Kucinich Vows New Round of Impeachment Articles Against Bush If Measure Dies

Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Congressman and former 2008 Democratic Presidential candidate, said he would continue to introduce resolutions calling for the removal of President George W. Bush from office if the articles of impeachment against Bush that he presented to the House Monday is not taken up within 30 days or dies in committee.

On Monday, Kucinich introduced the articles of impeachment against President Bush in the form of a privileged resolution, a procedural maneuver requiring Congress to take up the measure within two legislative days. Kucinich spent four-hours reading 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush, accusing the commander-in-chief of a wide-range of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” such as lying to Congress and the public to win support for the Iraq war.

Congressman Robert Wexler, (D-Fla.), agreed to co-sponsor of the measure Tuesday.

Congress voted 251-166 Wednesday to send the articles of impeachment to a House Judiciary Committee for review where it’s expected to die.

But Kucinich said if that happens he will just introduce another resolution until lawmakers vote on the measure.

“Leadership wants to bury it, but this is one resolution that will be coming back from the dead,” Kucinich told the Washington Post Wednesday. “Thirty days from now, if there is no action, I will be bringing the resolution up again, and I won’t be the only one reading it. We’ll come back and many of us will be reading this [on the House floor], and we’ll come back with 60 articles, not 35.”

In a statement Wednesday, Kucinich urged the House Judiciary Committee to “begin a review of the 35 articles” and said he “will be providing supporting documentation to the committee so that it can proceed in an orderly manner.”

Kucinich said he expects to meet with Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers within a week to for the committee to vote on the measure. A resolution Kucinich sponsored last year to impeach Cheney was sent to Conyers’ committee but was not debated.

Conyers, as well as others in the Democratic leadership, has opposed initiating impeachment proceedings against President Bush. Conyers has said the House simply does not have enough votes to support impeachment, and therefore, pursuing it would be a waste of time.

He did, however, state in a letter sent to President Bush on May 8, that he would pursue impeachment if the president were to launch a military strike against Iran without first receiving approval or consulting Congress about the matter.

“Late last year, Senator Joseph Biden stated unequivocally that “the president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran, and if he does, as Foreign Relations Committee chairman, I will move to impeach” the president.

“We agree with Senator Biden, and it is our view that if you do not obtain the constitutionally required congressional authorization before launching preemptive military strikes against Iran or any other nation, impeachment proceedings should be pursued,” Conyers’ letter says.

Kucinich said the articles of impeachment against President Bush are a way for lawmakers to “create an historical record of the misconduct of the Bush administration.”

“The weight of evidence contained in the articles makes it clear that President Bush violated the Constitution and the U.S. Code as well as international law,” Kucinich said in a prepared statement.

“It is the House’s responsibility as a co-equal branch of government to provide an effective check and balance to executive abuse of power,” Kucinich continued in the statement. “President Bush was principally responsible for directing the United States Armed Forces to attack Iraq.”

“I believe that there is sufficient evidence in the articles to support the charge that President Bush allowed, authorized and sanctioned the manipulation of intelligence by those acting under his direction and control, misleading Congress to approve a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq,” he added.

Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment is “off the table” because it would hinder the Democrats’ chances of securing a bigger majority in Congress come November and could result in a public backlash and cause the party to lose the November presidential election.

“Speaker Pelosi will continue to lead legislative efforts to find a new direction in Iraq but believes that impeachment would create a divisive battle, be a distraction from Congress’s efforts to chart a new course for America’s working families and would ultimately fail,” Pelosi’s spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer Tuesday.

Congress has not considered impeachment because the Democratic leadership believes it will hurt their party’s chances of securing the White House in November’s hotly contested presidential election between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence agreed. Last week, the committee released a long-awaited report on prewar Iraq intelligence that concluded President Bush and Vice President Cheney knowingly lied to the public and to Congress about Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda and the threat the country posed to the U.S. in the aftermath of 9/11.

That would be an impeachable offense, according to former Nixon counsel John Dean.

“To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked,” Dean wrote in a June 6, 2003 column for findlaw.com.

“Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be “a high crime” under the Constitution’s impeachment clause. It would 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 or for any purpose.

Jason Leopold is an investigative reporter and a two-time winner of the Project Censored award. He is the author of the National Bestseller, News Junkie, a memoir, and he has launched a new online investigative news magazine, The Public Record. Read other articles by Jason, or visit Jason's website.

14 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. Lloyd Rowsey said on June 13th, 2008 at 5:55am #

    http://kucinich.us/

  2. Tom Falkenberry said on June 13th, 2008 at 7:54am #

    Why did he vote against a vote and to send it to committee???

  3. hp said on June 13th, 2008 at 8:37am #

    As Nancy Pelosi takes her rightful place in history, the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century.

  4. Lloyd Rowsey said on June 13th, 2008 at 8:40am #

    She didn’t stand up to Hit-la-Buschos – so true, hp. But what makes you think she – or the 21st century – is dead and gone?

  5. hp said on June 13th, 2008 at 9:04am #

    Well, perhaps I could reword this, Lloyd.
    The first Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century.
    As Dylan says, “it looks like it’s a- dyin an’ its hardly been born.”

  6. Phil said on June 13th, 2008 at 10:53am #

    Nice, Dennis, but why didn’t this happen over four years ago?

  7. Chris Crass said on June 13th, 2008 at 10:53am #

    Is it possible for Dennis to pre-emptively introduce articles of impeachment for Pelosi, too? She said impeachment is off the table and took an oath to uphold the constitution, so one of those is a perjury.
    Then we can have America’s first half-dead president! It will be a glorious day!

  8. Lloyd Rowsey said on June 13th, 2008 at 2:55pm #

    Well, CC, we already have America’s first totally brain-dead third-in-line for the Presidency. That’s pretty fair for a country that thinks of itself as beyond red-baiting.

    Even if you and I were lawyers, we’d be appalled at Nasty Pelosi’s…substitution of greed for principle in “justifying” her traducing the American Constitution. She even got Gore Vidal’s goat:

    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/12/9579/

    Cuba Libre!

  9. Lloyd Rowsey said on June 13th, 2008 at 3:27pm #

    In fact, I was so favorably impressed by Uncle Gore’s piece, from his dottage, that I’ll reprint it:

    Published on Thursday, June 12, 2008 by TruthDig.com
    Gore Vidal’s Article of Impeachment
    by Gore Vidal
    On June 9, 2008, a counterrevolution began on the floor of the House of Representatives against the gas and oil crooks who had seized control of the federal government. This counterrevolution began in the exact place which had slumbered during the all-out assault on our liberties and the Constitution itself.

    I wish to draw the attention of the blog world to Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s articles of impeachment presented to the House in order that two faithless public servants be removed from office for crimes against the American people. As I listened to Rep. Kucinich invoke the great engine of impeachment — he listed some 35 crimes by these two faithless officials — we heard, like great bells tolling, the voice of the Constitution itself speak out ringingly against those who had tried to destroy it.

    Although this is the most important motion made in Congress in the 21st century, it was also the most significant plea for a restoration of the republic, which had been swept to one side by the mad antics of a president bent on great crime. And as I listened with awe to Kucinich, I realized that no newspaper in the U.S., no broadcast or cable network, would pay much notice to the fact that a highly respected member of Congress was asking for the president and vice president to be tried for crimes which were carefully listed by Kucinich in his articles requesting impeachment.

    But then I have known for a long time that the media of the U.S. and too many of its elected officials give not a flying fuck for the welfare of this republic, and so I turned, as I often do, to the foreign press for a clear report of what has been going on in Congress. We all know how the self-described “war hero,” Mr. John McCain, likes to snigger at France, while the notion that he is a hero of any kind is what we should be sniggering at. It is Le Monde, a French newspaper, that told a story the next day hardly touched by The New York Times or The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal or, in fact, any other major American media outlet.

