Why didn't the Democratic Party Impeach Bush?

We had so much evidence.

If the Republicans had this kind of case against Obama, do you think they would sit around enabling him?

They need only pursue impeachment, bring up the lies, and the media would have been forced to cover it.

Because of this, George Bush is still considered a hero, but the same people that are quick to jump all over Obama for all the problems Bush created.

He needed to and STILL NEEDS TO BE EXPOSED!




This interview in 2006:

David Swanson: I don’t know I think we’re kind of overwhelmed with an abundance of arguments and evidence. There is not really conceivably a stronger case for impeachment than having taken a nation to war on the basis of lies. If you read the remarks and the writings of our founding fathers that put impeachment into the Constitution this is precisely the key example of when impeachment would be appropriate. And we have not only a war that is blatantly illegal; not fought in self defense; not fought under UN authorization; but we have an abundance of war crimes. -The targeting of civilians. The use of torture, the ghosting of prisoners, the depleted uranium, the white phosphorus, and on and on and on.

And now we have the spying scandal and you know, what the Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and many others, scandal adds is simply an additional impression of the corruption and the arrogance that is currently rampant in the Republican Party in the White House. So if it helps to call people’s attention to that and to the need for some accountability and some oversight and some checks and balances than it’s helpful...

David Swanson: Well there is certainly greater (willingness) than there was some weeks back. In large part due to the NSA spying story and in part due to the work that we and others have been doing at Afterdowningstreet.org and Impeachpac.org but that’s not saying much you know. Greater than before which is nothing. The attitude that you find in the media elites in this country is that impeachment is something to be scorned and ridiculed and laughed at and dismissed. And of course that’s not a consistent position in that there were endless newspapers editorializing that Bill Clinton should resign over his sex life and that impeachment was absolutely called for when public opinion was quite low in support for impeachment proceedings against Clinton. -And understandably in that it was a private matter of a sexual relationship.

In this case the media has been very resistant to writing or speaking about impeachment and even to doing the polls to learn where the public stands. We have had to commission polls by independent polling companies to find out and the most recent by Zogby International found 53% of Americans would like Congress to consider impeachment if the President lied about the war. That’s dramatically, that’s over twice as high as you had for Bill Clinton

http://talknation.org/2006/01/07/an-interview-with-david-swanson-2/

wall

street

money

weak

kneed

wusses!

:thumbsup:

still don't

:yourock:

...perhaps even moreso. It's what dictates the path of least resistance for the weak-kneed wussies.

They.

were.

complicit.

in the rush to war.

Chicken Shit...

And the three words above.

:shrug:

There is a key difference between the Dems and the GOP.

The Dems when in power, actually try to govern. The GOP does not.

This is why a GOP majority has lots of time for an impeachment, and the Dems do not.

The GOP has nothing else to do with its time when it is in the majority. They have no plans to get anyting done for the American people.

The Dems actually have plans for the future. And they know that the time the spend on impeaching Bush does not advance anything else.

The republicans can always get what they want even when they don't have the exec, house or senate.

They had nothing...and we still got jack shit from the dems.

This sucks!!! And now they are making our party look even worse.


We have to fix this by EXPOSING BUSH once and for all!! Any ideas?

They are rewriting history. They are painting Iraq as a wonderful victory for Bush (but Obama tried to steal his thunder)

They are mourning what a great leader he is.

Bush wasted all this freaking money and now the country is in huge amount of debt, they are blaming on Obama so they are going to cut off poor people to pay for it!

It is so absurd I could SCREAM!

WE got wikilinks...there must be someone out there with just the fix....

of the Iraq War and the end of Bush's presidency.

Conviction on impeachment charges takes 67 votes in the Senate.

There was no way in hell that 18 Republicans were going to jump ship and vote to remove Bush from office.

Don't hold to principles. Don't believe in anything. Stay safe. Don't upset Republicans or they might not vote for you!

Republicans play power games. Democrats try to govern as best they can.

We don't have time for the games.

And the evidence is not as easy as some claim.

They did not have the votes to convict though as the Republicans also did not have. Bush* might very well have been impeached in the same manner as Clinton but not removed because the Senate would not do so..Democrats chose not to even try though..

Signed onto Bush's lies, no questions asked.Weak Dems wrote Bush's permission slip.
God Damn them.

God Damn them.

it was/is a post 9/11 world ya know. Everything is about re-election, everything.

The number of votes required to convict them in the Senate, which was never going to happen in a thousand years. And an acquittal would have been seen as a total vindication.

and she kept that promise, no matter how much evidence came to light.

She took impeachment 'off the table', but she was already Speaker. She didn't "win" Speaker 'running on a no impeachment promise'.

Facts. They're important.

Were elections held early in 2006? Nobody told Nancy.


Pelosi: Impeachment 'off the table'

RAW STORY
Published: Monday October 23, 2006


Print This Email This


In an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) pledged that impeachment of President George W. Bush was off the table should Democrats gain a majority next month.

Pelosi speculated that Republicans would "just love" the "waste of time" such proceedings would be. "Making them lame ducks," she concluded, "is good enough for me."

