In an interview with Joshua Scheer at
Truthdig, Congressman Dennis Kucinich has called for a Congressional investigation on the origins of the Iraqi invasion. As both Nancy Pelosi and John Conyers have pulled impeachment off the table for the present, it is imperative that Congress, at the very minimum, investigate the leadup to the war.
Although Conyers writes that Democrats should "put aside any thought of anger or payback", investigating the lies, disinformation and the scandals that led this country into an illegal war does not constitute a payback. It constitutes oversight. The truth needs to come out. Moreover, I'm not ready to put aside my anger over what this administration has done to our country and its reputation around the world.
Kucinich states that
people have to be held accountable. You can't lead this country into a war that has lost thousands of U.S. troops and perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, [and that has] cost the American taxpayers $400 billion--and maybe up to $2 trillion--and leave it with some kind of blithe apology. There has to be accountability. When the people elected Democrats, they also voted for accountability.
Bi-partisanship should not and must not be used as a tactic to conceal the crimes of the Bush regime. Kucinch continues:
We need to have hearings on Iraq again. We need to go over again why we went there. We need to review the statements and all the errors that were made, and from that we bring the country together to take a new direction. It's all fact-based. And then we start to heal our nation. But we cannot heal America if we continue with policies that are based on lies. We'll never be able to bring closure to this Iraq matter unless we tell the truth about what happened. So America needs a new approach of truth and reconciliation. This isn't a Democratic or Republican matter. This is a matter that relates to the conscience of this country. This is a matter of the heart--the heart of democracy itself. This is a matter of whether we're going to a sober reflection about the events that have transpired since 9/11, with respect to Iraq. And until we do this, we will be trapped not only physically in Iraq, we'll be trapped emotionally and spiritually in Iraq. We may never get out of Iraq if we don't tell the truth.
Once the American people know the truth it is likely that the percentage favoring impeachment will increase from its present level of 51%. Congress will not have to convince the people that impeachment is necessary. The people will demand impeachment.