The Pen – 2008-03-16 08:54:48
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/673582
(Mar 13, 2008) — Exactly what we had feared most, and had predicted, has happened. Admiral Fallon, the man who famously said that an attack on Iran would “not happen on my watch” was just “retired”. Now, he is no longer on the watch. And they are absolutely planning to start a war with Iran and World War 3, against all strategic wisdom. And they are absolutely planning on doing it before the next general election. Indeed, they will mostly likely do it for the PURPOSE of tilting that election, unless they are stopped first by impeachment.
We have one and only one hope.
Congress must immediately commence impeachment proceedings against both Dick Cheney and George Bush, the shadow emperor and his ventriloquist dummy.
And only one dynamic can force Congress to stand up for itself, the impeachment based primary challenges now ongoing, and in particular Shirley Golub’s challenge to the speaker of the house herself, the primary impediment to enforcing the Constitution, who has perversely declared that impeachment will never happen on HER watch, Nancy Pelosi.
Shirley Golub taking action now. She wants to run the largest display ad she can afford in her district’s main newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, calling out the speaker of the House on her total failure to do job number one, to protect and defend the Constitution. And if Shirley can raise just $16,000 in the next 24 hours, she wants to do it in the very next possible Sunday paper, in the main news section. [http://www.shirley08.com/donations.php]
What will this ad say? Besides the specific language above, we will draw an ominous parallel between what is going on now and what happened in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. General Zinni opposed that invasion. He said, “I had grave reservations about this whole undertaking and I expressed those”. And he was forced out.
Here is the rest of the proposed text for the ad we can run with your help:
General Shinseki predicted that it would take at least a couple hundred thousand troops to stabilize a post invasion Iraq. He assessment was ridiculed as “wildly off the mark” by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. And he was undercut even before his already scheduled retirement.
Every time a top military commander who actually knows what they are doing gets the ax, something very bad happens. And now they are doing the same thing again, purging the last dissenting voice to a even more lunatic plan.
Now, Admiral Fallon is the epitome of a good soldier. And he will always protect his commander in chief, no matter how misguided or wildly off the mark they are. He will tell you that nobody forced him out and that this was his decision alone. But anybody capable of reading between the lines of his painstakingly diplomatic resignation statement will know that he will be gone because he was standing in the way of another premeditated strategic disaster, one that again they are perhaps too blinded by power to foresee, or maybe they do.
But the chain of command at the White House does not extend to the U.S. Congress, at least it’s not supposed to, not according to our Constitution. So when exactly is Congress going to stand up for itself, and for us, and put an end to the hideous debacle in the Middle East and in the White House?
After nearly a year of clutching its skirts, the House finally worked up the nerve to vote to hold Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton in contempt for refusing, under direct orders from the White House, to testify in response to congressional subpoenas. If Congress had any spine at all, even one vertebrae, they would have invoked the power of inherent contempt and had the two of them arrested on the spot.
Instead, after nearly a year of irresolute vacillation, they pretended to expect contempt citations would be enforced by the new attorney general, who the Senate was so ill-advised to confirm in the first place, who had plainly suggested in his own confirmation that the president’s constitutional powers could override federal law. Fat chance of getting any redress there.
And now they tell us they are going to file a law suit. Oh, please, what a sad pathetic joke of a publicity stunt. In the first place, there is zero chance that such a law suit would even be finally decided in less than three to five years. It absolutely would go to the Supreme Court. And what would be the chances there? Take a look at some of the appointments the Democrats in the Senate have so gullibly waved through in the last couple years and you can answer that question yourself.
And in the second place, to even contemplate taking on such a struggle by way of the courts, they better have the top notch constitutional litigation experts at the helm. Instead they just filed something knocked off by a couple staffers. Our intelligence can hardly stand any more such insults.
Let us be clear. The president and vice president of the United States have at least committed treason. The Scooter Libby trial revealed that the White House was directly involved in leaking the identity of Valerie Plame, an undisputed undercover CIA agent, which destroyed perhaps the most effective operation they had to deal with the proliferation of the very weapons of mass destruction we were supposed to be so afraid of in the Middle East. And it was done for political retribution purposes.
The first president Bush said it all, when he said “I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who expose the names of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors”. And what does the Democratic majority in Congress do about it?
Nothing.
There is hardly a federal law passed anymore that does not suffer crippling by a so-called “signing statement” to negate it, signing statements concocted by Cheney staffers, brazenly defying the authority of Congress to do anything, referring to that authority as “purported” compared the presumed imperial largess of the White House. And what does the Democratic majority in Congress do about it?
Nothing.
We have traded a rubber stamp Congress for a rubber spine Congress. What’s the difference? Now finally empowered to hold hearings on the endless constitutional crimes of the Cheney/Bush White House, the lies that took us to war in the first place, the rampant illegal wiretaps, the firing of U.S. Attorneys for partisan reasons, an official policy of torture and all the rest, and what does Congress do?
Nothing.
Instead they fritter away their hearing time harassing baseball players, threatening them with long years in prison for not telling the immaculate truth about using performance enhancers. Well, maybe Congress needs a performance enhancer, and big dose of it.
A year ago we were promised a “new direction”, and we have been waiting for even a glimpse of it ever since. It is now too late even for inherent contempt. Congress must impeach. And if you support me as your representative in the 8th Congressional district, we can up impeachment on back on the table no later that June 3, the day of the Democratic primary here, by showing Nancy Pelosi herself a new direction . . . out the door.
So please make a contribution if you can to run this historic newspaper ad. There also you can see the very video she is running right now on MSNBC in heavy rotation, talking about making impeachment happen for real, and rallying her local constituents to come out and demonstrate with her in front of Pelosi’s district office to demand it. Your contributions are what is making it possible for Shirley to have a competitive media presence, and let everyone know this a serious candidacy, and that the impeachment movement is gathering speed.
Or if you would, just send this email to other people you know, to encourage them to visit Shirley’s site, you can help her to spread the impeachment now message, and inspire other candidates to step forward and do the same thing in their own districts. For if the speaker of the House can be successfully challenged, why not any member of Congress who still cannot find their spine with both hands?
http://www.usalone.com/in.htm
