Also see below:     
Vermont Votes to Impeach Bush/Cheney    [

    Vermont: Land of Hope
    By Cindy Sheehan
    t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

    Thursday 08 March 2007

    My recent trip to Turkey opened my eyes further to anti-American hatred. As more and more people in the occupied countries of Afghanistan and Iraq are being killed by American troops or by violence that didn't exist before America entered their countries, the intensity of the hostility is escalating along with the escalating violence. At a "peace" conference that I attended in Istanbul I was appalled when attendee after attendee rose up from the audience to commend my fellow panelist, an Iraqi scientist, on the insurgency in Iraq that was giving the world "hope" by staving off the self-entitled "mightiest military in history." I was as appalled because a violent insurgency was applauded as I am appalled that a violent regime in DC is still in power to continue devastating the world which encourages people to place their hope in the Iraqi resistance.

    I want to live in a country that gives hope to the world. I want to live in a country that decreases world instability instead of fomenting and celebrating it. I want to live in a country that listens to its citizens and not the lobbyists of the war profiteers. I want to live in a country that doesn't use its precious sons and daughters to kill other people's precious sons and daughters. I want to live in the USA, and that's why I want Bloody George and Doomsday Dick to be impeached.

    I had the honor over this past weekend to travel the state of Vermont (in the Yellow Rose of Texas VFP and Camp Casey Bus) with impeachment activists, including Dan DeWalt, who began the impeachment movement in Vermont; John Nichols, who is an associate editor of The Nation magazine and author of "The Genius of Impeachment," which puts the impeachment of the Bush regime in crystal clear historical focus; along with three superbly intelligent and articulate Iraq Vets Against the War: Drew Cameron, Matt Howard and Adrienne Kinne.

    We made 13 stops across Vermont (which is bigger than it looks) and found ourselves settling into a routine. First, the Iraq Vets would speak. Adrienne was an Arabic linguist for 10 years and knew the intelligence that our country was gleaning from such sources as Ahmed Chalabi was false because she, using her brain, figured out that he had much to gain from the invasion of Iraq. When she brought this up to her commander, he accused her of not supporting their unit or the mission. Adrienne now works in a VA hospital in Vermont and hears tragic tales of why our vets have PTSD. Stories of soldiers who were driving down the road in a sandy country that they had no business being in, and who awaken to find themselves covered in blood with a body part in their laps, not knowing if it's their own or one of their buddies'.

    Matt, a Marine, and Drew, a soldier, told horror stories of lack of body armor, lack of enough food and the killing of innocent women and children. The young vets' points basically boiled down to this: as our VA hospitals are falling apart and soldiers are committing suicide, because even if the harmed soldiers wanted to, they can't get beds in a VA facility, the illegal occupation of a country that Bloody George wants to make worse is creating more damaged veterans who will be refused, or criminally delaying treatment from the very government that hurt them in the first place.

    John Nichols would then arise and talk about the founding of our country and the genius of the founding fathers who built impeachment into our Constitution - which mentions impeachment six times and God zero. Impeachment was our founders' way of ensuring that no branch of the government - but especially the executive branch - got too powerful or tyrannical. With the fire of an evangelist, John would relevantly quote Jefferson, Madison and Adams with alacrity and wisdom. Then John would introduce me.

    By the time I would speak, the crowd had heard about the atrocity and senselessness of war. John would give them the historical background and reasons for impeachment, i.e., starting wars of aggression based on lies; torture; Katrina; spying on Americans without permission, and torture, to name a few, and my job was to put impeachment into the present day and explain future implications.

    My imperative for impeachment does not come out of a sense of revenge. If I wanted revenge, I would be calling for something more harmful than impeachment. Justice is one of the reasons that I want impeachment. Peace is one of the reasons that I want impeachment. Accountability is one of the reasons that I want impeachment, but the overriding reason that I want impeachment is for the future.

    I believe that a mammoth number of Americans think that Vietnam was a wrongheaded war, and that atrocities and crimes against humanity were committed. However, the main architects of that disgusting crime of that century left office to go on to lead happy and healthy lives of ease. Johnson went back to Texas to bar-be-que; Nixon returned to California to golf; McNamara went on to be president of the World Bank (which seems to be a reward for planning horrid wars), and Kissinger is back in the saddle advising the cowboy of killing. If even one of the above-mentioned murderers had been impeached and imprisoned, maybe George would not have thought that he was above the law, and maybe he wouldn't have felt so comfortable leading our country into disaster a la the war that he spent a lot of time avoiding himself.

