"The joke around the Pentagon at the time was 'we know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction -- we have the receipts.'"
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I hope in the future Americans are thought of as a warlike, vicious people, because I bet a lot of high schools would pick "Americans" as their mascot. -Jack Handy
I'm one hundred percent in favor of a "War Crimes" arrest and trial, seriously. The torture issue alone can have the top 5 prosecuters of the war (Bush/Cheney/Rice/Rumsfeld, and I'm forgetting someone) put behind bars. But let a NATO prosecution do the work.
Impeachment (and I understand the difference between the impeachment process and prosecution) pits Americans against Americans, and we just did that 10 years ago, and nobody won.
Don't do impeachment if you're not going to "win" the resulting prosecution (and the Senate wouldn't 'convict', you can't possibly believe), otherwise you just polarize the political center. It's taken us 10 years and one shitty president to get past the last impeachment.
It's too bad we don't live in a parliamentary system where our representatives could simply vote "no confidence" in the executive, and thus quickly change him.
I'm not picking on you, Livingston, but saying "no one should be above the law" is, to me, a platitude. No one should be, but in every society, people who are either politically favored, or wealthy, have a different relationship to jurisprudence than the rest of us.
I see the best way forward this way: Let Bush leave office quietly, let America breathe a sigh of relief. Let some years go by (let's get past the election of 2012, let's say, but maybe we start in late 2009, if the public impetus grows to support it). Maybe after Bush leaves office, the press will feel the freedom to go back and really make public the facts about the war (but more likely they'll be showing the future Hannah Montana lesbian sex video).
Then let some international court indict Bush on war crimes. Let's say he's tried in abstentia. Let him be convicted and let the real truth come out. Maybe he never serves a day. Maybe he's sued and never pays a dime and lives out his days in isolation and seclusion, knowing history calls him a war criminal.
Meantime, let's focus on drawing down troops, leaving Iraq as stable as we can, redirecting our funds toward energy discoveries, universal health care, and green technologies. An impeachment, to me, means we stop all the things we could be doing and we sit in one spot and call names for a couple years.
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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. - R.W. Emerson
Probably a quote from a habitual milk spiller. That wouldn't work for the cop writing me a speeding ticket last week. Spilt milk is usually associated with an accident. If I threw milk in your face, flipped you off, and said "bring it on", that is a little different than dumping it in your lap while reaching for the mashed potatoes.
Livingston, that is some seriously funny shit and extremely well put.
And I was never for the war on Iraq. Wasnt the Taliban in Afghanistan? I get confused.
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"I'm not here to make a record, ya stupid cracker" Governor Pappy O Daniel
Impeachment isn't the answer. Treason trials for all the members of the "Project for the New American Century" IS THE ANSWER. Shrub was, and is, a willingly compliant imbecile being led along by some very dark and evil bastards.
"Somebody’s going to take the fall
There’s your quid pro quo
They’ll punish the monkey
and let the organ grinder go"
- Mark Knopfler
I believe in cleaning up my own mess. But if this is how you feel, sweet, I've got a basement full of dirty laundry and sink full of dishes I'd love for you to come over and tackle.
Quote:
Impeachment (and I understand the difference between the impeachment process and prosecution) pits Americans against Americans, and we just did that 10 years ago, and nobody won.
-Republicans impeached Clinton for a blowjob
-The Bush administration started a war on manufactured and false evidence (among 34 other articles we know of).
Therefore, we should not impeach Bush... Clear as mud to me. Just because the Republican congress of the 90s were a bunch of coniving assholes, we can't pursue justice? Come on.
The only two reasons I can think of for Pelosi to take impeachment of the table could be 1) she is implicated too deep herself (or friends on her side of the aisle), or 2) warrentless wiretapping produced some dirt on some dem's that is being used to keep them in line.
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I'm not picking on you, Livingston, but saying "no one should be above the law" is, to me, a platitude. No one should be, but in every society, people who are either politically favored, or wealthy, have a different relationship to jurisprudence than the rest of us.
Sure, but I'm all for drawing the line in the sand as far toward justice as possible. Impeachment may not be successful, but when the truth come out and those who vote in favor of criminals... well, perhaps the public will then take notice and vote them out of office their next term.
-d
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Could it be that intense partisanship unhinges us all, leading us to being with the conclusion we prefer, and then to reason backward to reach it? -William Falk
The whole game is rigged, and the power players will simply just trade hats as they have always done. I think this country needs more than just impeachment of a couple of murderers and crooks. The whole system is F#cked. Impeachment would probably only just put a bandaid on a massive wound that actually needs severe surgery in order for its survival. The best article I have read about impeachment is this one... Repudiation, Not Impeachment - CommonDreams.org
Here is a quote from the above article...
Quote:
While I reject violence as a means of redressing social wrongs, especially when applied to issues of governance, and instead rely on the rule of law as manifested by the Constitution and those legitimate bodies empowered by the Constitution to remedy every situation, I cannot help but fear the moment when the foundation of legitimacy which defines who we are and what we are as a nation fades away into irrelevance amidst a sea of complacency and ignorance. There is no greater breeding ground for the forces of tyranny than the surrender of civic responsibility on the part of those entrusted with the defense of liberty. And in this I do not mean the Congress of the United States, but rather the people of the United States, the duly elected representatives of whom constitute the Congress.
I fear not the bloody rebellion of an outraged citizenry, but rather the passive submission of a shameful mass which betrays the cause of liberty and freedom through the abandonment of the Constitution, and the obligations of citizenship derived thereof, in favor of the narcotic of consumerism. Such a mass, foreswearing blind obedience to those who profess how to best construct a cocoon that immerses the occupant in transitory comfort, is the most pressing problem facing America today. In a nation whose defining document begins, “We the People,” I find that it is we the people who constitute the greatest threat to the future of America. It is not through the force of our actions, but rather the vacuum created by our inaction and apathy, a vacuum all too readily filled by those who would have us exchange our hard-fought freedoms for a gilded cage of market-driven consumerism.
As for the people who are saying, "in 7 months it will all be better" and just "hoping" that Obama will be the next great President of "change"..... all you are essentially doing is saying “damn this crap table just isn’t paying off, let’s move to another table”, without realizing that it isn’t the damn table! The entire game is rigged! Maybe I'm wrong, in fact I would love to be wrong, but I just don't see one man changing it all for us. Change will come when mass amounts of people come knocking at the door of the White House demanding that it be changed.
I am guilty of being a complacent American. I had to get that out there. I was just thinking of it as an AA meeting and admiting I have a problem seems to be the right first step.
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"I'm not here to make a record, ya stupid cracker" Governor Pappy O Daniel
The whole game is rigged, and the power players will simply just trade hats as they have always done. I think this country needs more than just impeachment of a couple of murderers and crooks. The whole system is F#cked. Impeachment would probably only just put a bandaid on a massive wound that actually needs severe surgery in order for its survival. The best article I have read about impeachment is this one... Repudiation, Not Impeachment - CommonDreams.org
Here is a quote from the above article...
As for the people who are saying, "in 7 months it will all be better" and just "hoping" that Obama will be the next great President of "change"..... all you are essentially doing is saying “damn this crap table just isn’t paying off, let’s move to another table”, without realizing that it isn’t the damn table! The entire game is rigged! Maybe I'm wrong, in fact I would love to be wrong, but I just don't see one man changing it all for us. Change will come when mass amounts of people come knocking at the door of the White House demanding that it be changed.
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