    As for TV? Well, there wasn’t much — you see, we dare not be divisive because it upsets our masters who know that this is a perfect country, and the fact that so many in it don’t like it means that they have been terribly spoiled by the greatest health service on Earth, the greatest justice system, the greatest number of occupied prisons — two and a half million Americans are prisoners — what a great tribute to our penal passions!

    Naturally, I do not want to sound hard, but let me point out that even a banana Republican would be distressed to discover how much of our nation’s treasury has been siphoned off by our vice president in the interest of his Cosa Nostra company, Halliburton, the lawless gang of mercenaries set loose by his administration in the Middle East.

    But there it was on the first page of Le Monde. The House of Representatives, which was intended to be the democratic chamber, at last was alert to its function, and the bravest of its members set in motion the articles of impeachment of the most dangerous president in our history. Rep Kucinich listed some 30-odd articles describing impeachable offenses committed by the president and vice president, neither of whom had ever been the clear choice of our sleeping polity for any office.

    Some months ago, Kucinich had made the case against Dick Cheney. Now he had the principal malefactor in his view under the title “Articles of Impeachment for President George W. Bush”! “Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate.” The purpose of the resolve is that he be duly tried by the Senate, and if found guilty, be removed from office. At this point, Rep. Kucinich presented his 35 articles detailing various high crimes and misdemeanors for which removal from office was demanded by the framers of the Constitution.

    Update: On Wednesday, the House voted by 251 to 166 to send Rep. Kucinich’s articles of impeachment to a committee which probably won’t get to the matter before Bush leaves office, a strategy that is “often used to kill legislation,” as the Associated Press noted later that day.

  10. Hue Longer said on June 13th, 2008 at 5:12pm #

    dems suck…who were the dems of the 251?

  11. hp said on June 13th, 2008 at 5:32pm #

    Even that’s deceiving Hue. You know how they jockey their votes around to make a certain person look good a certain time. Pretty brave to vote yes or no when it’s already decided before hand. Like a plea bargain. They’re sleazy shysters barely worthy of a new rope.
    Their best trick, though, is the old ‘unrecorded voice vote.’ You know, the one where no one really knows who voted or how they voted.
    If this example below is boring, just scroll down to the last paragraph where it shows how this dishonest and cowardly type of voting is legal.

    New Bill in Congress Targets Teachers Who Dare to Question US Support for Israel
    ADL Moves to Muzzle U.S. Schools

    By Michael Collins Piper

    The Israeli lobby has launched an all-out drive to ensure congressional passage of a bill, approved by the House and now before a Senate committee that would set up a federal tribunal to investigate and monitor criticism of Israel on American college campuses.

    Ten months ago the New York-based Jewish Week newspaper claimed that the report by American Free Press that Republican members of the Senate were planning to crack down on college and university professors who were criticalof Israel was “a dangerous urban legend at best, deliberate disinformation at worst.” They were claiming that AFP lied.

    However, on Sept. 17, 2003, the House Subcommittee on Select Education unanimously approved H.R. 3077, the
    International Studies in Higher Education Act, which was then passed by the full House on Oct. 21. The chief sponsor
    of the legislation was Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a conservative Republican from Michigan.

    DANGEROUS LEGISLATION
    Critics charge that the bill is dangerous—a direct affront to the First Amendment and the product of intrigue by a small clique of individuals and organizations which combines the forces of the powerful Israeli lobby in official Washington.

    Leading the push for Senate approval of the bill are the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith, run by Abe Foxman, the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee.

    Also lending its support is Empower America, the neoconservative front group established by William Kristol, editor and publisher of billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard, which is said to be the “intellectual” journal that governs the train of foreign policy thinking in theBush administration.

    One other group has lent its support: the U.S. India Political Action Committee, an Indian-American group that has been working closely with the Israeli lobby now that Israel and India are geopolitically allied.

    H.R. 3077 is bureaucratic in its tone, decipherable only to those with the capacity to wade through legislative linguistics. It would set up a seven-member advisory board that would have the power to recommend cutting federal funding for colleges and universities that are viewed as harboring academic critics of Israel.

