Articles of impeachment filed against warmongering U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney
Kucinich Files Impeachment Bill
By Dave Lindorff
04/25/07 "ICH" -- -- Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has dropped the first impeachment shoe, filing a bill calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.
Kucinich, defying the leadership of the Democratic Party, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who have been struggling mightily to prevent impeachment from occurring during the waning years of the Bush presidency, on Tuesday filed three articles of impeachment, claiming that Cheney violated his oath of office and the Constitution, for deceiving Congress and the American people about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, about alleged but nonexistent links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and finally for making threats to invade Iran.
The bill now goes to the House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and the rest of the committee's members will have to decide whether go hold formal hearings on the charges.
The move by Kucinich comes as impeachment is gaining ground among the broader public. Today, the Vermont House of Representatives will hold a floor debate and vote on a resolution calling for Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against both President Bush and Cheney. That measure would be a companion to a similar resolution passed last week by
Under Thomas Jefferson's Manual for the Rules of the House, under which the US House of Representatives has operated for over 200 years, such a resolution would require the House to take up the impeachment issue, just as would a member's bill of impeachment.
The speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives, Lynn Symington, had strenuously opposed the resolution, and has been keeping it bottled up in the House Judiciary Committee, but following passage of the resolution in the state Senate, and a massive grassroots campaign by
Similar measures are being pushed in at least 10 other state legislatures, while two such efforts, in
On April 28, demonstrations are planned in
The mainstream corporate media, which has so far been largely ignoring the issue of impeachment, will have to go to extra lengths of censorship to block out the popular movement now, with a bill on the floor of the House, and with impeachment resolutions passing in the
Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His n book of CounterPunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's newest book is "The Case for Impeachment", co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.
He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com
110TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION
H. RES. 333
Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United
States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.
Resolved, That Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the
In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of Vice President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests, to wit:
(1) Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Vice President actively and systematically sought to deceive the citizens and Congress of the
(A) ‘‘We know they have biological and chemical weapons.’’ March 17, 2002, Press Conference by Vice President Dick Cheney and His Highness Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince of Bahrain at
(B) ‘‘...and we know they are pursuing nuclear weapons.’’ March 19, 2002, Press Briefing by Vice President Dick Cheney and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in
(C) ‘‘And he is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time...’’ March 24, 2002, CNN Late Edition interview with Vice President Cheney.
(D) ‘‘We know he’s got chemicals and biological and we know he’s working on nuclear.’’ May 19, 2002, NBC Meet the Press interview with Vice President Cheney.
(E) ‘‘But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons... Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.’’ August 26, 2002, Speech of Vice President Cheney at VFW 103rd National Convention.
(F) ‘‘Based on intelligence that’s becoming available, some of it has been made public, more of it hopefully will be, that he has indeed stepped up his capacity to produce and deliver biological weapons, that he has reconstituted his nuclear program to develop a nuclear weapon, that there are efforts under way inside Iraq to significantly expand his capability.’’ September 8, 2002 NBC Meet the Press interview with Vice President Cheney.
(G) ‘‘He is, in fact, actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.’’ September 8, 2002 NBC Meet the Press interview with Vice President Cheney.
(H) ‘‘And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.’’ March 16, 2003, NBC Meet the Press interview with Vice President Cheney.
(2) Preceding the March 2003 invasion of
(B) Vice President Cheney sought out unverified and ultimately inaccurate raw intelligence to prove his preconceived beliefs. This strategy of cherry picking was employed to influence the interpretation of the intelligence.
(B) The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research dissenting view in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate also stated that ‘‘Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in
(C) The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research dissenting view in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate references a Department of Energy opinion by stating that ‘‘INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the US Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose.’’.
In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of Vice President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in order to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests, to wit:
(B) ‘‘His regime aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda. He could decide secretly to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against us.’’ January 30, 2003, Speech of Vice President Cheney to 30th Political Action Conference in
(C) ‘‘We know he’s out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization.’’ March 16, 2003, NBC Meet the Press interview with Vice President Cheney.
(D) ‘‘We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on biological weapons and chemical weapons...’’ September 14, 2003, NBC Meet the Press interview with Vice President Cheney.
(E) ‘‘Al Qaeda had a base of operation there up in Northeastern Iraq where they ran a large poisons factory for attacks against Europeans and
(F) ‘‘He also had an established relationship with Al Qaeda providing training to Al Qaeda members in areas of poisons, gases, and conventional bombs.’’ October 10, 2003, Speech of Vice President Cheney to the Heritage Foundation.
(G) ‘‘Al Qaeda and the Iraqi intelligence services have worked together on a number of occasions.’’ January 9, 2004, Rocky Mountain News interview with Vice President Cheney.
(H) ‘‘I think there’s overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government’’ January 22, 2004, NPR: Morning Edition interview with Vice President Cheney.
(I) ‘‘First of all, on the question of—of whether or not there was any kind of relationship, there clearly was a relationship. It’s been testified to; the evidence is overwhelming.’’ June 17, 2004, CNBC: Capital Report interview with Vice President Cheney.
(B) Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary No. 044-02, issued in February 2002 by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency, which challenged the credibility of information gleaned from captured al Qaeda leader al-Libi. The DIA report also cast significant doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda conspiracy: ‘‘Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover,
(C) A January 2003 British intelligence classified report on
In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of Vice President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has openly threatened aggression against the Republic of Iran absent any real threat to the United States, and done so with the United States proven capability to carry out such threats, thus undermining the national security of the United States, to wit:
(B) ‘‘But we’ve also made it clear that all options are on the table.’’ January 24, 2007, CNN Situation Room interview with Vice President Cheney.
(C) ‘‘When we—as the President did, for example, recently—deploy another aircraft carrier task force to the Gulf, that sends a very strong signal to everybody in the region that the United States is here to stay, that we clearly have significant capabilities, and that we are working with friends and allies as well as the international organizations to deal with the Iranian threat.’’ January 29, 2007, Newsweek interview with Vice President Cheney.
(D) ‘‘But I’ve also made the point and the President has made the point that all options are still on the table.’’ February 24, 2007, Vice President Cheney at Press Briefing with Australian Prime Minister in
(B) Iran indicated its ‘‘full readiness and willingness to negotiate on the modality for the resolution of the outstanding issues with the IAEA, subject to the assurances for dealing with the issues in the framework of the Agency, without the interference of the United Nations Security Council’’. IAEA Board Report, February 22, 2007.
(C) ‘‘...so whatever they have, what we have seen today, is not the kind of capacity that would enable them to make bombs.’’ Mohamed El Baradei, Director General of International Atomic Energy Agency, February 19, 2007.
(B) The
(C) News accounts have indicated that military planners have considered the B61-11, a tactical nuclear weapon, as one of the options to strike underground bunkers in
(D) The
(E) News accounts indicate that
(B) The
(C) Article 51 lays out the only exception, ‘‘Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.’’
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