My usually reliable memory failed me. Mea culpa.

if not all of it?


It was her job and she simply didn't do it.

Impeachment would have solved nothing, would have brought no justice, and would have resulted in a much stronger and renewed George Bush after his acquittal.

It would have been a huge waste of time and money and the GOP would have made several tons of political hay out of it, with the support of their propaganda arm at Fox News.

Impeachment was a non-starter, and Pelosi at least had the fortitude to say that up front.

The OP does not ask why he was not removed from office. It asks why he was not impeached.

He was not impeached because Pelosi refused to uphold her constitutionally mandated responsibility to exercise checks on the executive branch.


Your assumption, in your other post, that he would not be removed from office is an unfounded assumption. There was enough evidence to prove he committed war crimes (high crimes and/or exceeding the constitutional bounds of his powers of the office). It is possible that enough (R) senators would be more worried about their own reelection to not cover up for Bush and to do the right thing, we will never know. The truth is that when talking impeachment this is irrelevant. If he was impeached and acquitted we could then ask why he was not found guilty and we could have used the corrupt senators votes in the next cycle.


Facts are important, please read up on impeachment. That word, you keep using it. I think it does not mean what you think it means.

You don't know that, right?

Acquittal an unfounded assumption? If you think mere "evidence" would have turned any GOP Senators to vote to convict a Republican President, you've not been paying attention since approximately 1994.

And your 'impeachment and acquittal' sentence makes no sense to me. "We" could ask why he was not found guilty? All "we" would have heard was "get over it". And I don't know what you mean by "use the corrupt Senators". If you mean "unseat", you're dreaming. Think a Democrat of any stripe could defeat the likes of Jeff Sessions? John Cornyn? Kay Bailey Hutchison? Lindsay Graham? Any of the entrenched Southern or Western Republicans? After they went to bat for the great George W Bush? Highly unlikely.

The speaker is elected once congress is in session. This was early january 2007. I can look up the exact date if you need me to.


Here is a quote from Nov. 8th 2006 clearly showing she was running on a no impeachment platform.


http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2006/11/08/cq_1916.html

^snip^

“I have said it before and I will say it again: Impeachment is off the table,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said during a news conference.





She was not elected speaker at that point. I can look for an earlier quote if you want me to. She claims to have made the statement prior to this date. The election was Nov. 7th so it seems she was making this statement prior to retaining her seat.








Edit To Add, I didn't see ReggieVeggie's post before posting this. I was simply responding through the My DU link. Sorry.

movement to impeach. You know, Dennis Kucinich, the guy you've been shitting on all over DU tonight.

:hi:

Remember me?

than responding to us.

Is that too harsh?

Same reason Kerry didn't dispute the second Bush election theft. They play by rules that have more to do with each other than with us.

I'm not saying this is hopeless but, if we want this party to be our party, we have a lot of work to do because it is completely out of our hands at this point, imho.

I agree.

I'm thinking that since our party won't go after Bush...we should just do it ourselves...loudly...everywhere.

There are people going around thinking that he is some noble great leader....for the good of our party, the nation and the world... we need to snap these people out of it!!

It's like letting people go around thinking Hitler was a good guy...it is absurd.


Every time someone brings up the debt....if all us real democrats just start laying into how much Bush wasted on the wars, homeland security....fraud and abuse by government contractors (the vp's company!) and continual rehiring of these same people. They don't give a damn about the budget.

The debt has gone up more under Reagan, Bush Sr and Jr.....the republicans need to be told this LOUDLY AND OFTEN!

There are people out there that think he is a great leader!

Those in power protect each other.

Anyone? Hint: it doesn't.

Because if your greatest wet dream happened and GWB et al had been impeached, what exactly do you think that would have accomplished besides total vindication for Bush after his acquittal in the Senate, and the subsequent near-catastrophic blow-back on the Democrats?

Use both sides of paper if necessary.

the senate would have had no choice but to go along. The lies were so obvious, they only needed the tiniest bit of exposure. They needed to force the media to cover.

What do we have now?

"near-catastrophic blow-back on the Democrats?"

For NOT impeaching Bush and exposing his whole presidency as the farce that it was.

They take credit for Iraq as if everything was wonderful, and blame Obama for all the money they wasted.

They still say Bush was such a great leader after 9/11...now Obama is so out of touch with the oil spill, nuclear mess etc.

They attack Obama using a teleprompter...when we caught Bush using an earpiece during a debate with Kerry "Let me finish"



If we don't expose that bastard, we are going to get stuck with Jeb!

You pretty much put richardo down and told him what he didn't want to hear: Le truth.

Think he'll be back after such a sound whupping?

or the US Code that would make impeachment or prosecution of any kind possible.

"He lied us into war!" is about as specific as anyone gets.

I posit that IF it could be proven that some law were broken, Bush and his cronies would most certainly be prosecuted even to this day.

Whether it was Bush then or Obama now, people seem to have it in their head that they can impeach a President basically because they don't like him. Many people seem to think that it's more like a recall process rather than what amounts to a criminal trial. Unless and until someone can point to the specific chapter and verse in the United States Code that Bush or Obama violated, there are no grounds for impeachment.




