
Twenty-nine years ago next month, the House Judiciary Committee, with
sharp division, voted for Articles of Impeachment for Richard M.  Nixon.
Within a month, on August 9, 1974 Richard Nixon resigned rather than face
impeachment. Let us not forget that Nixon's near-impeachment and
resignation came a year and a half after he won one of the biggest
landslide elections in U.S. history.  Among the Articles of Impeachment,
Nixon was charged with "making or causing to be made false or misleading
statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United
States...." The relevance of the Nixon impeachment proceedings with the
case against George W. Bush et al., was noted recently by John Dean, the
former counsel to President Nixon in a June 11, 2003 article titled "The
Case for Impeachment."

Responding to the growing public outcry regarding Bush's lies and
deceptions that were used as the rationale for the invasion of Iraq, Dean
wrote, "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 be 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 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."

Dean asserts, "in the three decades since Watergate, this is the first
potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by
comparison. If the Bush administration intentionally manipulated or
misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public
to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a
monstrous misdeed."  When George W. Bush addressed the nation on March 17,
2003, to announce that war against Iraq had become inevitable and
imminent, he stated, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments
leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some
of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Bush administration officials systematically lied to the people of the
United States, to Congress and to the United Nations. Tens of thousands of
Iraqis have now been killed and maimed. Iraq society has been plunged into
chaos and misery. Its sovereignty shredded by an illegal occupation.
Hundreds of US GI's have been killed and wounded.  While waging an illegal
war against the people of Iraq, the administration has carried out a war
home -- an attack on the civil rights and liberties of the people of the
United States and on the Bill of Rights itself.  The VoteToImpeach
campaign is a critical effort. As Ramsey Clark stated in his May 12
address at the National Press Club that was broadcast nationally on
C-Span: "When people vote to Impeach it is important. It reminds Americans
that the Constitution provides the means for removing an Imperial
President and officials who commit high crimes."  The administration's
crimes, including its lies and deceptions, are becoming increasingly
exposed in the public discourse and media. Pressure is growing for
Congressional hearings on the Administration's lies and deliberate
manipulation of "intelligence data" related to the much ballyhooed
connection between Iraq and Al' Qaeda and the patently false claim about
the "grave and imminent threat" posed by Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass
Destruction. Under these circumstances it is all the more important to
expand the grassroots VotetoImpeach campaign.



Participate in the Each One, Reach One initiative, and by
<http://www.votetoimpeach.org/eachone.htm> clicking here you will be taken
to the Each One, Reach One page where you can send an email inviting one
or more friends, family members or colleagues to join the Impeachment
movement.

Let's keep the pressure on!

  All of us at VoteToImpeach.org

.






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