    It is urgent and necessary that we impeach the criminals who inhabit the highest offices of the world to ensure the future peace of the world.

    Impeachment is absolutely mandatory, so that the crooks will be held accountable for their crimes so America can be the shining city on the hill that the rest of the world can look towards with hope and confidence in her wisdom.

    Impeachment is a constitutional requirement that must not be expediently avoided and must be set back on the table as the first course.

    Dozens of towns in Vermont were voting on impeachment resolutions in their town meetings March 6th as a people's antidote for the political temerity of Congress. If Congress won't do its constitutional duty, then we the people will.

    Vermont, the world is watching. Be the glowing beacon that leads our country down a path of justice and peace.

    The hope of the world is counting on you.

 

---

    Go to Original

    Vermont Votes to Impeach Bush/Cheney
    By John Nichols
    The Nation

    Wednesday 07 March 2007

    The Nation - When Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, a Republican with reasonably close ties to President Bush, asked if there was any additional business to be considered at the town meeting he was running in Middlebury, Ellen McKay popped up and proposed the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

    The governor was not amused. As moderator of the annual meeting, he tried to suggest that the proposal to impeach - along with another proposal to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq - could not be voted on.

    But McKay, a program coordinator at Middlebury College, pressed her case. And it soon became evident that the crowd at the annual meeting shared her desire to hold the president to account.

    So Douglas backed down.

    "It became clear that no one was going home until they had the chance to discuss the resolutions and vote on them," explained David Rosenberg, a political science professor at Middlebury College. "And being a good politician, he allowed the vote to happen."

    By an overwhelming voice vote, Middlebury called for impeachment.

    So it has gone this week at town meetings across Vermont, most of which were held Tuesday.

    Late Tuesday night, there were confirmed reports that 36 towns had backed impeachment resolutions, and the number was expected to rise.

    In one town, Putney, the vote for impeachment was unanimous.

    In addition to Governor Douglas's Middlebury, the town of Hartland, which is home to Congressman Peter Welch, backed impeachment. So, too, did Jericho, the home of Gaye Symington, the speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives.

    Organizers of the grassroots drive to get town meetings to back impeachment resolutions hope that the overwhelming support the initiative has received will convince Welch to introduce articles of impeachment against Bush and Cheney. That's something the Democratic congressman is resisting, even though his predecessor, Bernie Sanders, signed on last year to a proposal by Michigan Congressman John Conyers to set up a House committee to look into impeachment.

    Vermont activists also want their legislature to approve articles of impeachment and forward them to Congress. But Symington, also a Democrat, has discouraged the initiative, despite the fact that more than 20 representatives have cosponsored an impeachment resolution.

    "It's going to be hard for Peter Welch and Gaye Symington to say there's no sentiment for impeachment, now that their own towns have voted for it," says Dan DeWalt, a Newfane, Vermont, town selectman who started the impeachment initiative last year in his town, and who now plans to launch a campaign to pressure Welch and Symington to respect and reflect the will of the people.

    It is going to be even harder for Governor Douglas, who just this month spent two nights at the Bush White House, to face his president.

    After all, Douglas now lives in a town that is on record in support of Bush's impeachment and trial for high crimes and misdemeanors.

    For the record, Middlebury says:

We the people have the power - and the responsibility - to remove executives who transgress not just the law, but the rule of law.

The oaths that the President and Vice President take bind them to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." The failure to do so forms a sound basis for articles of impeachment.

The President and Vice President have failed to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" in the following ways:

1. They have manipulated intelligence and misled the country to justify an immoral, unjust, and unnecessary preemptive war in Iraq.

2. They have directed the government to engage in domestic spying without warrants, in direct contravention of U.S. law.

3. They have conspired to commit the torture of prisoners, in violation of the Federal Torture Act and the Geneva Convention.

4. They have ordered the indefinite detention without legal counsel, without charges and without the opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention - all in violation of U.S. law and the Bill of Rights.

When strong evidence exists of the most serious crimes, we must use impeachment - or lose the ability of the legislative branch to compel the executive branch to obey the law.

George Bush has led our country to a constitutional crisis, and it is our responsibility to remove him from office.

    ---------

    John Nichols' new book is The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism. Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson hails it as a "nervy, acerbic, passionately argued history-cum-polemic [that] combines a rich examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the 'heroic medicine' that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to 'reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for the defense of our most basic liberties.'"