George,

President Bush claims he did not knowingly lie about Iraq’s WMD but was “misled” into attacking by “bad intelligence.” One might make the same case for Vice President Cheney except that, years ago as Secretary of Defense, Cheney lied to start the Gulf War, too.

The late presidential scholar James David Barber of Duke University wrote in “The Washington Monthly” back in Oct., 1991: “After ordering 250,000 troops to the Gulf region, Mr. Bush told the public on TV, ‘The mission of our troops is wholly defensive…when they (Bush and Cheney) knew otherwise.” Cheney echoed, “We’re not there in an offensive capacity, we’re not there threatening Iraq.” Barber wrote:

They “came on clear as a bell (and) both men lied” about the deployment being “defensive.” “They had been planning for the possibility of an American attack from the very first meeting…to discuss the Iraq invasion.”

So why should anyone believe Cheney was mistaken when he claimed in 2003 Iraq’s Hussein had a nuclear capability to threaten “anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond”? Cheney asserted, “We do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.”

Lying to plunge a nation into war is a grave offense. By one estimate, Bush’s Iraq war has killed 100,000 civilians. That’s more people than Hitler killed in the invasion of Poland (70,000) in 1939 or during his “Blitz” of England (60,000) in 1940. Surely, aggressive war fits into the Constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” category as an impeachable offense.

What’s more, as former Vice President Al Gore just charged, by authorizing the National Security Agency taps on civilians without court approval, Bush broke the law repeatedly and put “America’s Constitution in grave danger.”

“If the president has the inherent authority to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture them, what can’t he do?” Gore asked. Bush also lied when he claimed his regime “does not torture” when, in fact, it does, according to Human Rights Watch and others. One report says as many as 200 captives have already been put to death without trial.

Gore went on to say, “When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him all the power he wanted…he secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother.”

Cheney also dissembled when he stated the Bush-ordered NSA wire taps “saved thousands of lives.” In fact, the only domestic “threat” unearthed from all those taps was one to attack the Brooklyn Bridge with a “blow torch,” a threat disputed by local officials, The New York Times reported.

By the way, the NSA has spied illegally on Americans before, most notoriously during the 1968 Democratic Convention. Two years later, NSA got caught monitoring U.S. citizens making overseas telephone calls.

Senator Arlen Specter, (R-Pa.), who will conduct the spy hearings, said if Bush broke the law ordering them, one remedy could be impeachment.

In his “The Imperial Presidency,” historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., wrote founder Ben Franklin believed that the impeachment provision in the Constitution was necessary. Otherwise, Franklin said, the only recourse to remove a president would be assassination, depriving the president of life and “of the opportunity of vindicating his character.”

As Virginia’s George Mason told the Constitutional Convention, “No point is of more importance than the right of impeachment should be continued. Shall any man be above Justice? Above all shall that man be above it, who (as President) can commit the most extensive injustice?”

Lying to start wars? Spying on Americans without warrants? Torture? Hey, what’s going down here? As President John Quincy Adams warned, if America became routinely involved in foreign wars, “the fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force” (and) “She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.” Is that what Bush and Cheney are up to?

- Sherwood Ross, (electronic mail, January 20, 2006)