This diary started out as a comment for clammyc's diary "unhinged and unfit for office", but it started to take on a life of its own and got longer and longer and I decided to enter it into a diary of my own.
As clammyc and countless others have said, Bush and Cheney and their maladministration has become unhinged and unfit for office.
My question is this: If we do not put a stop to it, will America be the country that our Revolutionary Forebearers invisioned, or just another Cheap Banana Republic?
Say, MK, what's got you in such an uproar anyway? Why can't you just chill out?
Here's a non-exhaustive list of why I'm in an uproar:
He threatens his neighbors. He threatens people who aren't anywhere close enough to be considered neighbors. He is a threat to stability in the Middle East. He is a threat to stability in America. He is a threat to stability in the Far East.
He engages in torture. He laughs at the people he has executed and mocks their cries for mercy. He has, through the cultivation of a climate of fear, set up a system of surveillance on his own population through the phones, the mail, the nets, and through data mining. He has ordered the kidnapping and detention incommunicado of U.S. citizens and the citizens of our allies. He has ordered that those captured on the battlefield be denied the status of prisoners of war.
He came to power through very questionable election shenanigans involving his brother the governor of Florida and corrupt election officials of that state. Efforts to provide for a full accounting of the votes in that state were brought to a halt by the Supreme Court, the deciding votes cast by Justices appointed by his father.
He hands out lucrative no-bid contracts to corporations tied to his political machine and to the company that was formerly run by his vice president, Dick Cheney.
He has ordered the invasion of a sovereign country that was no threat to our country. Agents of his administration concocted a media campaign of outright falsehoods and half-truths to convince a frightened public to accede to his demands. The resulting invasion and occupation has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, including over three thousand Americans. He has unleashed armies of mercenaries that swarm across the lands he has occupied, accountable to no one but the corporations that have been given these lucrative contracts.
He is presently massing armed forces in the Persian Gulf with the likely aim of striking against one or more countries who are not a threat to the United States. It is highly likely that one or more ships in the armada amassing in that area is armed with Weapons of Mass Destruction.
He has broken innumerable treaties signed by his predecessors. He has unilaterly nullified the will of the U.S. Congress through a self-proclaimed new power called the Unitary Executive Theory. He has declared that from that point forward the United States is in a state of Perpetual War, and due to that state his powers are almost limitless. He had his minions write bogus legal theories that proclaim that habeus corpus no longer exists and had his rubber stamp legislature ratify that view. His chief legal officer has declared the Geneva Conventions "quaint".
What part of the above doesn't call out for regime change? Impeachment is not just some obscure little reference in the Constitution akin to local laws against spitting on the sidewalk.
George Walker Bush is exactly why impeachment was put in the Constitution by the founding fathers. I have no doubt that if Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, George Washington, Patrick Henry and the like were alive today, they would be sitting somewhere contemplating what the next step would be in righting the wrongs that have been done to our country and to the world by this vile administration.
Those great men would not have stood for this vile crap for nearly as long as we already have. It's embarassing to contemplate how we would have to answer for ourselves if we were to have to speak to these gentlemen and give a report on our stewardship of this democracy.
If we asked them what to do now, I'm sure the reply would be:
"Why are you asking? It's in the Constitution we wrote for you. The mechanism is there, just as we prepared it for you. It's called impeachment. Read the Declaration of Independence that we wrote for you. That document wasn't just for 1776, you know. It lays out for you why we formed a country of our own in the first place. We fought a Revolution so you wouldn't have to. We did the hard part for you. If you can't live up to that, then you don't deserve to have an independent country. We've been talking amongst ourselves about what's been going on with the Bush administration and the way we see it, he's far more dangerous and despotic than the Mad King George that we tangled with.
Do your duty, Americans. Use the power we gave you. What are you waiting for?"
The time for talking about "should we or could we" is over. It's time to start talking about organizing to bring about impeachment or resignation.