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May
31, 2003
It Was the Lying, Right?
Clinton, Bush
and Impeachment
By DAVE LINDORFF
Everyone agreed that it was not the sex. It was
the lying, right? If having extramarital sex in the White House
were an impeachable offense, the impeachment of presidents would
long ago have become a routine affair. We'd have seen Roosevelt,
Ike, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Bush the Elder in the dock for
sure, and maybe Ron, too.
But everyone agreed it wasn't the sex
that got President Clinton in trouble. It was the lying. The
audacious bending of the meaning of the word is and the word
sex. Right?
But has lying ever been practiced so
blatantly as it is being practiced today in the White House?
At least President Clinton's lies were
about his personal behavior. This administration has done its
share of that kind of lying, to be sure. For example about the
President's cowardly conduct during the 9/11 attacks, or about
Vice President  Cheney's dealings with
Enron executives as the company was tanking. Or about President
Bush's year as an AWOL guardsman during the Vietnam War.
But this administration's lying has gone
far beyond that, and has led to the deaths of thousands, including
well over a hundred Americans (and counting). This is prevarication
on a scale that rivals the Johnson Adminstration's lie about
the purposted attack on an American destroyer in the Gulf of
Tonkin, or the Nixon Administration's lie about its secret war
in Cambodia.
Like Johnson's big lie, which led to
the deaths of over 50,000 Americans and of millions of Southeast
Asians, the Bush Administration's lies about Iraq--that it had
biological and chemical weapons ready to use and that it was
well on the way to developing nuclear weapons of that it was
directly supporting Al Qaeda--were deliberately designed to trick
Congress and the American Public into supporting a war that otherwise
would not have happened--in the first instance against North
Vietnam and in the second against Iraq.
Both of these deceptions were murderous
lies.
Remember: Nixon's lie about U.S. aggression
against the neutral nation of Cambodia--another murderous lie--was
one of the articles of impeachment that were voted against him
in the House of Representatives. Johnson never had to face the
music for his monstrous lie, but perhaps had he not decided not
to seek a second elected term of office, he too might have ended
up being impeached for it.
Now it's Bush's turn.
But where
are the voices calling for his impeachment?
Where is the public outcry demanding
that he be called to account for his shameless and bloody deception
of the American public and the Congress?
It is likely that with American troops
still patrolling the streets of Baghdad, and still getting attacked
and killed there, and with most American's still revelling in
the thrill of the military's quick victory over Saddam Hussein's
army, nobody's ready to call Bush and his cronies on their crimes
of falsehood.
But the buoyant nationalistic mood is
liable to shift dramatically as the Iraq situation continues
to deteriorate, and as the American body count continues to rise.
Particularly if, as is likely, the economy stays in the doldrums.
At some point it will start to become
politically acceptable to start asking, "If everybody's
mad at us, why are we over there?" Once that happens, the
next question will be "How did we get into this mess in
the first place?"
That's when Bush's big lie will start
to loom large in the public's assessment of this administration.
As for impeachment, as long as Congress
remains in the hands of the Republican Party, it's not likely.
That makes the 2004 election doubly important. Even if Bush manages
to eke out a narrow victory again in 2004, it is critically important
that Democrats regain control of at least one house of Congress.
It may seem hard to imagine today, but
if the voters manage that, we may yet see another impeachment
drama.
Dave Lindorff
is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
A collection of Lindorff's stories can be found here: http://www.nwuphilly.org/dave.html
Today's
Features
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Jason
Leopold
Despite Thin Intelligence Reports,
US Plans Overthrow of Iran Regime
Ron
Jacobs
Popular Uprising, Inc.
Michelle
Ciaccorra
Bush's Nuclear Policy: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Yves Engler
The Economics of Health Care in
America: Pay More to Die Sooner
Kimberly
Blaker
Vouchers for Jesus
Harry
Browne
Stakeknife: Britain's Army Spy at
the Top of the IRA
Stew
Albert
Cops of the World
Steve Perry
Greens 04: In or Out?
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