Impeach Bush and Cheney for Torture - Sign the Petition!

On Friday, George Bush told ABC he personally approved of the approval of torture by Dick Cheney and his top cabinet officials.

"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC New s White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And, yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."...

Bush said the ABC report about the Principals' involvement was not so "startling."

Well perhaps Bush didn't find it startling, but torture happens to be both a U.S. felony and an international war crime subject to the death penalty.

It may also be the reason for the last-minute decision by the Pope to refuse to attend the long-planned state dinner for him at the White House.

So what was the reaction of the Corporate Media to Bush's admission of war crimes? Crickets.

thus far at least, no one seems to give a damn. As of 9AM, the NYT published no news of Bush's admission. The WaPo placed a story on A3 (stating that they had already reported this, even though they hadn't reported this). ABC, the outlet that got the damn scoop, places the story fourth on its list of stories, behind Obama and Indiana and Hillary telling Bill to "butt out," with the main picture on the front page cycling through such critical stories as a dog who invited himself to his owner's funeral. Oh--and do you think maybe there's a connection between the stories of teens beating each other and the President, approving of torture?

This is an exclusive with the President who, after lying about torture for four years, just admitted that he knew and approved of the torture! And yet you place it there among the cute puppy stories?

Marcy can't get her head around the fact the Corporate Media doesn't give a crap that our President is a war criminal. But the Corporate Media was fully complicit in the pre-war lies. That's why they were fully complicit in the post-war coverup of those lies by refusing to report on the Downing Street Memos, which is why we had to create AfterDowningStreet.org.

They were also fully complicit in the original sin of the Bush Administration - the stolen election in Florida and the lawless appointment of Bush by five of his father's cronies on the Supreme Court.

But for me, the key question of the moment is: where are the progressive bloggers.

Booman framed the question:

If you were strategizing a blogswarm to get Congress, the press, and the administration to do something, what would you suggest we focus on? Should we focus on the lack of media coverage? Should we focus on getting a special prosecutor? Should we focus on getting the administration to comply with requests for documents and testimony from congressional committees?

But he left out the only Constitutional remedy for Presidential crimes: impeachment. Why would he, when he publicly supports impeachment?

Tristero, who also supports impeachment, won't even embrace Booman's proposed solutions, but prefers that we educate ourselves:

My answer is none of the above, but we should support all these efforts. Instead I think bloggers should focus on the essential issue and constantly remind our readers what it is:

There is no longer the shadow of a doubt that the torture of prisoners was planned at the highest levels of the US government with the explicit knowledge and approval of the president. How do we know this? Bush himself admitted it.

What we also need to do is to remind people exactly what it means to torture, and that torture is profoundly immoral. Furthermore we should make it clear that among the numerous reasons that torture is profoundly immoral is that torture makes societies who torture less safe.

That's it? All bloggers can do is "remind" people that torture is wrong?

This is absurd. We've come to a historic moment where every American - especially bloggers - must take a stand.

Either you're for torture or you're against it. And if you're against it, you must support the only Constitutional remedy: impeachment.

It's simply idiotic to call for a Special Prosecutor, as the ACLU did. A Special Prosecutor can't prosecute a President, only send a report to Congress (see the Starr Report if you've forgotten). We don't need a Starr Report when the President has publicly admitted to approving war crimes! (Call ACLU president Anthony Romero at 212-549-2500 or email him to support impeachment, not a useless Special Prosecutor.)

It's no excuse to say, "we can't impeach Bush because President Cheney would be worse." We know that Cheney directly approved torture, so they must be impeached together. If they were convicted by the Senate (or resigned to avoid impeachment), Speaker Pelosi would become President, as prescribed by the Constitution.

It's no excuse to say, "we don't have the votes to impeach Bush and Cheney." Democrats didn't have the votes to impeach Nixon when they started, but when the House Judiciary Committee reluctantly adopted Articles of Impeachment, Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment.

Nor is it an excuse to say, "we don't have time to impeach Bush and Cheney." Bush admitted both his own and Cheney's guilt, and Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet are witnesses. There's no need for impeachment hearings - an impeachment resolution based on Bush's confession could go straight to the floor for a vote, just as they did on 11/6/07 when Dennis Kucinich introduced H.Res. 799, Articles of Impeachment for Vice President Cheney.

And finally, it is utterly immoral for bloggers to say, "we shouldn't impeach Bush and Cheney because it would hurt the chances of electing a Democrat in November." Simply stated, politics should never come before torture. (Of course, as John Nichols convincingly argued in The Genius of Impeachment, impeachment has always helped the impeaching party in the next Presidential election - not that that should matter.)

Dr. Martin Luther King famously said, "A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam."

Thanks to Bush's admission that he approved torture, that time has come for us in relation to impeachment. To paraphrase George Bush: you're either with us, or you're with the torturers. Bloggers, which side are you on?

Update 1: The Pentagon Post claims it covered the story in January 2005, but they're lying.