    Two members of the board would be appointed by the Senate, two by the House, and three by the secretary of education, two of whom are required to be from U.S. federal security agencies. The various appointees would be selected from what The Christian Science Monitor described on March 11 as “politicians, representatives of cultural and educational organizations, and private citizens.”

    FEARS ECHOED
    Gilbert Merk, vice provost for international affairs and development and director of the Center for International Studies at Duke University, has echoed the fears of many when he charged that this advisory board “could easily be hijacked by those who have a political axe to grind and become a vehicle for an inquisition.”

    The primary individuals promoting this effort to control intellectual debate on the college campuses are prominent and outspoken supporters of Israel and harsh critics of the Arab and Muslim worlds. They are:
    • Martin Kramer, a professor of Arab studies at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University in Israel;
    • Stanley Kurtz, a contributor of ex-CIA man William F. Buckley Jr.’s bitterly anti-Arab National Review Online and a research fellow at the staunchly pro-Israel Hoover Institution; and
    • Daniel Pipes, founder of the pro-Israel Middle East Institute and its affiliate, Campus Watch, an ADL-style organization that keeps tabs on college professors and students who are—or are suspected of being—critics of Israel.

    These three, along with the Israeli lobby, are claiming that they are fighting “anti-Americanism” as it is being taught on the college campuses.

    Republicans in Congress have joined this chorus, preferring to allow their constituents to think that this is an “America First” measure.

    Juan Cole of the History News Network responds to this extraordinary twist on reality saying that the claim of “anti-
    Americanism” is intellectually dishonest.

    “What they mean . . . if you pin them down is ambivalence about the Iraq war, or dislike of Israeli colonization of the West Bank, or recognition that the U.S. government has like al Qaeda or Saddam. None of these positions is ‘anti-American,’ and any attempt by a congressionally appointed body to tell university professors they cannot say these
    things—or that if they say them they must hire someone else who will say the opposite—is a contravention of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

    The promoters are also suggesting that this legislation would, according to the American Jewish Committee, “enhance intellectual freedom on campus by enabling diverse viewpoints to be heard.” Of course, the legislation would do precisely the opposite, say critics.

    Lisa Anderson of the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs said in response that “this plan . . . is not about diversity, or even about the truth.”

    Ms. Anderson does not cite the role of the Israeli lobby,but instead targets conservative Republicans who are acting
    as the Israeli lobby’s surrogates and says that this plan is “about the conviction of conservative political activists that
    the American university community is insufficiently patriotic, or perhaps simply insufficiently conservative.”

    What she should be saying is that these Republicans who are carrying water for Israel are concerned that universities
    are “insufficiently pro-Israel.”

    The Republican House members who originally joined Hoekstra in co-sponsoring this legislation should be named for the record. They are: John A. Boehner (Ohio), John R. Carter (Texas), Tom Cole (Oklahoma), James Greenwood (Penn.), Howard (Buck) McKeon (Calif.), Patrick J. Tiberi (Ohio) and Joe Wilson (South Carolina).

    Americans will not be able to find out how their representatives voted on the bill. Hoekstra asked for a suspension of the House rules, which was approved, making it possible for the controversial measure to be passed an unrecorded “voice vote.” There is no record of how individual House members voted or if they even voted at all.

  12. Lloyd Rowsey said on June 15th, 2008 at 9:13am #

    Whew, hp. Or you can live in Podunkville, America, and try to find out how people in your area voted in a primary a month or so ago. Just the numbers and the parties, you know, no names. Fagittaboutit.

  13. hp said on June 15th, 2008 at 11:19am #

    Yes Lloyd, but you don’t need a weatherman to know how people in Podunkville would vote on this act of Zionist treasonous and snake in the grass legislation. Do you?

  14. Dissident Voice : Getting Away with the Supreme International Crime said on June 18th, 2008 at 9:16am #

    […] and Crimes against Humanity,” Dissident Voice, 19 May 2008. #Jason Leopold, “Kucinich Vows New Round of Impeachment Articles Against Bush If Measure Dies,” Dissident Voice, 13 June 2008. #Patrick Martin, “House Democrats kill resolution to […]