Given their Nixon-esque polling numbers, it's safe to say that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are not exactly the most popular pair to grace 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. In fact, only about 25 percent of people think our feckless leader is doing a good job. Incidentally, the same percentage of people predicted that the second coming of Jesus would occur in 2007. I've got a hunch that there's a lot of overlap in those two groups.
But while it may make us feel smart and savvy to point out Bush's failures, it doesn't do anything to set this country on the right course.
Luckily, there is one man in Washington who has the chutzpah to actually stand up and do something about the Bush administration's abuses.
Recently, Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced a resolution listing 35 articles of impeachment against Bush. The allegations include Bush's illicit wiretapping program, the illegal detention of and use of torture against "enemy combatants" and his misleading statements about Iraq's weapons program. Kucinich also introduced articles of impeachment against Cheney for fabricating Iraq's threat to American security, manipulating intelligence to deceive Americans about a relationship between al-Qaida and Iraq, threatening the state of Iran without any justification and falsely impersonating the Penguin from Batman. The last one was recently removed, however, at the request of the Penguin.
Until last week, Kucinich's attempts were nothing more than the butt of Bill O'Reilly's jokes. However, the House Judiciary Committee has allowed hearings on one of the articles of impeachment against President Bush, one concerning his deception of Congress in the lead-up to the Iraq war.
While committee members did not explicitly call the 6-hour session "impeachment hearings," that's exactly what they were. And while there were enough members of Congress and the public to necessitate an overflow room, there was one person whose support was conspicuously absent - Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi has continuously stated her opposition to impeachment since she took her post. In a recent interview, she defended her opinion by stating impeachment would be a distraction from efforts to "expand health care, protect the American people and educate our children." That's very interesting considering the president she refuses to impeach has twice vetoed the expansion of health care for children and has endangered the American people by overstretching our armed forces in an unjustified war. And what's the educational value of allowing a president who treats the Constitution like a wet napkin at a Sonny's Bar-B-Q to continue serving as president just because impeachment isn't politically convenient?
Well, if she won't listen to a fellow member of Congress, perhaps she'll listen to Vincent Bugliosi, the famous lawyer who successfully prosecuted Charles Manson and twenty other murderers. Bugliosi has just released a book outlining in detail the case against George W. Bush for the murder of the 4,000 U.S. soldiers who have died in a war that was sold to Americans under false pretenses.
Not only do we owe it to future generations to set a precedent and ensure these egregious acts never happen again, but we owe it to ourselves. When left unchecked, a war-mongering administration that has no reservations about lying to the American people to advance its own agenda will not hesitate to start another illegal war (Iran?).
For our own security and for the security of the world, we are obligated to impeach the president and vice president.
Brandon Sack is a second-year biomedical sciences graduate student. His column appears Thursdays.
