From his cocaine use, to manipulating the public into war because of 9/11. From mishandling the Katrina disaster to outing a covert CIA operative for political reasons. The list of crimes of crimes and abuses of power by President Bush (and his administration) goes on and on. But you didn't have to be a disillusioned congressman or a preeminent consumer advocate to know that something was wrong in the country. Aside from some polls immediately after 9/11, Bush has had approval ratings ratings as low or lower than Nixon's. And Cheney's approval ratings are appropriate for somebody who shoots his friends in the face. But approval ratings aren't what matter -- what matters is that nearly everyone could see and feel that Bush was destroying America.
We might have been more aware earlier on about the disastrous path that Bush was leading us down if only the shock of 9/11 hadn't caused us to overlook the Enron collapse collapse engineered by Bush's pal (Kenneth Kenny Boy Lay). And, unlike Enron, it turned out that most of us weren't heavily invested in the very successful Halliburton business. So, economically, the average American was feeling the crunch... but what could we do about that? Surveillance camera's were going up everywhere even without demand from Big Brother Bush and stories of wiretapping seemed par for the course. And even though habeus corpus was being effectively suspended, most of us were still getting due process regarding the growing prison-industrial complex. These policies were thoroughly unAmerican, and blatant abuses of our disappearing rights, but what could anyone really do? These things were just happening and most Americans simply can't afford to spend their work days getting involved with the ACLU. Still, we knew something was going terribly wrong in the country. We just didn't have the focus or the network to stand up and do something about it.
We had some informed skepticism about the reasons for the war and, while millions futilely tried, we couldn't stop the war. When our brothers, sisters, and friends were sent to Iraq, how could we know what they would be asked to do? It's bad enough that thousands of our loved ones are still coming back in flag draped coffins (hidden from the camera by the administration), but did anyone really believe that those young soldiers in the pictures at Abu Ghraib took it upon themselves to torture and humiliate those Iraqi prisoners? Bush has now admitted to authorizing torture, but who could effectively put the obvious together and throw the sadist out of office?
Mr. McClellan isn't doing all the work, nor is he spilling all the beans, but his effort is just enough to empower all of the others who have been working on impeachment. Millions of Americans are about to witness an act of national justice and Scott McClellan is largely to thank. But we still need the Wexlers and the Kucinichs and the Naders. We still need journalists who are prepared to get the whole story and who are willing to fearlessly present it in it's entirety. And we, the people of the U.S.A,. need to collectively stand up for our rights and for justice. Impeachment needs to be demanded by every citizen with a conscience, a soul, or a mouth.
this vampiric regime must not be allowed to escape, now is the time to drive the stake in. Expose this regime to the light of day (the impeachment process) and watch it turn to dust. But all the players and the American public must act and demand action now! As David Swanson recently wrote: "... if we get to impeachment, we will get to indictment for certain. If we don't get to impeachment, Bush and Cheney's strongest defense in court will be to argue that they were never impeached." That must not happen. Bush and Cheney must be impeached and then tried for war crimes in an international court.
