Varying Requirements for Impeachment
 

Getting busted having an intern blow you = Impeachable

Lying to the US public and taking the nation to war under false pretexts = Nada

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...593607,00.html

Excerpt: "C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy"

Why aren't more people up in arms over this?

People are tired from the Clinton scandal. They don't want to go through another one, so this President gets a pass on whatever he does.

Oh, and also, the "independent" counsel with the unlimited budget is a thing of the past. It's not fair, but it's probably better for the country in the long run.

because your media walks in lockstep with your administration. Probably because they're owned by the same people. Here we had the main opposition calling blair a lair, straight out, as a major part of their campaign, no pussy-footing about and the media have been happy to do it on more than one occasion. I cannot image the democrats or your media having the balls to do that.

CNN had the story up this morning and it was gone by noon.
WTF?

Bwah hah hah hah hah hah hah.

Requirements for impeachment:

( ( ( President commits major crime ) OR ( Congress doesn't like president ) ) AND
( ( Congress is honorable ) OR ( Congress doesn't like president ) ) )

i thought that was humorous.

Silent - you are a couple of years late on this bandwagon... oh yeah, and one election. if you aren't aware, that election was an opportunity for the fair citizens of the US to get rid of Bush without ridiculous legal proceedings. If they thought he lied about the war, they could vote for Kerry. If they thought he was wrong about the economy, they could vote for Kerry. If they didn't like his accent, they could vote for Kerry.

In the end, more people thought Bush was the better choice for President, so they reelected him. this election was after a couple years of having all the details of the war and the buildup to the war, the economy, the pre-9/11 events, etc. And still more people thought Bush was a better choice than Kerry.

As always, give the citizens a better option and they will flock to it. Unfortunately, the democrats came up with a sorry ass option for this election and we the citizens of these United States get to live with the consequences, for better or worse.

And BTW, Clinton wasn't impeached for getting a hummer. He was impeached for the cover-up. I believe it was stupid, unnecessary Republican wrangling - but get your facts straight.

Sorry, I guess the root was his denial about getting blown.

I guess in my view, at election time there were a lot of facts that if you looked at rationally you could connect the dots and see the lying rat fink tactics that the republicans imployed to get the war they wanted.
However, if you did not wish to see the pattern, you could ignore it.

Here is a story that basically lays it out on the table that the Iraq war was a forgone conclusion months before it happened and the general response seems to be *shrug*.
I am stunned by the apathy. At least I found this:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/6/113947/8072

"Walks in lockstep" is not quite right. What they do is accept language redefinitions unquestioningly, and report "he said she said" without fact checking.

"What the Democrats call the nuclear option"

"personal accounts"

"filibustering a judicial nomination is unprecedented".

All of those are things that the press for the most part just repeated when the administration/Republican Congress came out with them until enough pressure was placed to get some corrections here and there.

maybe you get the *shrug* because this is old news. we knew it was a forgone conclusion long before the war started. absolutely no one in America woke up one day and was surprised to find out we were at war with Iraq. most of us weren't worried about mushroom clouds over NY before the war, so we weren't that surprised to find that there weren't piles of nuclear munitions just sitting around Baghdad.

Again, the election saw all of this information make the rounds and people made their choices. they didn't vote for bush because they are stupid, or didn't see the same facts you see - it is because they have different priorities than you do and bush fell more in line with their priorities than Kerry did. end of story.

Actually, no they didn't.

http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pr...rt10_21_04.pdf

If you check page 14, you'll note that for the people who voted for Bush, Kerry actually held policy positions that were closer to the ones they wanted then Bush's.

If you read the rest of the memo it's clear that all involved believed in Saddam's WMD capability before the intelligence turn, and had their own intelligence to boot:

"...his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran..."

Roughly speaking, chem/bio but not nuke. What a relief.

"For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary."

Nobody stood up at that point, including "C", to say those WMDs didn't exist.

The meaning of the phrase "fixed around the policy" changes according to your narrative, your perception of the situation. Intelligence wasn't fixed around whether WMD existed. It seems like it was fixed around presenting the public reasons for the war, that were only considered after the private reasons made it seem like a good idea.

Is it heresy that the public and private reasons were different? No, they often have to be. It's crappy leadership if the public reasons don't hold up, which is why I didn't vote for the guy. But it's not *lying*.

on which day?

the flip-flop argument wasn't fruitful then and it is pointless now. I have said it before, I don't think Kerry is a bad guy, and he probably wouldn't have been the worst president ever, but he didn't do what was needed to draw people to him.

he didn't appear confident of his beliefs other than "I'm not George Bush". He always talked about "I have a plan" but never produced said plans. (neither did Bush, but he didn't end every sentence by stating he had a plan) Bush and Kerry weren't that different. they were only different in the areas that matter in an public election - Bush (or his handlers) know how to win an election. A) pick a position, B) State that position, C) Restate that position, D) Restate that position, E) Restate that position, F) see a theme here.

many voted for Bush even though they don't agree with some of what he does, because they KNOW what he is going to do. He will do what he says he is going to do - whether it is popular or not. sometimes that is good, sometimes it is bad, but it is always attractivein a politician. Kerry, in my opinion, had bad advisors that helped him change his views too often for public comfort.

anyway, this is old news. so who do you think is going to be up in '08?

Yes it is. I guess you could say that having separate public and private reasons for war is justifiable lying, but I wouldn't say that, and justifiable or not it is lying.

What's clear to me form reading this (and what pisses me off) is that they had decided on a regime change and used the WMD card as a pretext. If WMD's are your reason for invading another country, then I would think North Korea might be a litlle higher on the agenda.

If the Shrub had come right out and said "We think Sadam is a dangerous and bad man. We'd like to get rid of him. And we might get some cheaper gas to boot" I'd have said "Go for it". And if he had rallied the country around him then he is free and clear.
To justify an action with a reason that is not the case, is deceptive. And I believe that when someone gives a reason for a war that is not the real reason, I'm free to yell liar.

According to you guys, all poker games should be played with all cards face-up.

Unfortunately our opponents are playing face-down.

Our opponents would have an advantage if they knew the real reasons we attacked them? The American people could certainly use that information to judge the actions of their elected officials, but what could our opponents do with it?

Our opponents would have an advantage, and the ones we attacked would as well.

Read Haroun and the sea of stories by Salman Rushdie, it's technically a kids book but it explains why playing open handed will win in the most lucid way. Should be required reading in school.

The fatwa was the best thing that ever happened to Salman Rushdie's career. Without it he's just a second-rate expatriate Middle Eastern Author. With it, overnight celebrity.

You haven't read Salman Rushdie have you? For a start he's Indian, not 'middle eastern'. The fatwah bought a lot of attention to Salman but it's the incredible nature of his work that made him one of the great living authors. Midnight's Children was the book that brought him critical acclaim, long before the fatwah-issuing Satanic Verses.

What advantage would they have by knowing the real reason for the attack instead of the fake one?