Besides all of that, no one seems to have considered the other ramifications of an impeachment. Suppose, just for a moment, that Bush had been successfully impeached and removed from office for some specific violation of the law. That would leave Cheney as President. Moreover, it would mean a Cheney incumbency, allowing him to have the trappings of office to run for re-election, potentially winning twice (supposing that Bush were impeached and removed from office with less than two years left in a term). That's potentially ten years of President Cheney (meaning he would still be in office this very day). "Well, impeach Cheney, too!" Sure, but you've got a very difficult process happening twice, and the American people would grow quite weary of it the first time around. The chances that you'd get Cheney out of office would have been quite slim indeed. But let's suppose that even that happened. Then you would have had President Dennis Hastert. Then what? What on earth have you accomplished by removing Bush, and Cheney, only to wind up with a President Hastert running as an incumbent? You've just burned a boatload of political capital in order to basically change nothing at all.

Why in the world would the Democrats at the time have done something that stupid?

http://blog.buzzflash.com/interviews/044


There were so many violations to our constitution , it is hard to choose just one.

Elizabeth went went the lies to start the war in Iraq.

However, when the Bush administration was caught illegal wiretapping, it should have meant instant impeachment if the dems pursued it. Instead they attempted to make it legal retroactively. Right now they are still breaking the law, because they did change the constitution, they are violating our rights...right now....and the entire Congress should be impeached for it.

for Democrats. Of course, I'm talking about US having to deal with a collapsed economy, unemployment so severe everyone lies about it, war on our unions, and an attack on our most basic social safety net.

Refusing to go after these criminals only means more of the same, no matter if we take the White House or the House or the Senate. They run rampage, even today.

Maybe you need another sheet of paper to continue your calculations. Take as many as you need.

I thinnk you know I was talking about the political cost.

Asm for the economic blow-back - how would that have been any different under an acquitted and re-invigorated George Bush, filling out the remainder of his term? Think Social Security privatization might have flown? Maybe.

is social death. Our issues never get taken up, we might as well be door stops.

That's pretty much the ultimate political cost even if some entity that calls itself the Democratic Party rumbles on.

Terms like that tend to make others not take the issue seriously.

DLC leaders were notorious for their support for the war in Iraq and other core aspects of the George W. Bush administration's “war on terror.” Its relationship to these policies became a growing nuisance as Democrats debated the future direction of the party during President Bush’s second term. In 2006, the DLC held a three-day retreat in Colorado, where a new policy manifesto aimed at recapturing the White House and Congress was unveiled. According to the Los Angeles Times: " Clinton wielded a red-white-and-blue bound copy of the group's initiative and used a measured tone to paint a grim portrait of the last five years under President Bush. 'Americans are earning less while the costs of a middle-class life have soared,' she said. 'College costs, up 50% in the five years. Healthcare, 73%. Gasoline, more than 100%.'"<5> Although the conference—which was attended by several aspiring Democratic Party presidential candidates—covered everything from college tuition to healthcare, the Iraq War "was scarcely mentioned."<6>

http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Democratic_Leadership_Council

I learned that on DU somewhere...someone have the link because this is super important, everyone should see it.

Of course we wouldn't want to disturb your emotional rant with some basic history, but Congress voted to authorize the use of force.

The House voted 297-133 to authorize the use of force
The Senate voted 77-23 to authorize the use of force and three of those votes were Clinton, Biden and Kerry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_the_Use_of_United_States_Armed_Forces_Against_Iraq

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Liberation_Act_of_1998

which Bill Clinton signed, which made it US policy to seek the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and his government.

Un-Admiral Poindexter and Total Information Awareness compromised the political class as a whole.

War 24/7 Baby. Dow'll be over 12,000 any day.

For the same reason. Both parties work for the same people.

and you're dreaming if you think the MSM can be forced to cover anything they don't want to.

And they usually get what they want. How does that work?

You know, from the kkkoch godd-a-fee$ & co's...

They had no chance of removing Clinton from office by impeachment.
That was all a circus for the benefit of the Repig-friendly media.

We couldn't do that to Bush** because the media doesn't work for us.

In fact, President Clinton's approval ratings reached their highest point after his Senate trial.

Try to see things from their point of view and that will be obvious.

they are simple minded and have no shame, but it does not get them nearly what they want.

Not having enough votes before a hearing and or trial is no excuse. Once all the facts are brought out into the light things may change or public opinion may compel them to change. In any case it could have provided valuable election fodder regardless of the outcome.

to remove him/her from office.

Clinton was impeached but was not removed from office. This could have been done with our simple majority.

Insert in pipe and smoke.

...so they can get their spine implants.

to "move forward" and not pursue criminal charges against Bush, Cheney and their band of goons the GOP would be appreciative and work with him. They'll work with him all right . . . especially if they can drum up any reason for impeachment hearings. Democrats have got to get over their aversion to stepping on toes. Kumbayah is a giant waste of time.