Before last November's election, Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table, but now Bush is about to ignore the results of the election and escalate the war in Iraq, so it is fair to put impeachment back on the table.
At last summer's Texas Democratic Party state convention, a bunch of us circulated a resolution calling for Bush's impeachment. More than 30 percent of the delegates and alternates signed the petition, which was enough for the resolution to go directly to the floor for a vote. Unfortunately, it failed on a close vote on the floor. We made a mistake by not including Cheney in the resolution to be impeached along with Bush. Many people did not sign it because we did not include Cheney. The other most common reason given by people for not signing it was that they thought "we should fight Bush at the ballot box".
Well, we did fight Bush at the ballot box last November and we won. The number one reason we won was because people were fed up with the war in Iraq. Now Bush is set to ignore the results of the election and escalate the war in Iraq by sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq. So now it is time to put impeachment back on the table.
Some senators and members of Congress have proposed cutting off funding for the war, or at least not providing additional money for the increase in troops, while perhaps still funding the level of troops already there. But some are saying that Congress can do nothing. Sen. Biden said he thinks it is unconstitutional to cut off funding: "There's not much I can do about it; not much anybody can do about it," Sen Joe Biden, D-Del, told NBC on Sunday. "He's commander in chief. If he surges another 20, 30 (thousand) or whatever number he's going to, into Baghdad, it'll be a tragic mistake, in my view, but, as a practical matter, there's no way to say, 'Mr. President, stop.'"
I don't agree with Biden and I hope that Senators Kennedy, Obama and others are successful in cutting off funding, but there is another way to stop Bush that would be constitutional and that is to impeach him and remove him from office, along with Cheney.
In Dec 2005, Rep. John Conyers filed H.Res.635 to establish a "select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment."
Last year, leading up to the election, Conyers revised his position and said he was no longer going to pursue impeachment and instead would "propose comprehensive oversight of these alleged abuses."
In light of Bush's post-election course of action, Conyers should revise his position again and refile his resolution. It may turn out that hearings on the impeachment issue conclude that Bush's transgressions do not warrant impeachment, but we will not know unless a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives conducts an investigation.
Impeachment requires only a majority vote of the House, but conviction and removal from office is more difficult, requiring a two-thirds vote by the Senate. I concede it would be difficult to get 2/3s of the Senate to vote for removal, but impeachment alone, or the threat of impeachment, might be enough to convince Bush to bring the troops home. And who knows, depending on what the impeachment hearings find out, the evidence of wrongdoing might be strong enough to convince even 2/3's of the senate to remove him and Cheney from office.