I know this isn't the only impeachment diary in the last 24 hours, but I came upon this a couple of hours ago, and it comes from Conyers, where all impeachment proceedings must emanate from. Frankly, I’m kinda skeptical about Conyers being serious this time but as desperate as I am to exact some kind of accountability from the Bush crime family... I’ll take the chance that he’s indeed serious this time.
Actually, I think I’m still hyped up from watching Dennis Kucinich read off all 35 articles of impeachment on the House floor earlier. I figure it like this; if Dennis is still willing to spend 4 or 5 hours late into a Tuesday night to push this; why shouldn’t I support him?
Anyway...
Last Friday, Code Pink was granted a meeting with Chairman John Conyers, in which he challenged the intrepid, peace-lovin' protesters to explain to him why he should dismiss the five most common reasons indicating that impeachment is not possible.
The five reasons are below.
Why he's making us jump through hoops for impeachment, I haven't figured out yet. Perhaps, he's trying to push back on Speaker Pelosi. Hell, maybe he sees Bush and Cheney attacking Iran and feels this is the only way to thwart their attempts.
He knows the evidence like the back of his hand. He wrote a book documenting every bit of it up till then back in 2006, "The Constitution in Crisis – The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Cover-ups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance." It's very thorough, There's definitely there there, and, I'm sure he's kept it up to date since.
Impeach for Peace.org has the story:
After each of the five reasons excuses, I include a viable rebuttal.
So, that is your mission, Kossacks, should you decide to accept it. If you do decide to participate it’d be good if we could come up with as many different [credible] rebuttals as we can for each of his reasons. But if we can only come up with ones similar to the ones I provided just try to change up the words a bit so it doesn’t look like everyone’s using the same exact wording.
Just be respectful, succinct and... hell, you know what to do.
John Conyers’ five [paraphrased] reasons for not impeaching:
• Reason one: While the majority of people in this country want Bush gone, they don't want impeachment.
Rebuttal: According to the Institute for Public Accuracy, a poll done by the American Research Group back in July 2007 indicated that 54% wanted to impeach Dick Cheney and 40% did not. In the same poll, 45% said they wanted to see George W. Bush impeached and 46% did not. Democrats.com has a whole series of polls from last year. Times have changed and percentages are most likely even higher in favor of impeachment now with recent disclosures from the long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee Phase Two report and Scott McClellan’s new book What Happened.
• Reason two: The corporate media will slay us.
Rebuttal: Consider the source. I’m not trying to be trite here but the media in America simply have no credibility anymore because of how they failed to ask the hard questions during the run up to the war, and they’ve continued their dereliction of duties as the 4th branch of our government by not holding this scofflaw administration accountable for their crimes. Besides, impeachment hearings will be broadcast on C-Span full time and cable news part time. It's kind of difficult to refute the evidence once it's laid out on the proverbial table.
• Reason three: Not enough time.
Rebuttal: Both Clinton and Nixon were impeached and threatened with impeachment [respectively] in a matter of months. And, there have been judges that have been impeached in much less time. Besides, Mr. Chairman, you’ve already done most of the work, as was laid out so eloquently in your book.
• Reason four: Not enough votes.
Rebuttal: We are only asking for hearings right now to begin the process of exposing the myriad crimes committed by the Bush administrations. In all likelihood, the rest will take care of itself. The votes will come after the American people begin to pressure their local representatives.
• Reason five: It will most likely cost the Democrats the election.
Rebuttal: Throughout history, I don't know if a correlation can be drawn. Democrats did win seats in Congress after Nixon, and the presidency in the next election. But it was the opposite after Clinton's impeachment when the Republicans lost seats.
Please mail or fax your rebuttals directly to Chairman Conyers, with the note that here are rebuttals to his objections to impeachment. Ask him to please consider them very carefully.
I have a feeling that now is the last chance to push for impeachment.
Here’s the address, phone numbers and faxes of all three of Conyers' offices.
Washington Office
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax
Detroit District Office
669 Federal Building
231 W. Lafayette
Detroit, MI 48226
(313) 961-5670
(313) 226-2085 Fax
Trenton District Office
2615 W. Jefferson
Trenton, MI 48183
(734) 675-4084
(734) 675-4218 Fax
Chairman Conyers also indicated he would welcome our individual Congressional reps' signatures on the [Wexler] letter that currently has 15 signers, five of whom are on the Judiciary Committee. Contacting your respective representatives could help.
We'll never know unless we try.
Peace