Visit Holtzman's blog on the Huffington Post
This is my first blog on the Huffington Post and there is so much to talk about it's hard to know where to begin.
I want to start with a point I made in my new book, The Impeachment of George W. Bush, about why the framers of the Constitution created the impeachment power.They were afraid that despite the system of checks and balances, a president could subvert the constitution and threaten our democracy.
In other words, the framers anticipated George W. Bush. They knew that sooner or later someone like him--someone who tramples on the rule of law--would appear on the scene. The framers told us what to do about such a president: Impeach him.
But neither the mainstream media nor most of the Democrats in Congress want to breathe the word "impeachment," even though there are substantial grounds. Still, the power is in the hands of the American people to change control of Congress, which has failed to hold President Bush accountable, and force the new one to act. That is what we must, and can, do this November.
Two recent events provide more support for impeachment. First is the recently released National Intelligence Estimate, which shows that the Iraq war has created more terrorism than there was before the war.
Iraq was not related to the terrorism of 9/11. President Bush personally knew this. Nonetheless, he repeatedly suggested that Saddam and 9/11 were connected and most Americans believed that. It was one of the deliberate falsehoods used by President Bush and his team to drive us into the Iraq war--and it is ground for impeachment.
Now, our intelligence agencies agree that instead of ending terrorism, the Iraq war has inflamed it. This confirms that Bush's justification for the war was flat-out wrong.
Parenthetically, the situation in Afghanistan--where Osama bin Laden actually operated--seems to be deteriorating drastically, a direct consequence of the President's diversion of troops and resources to invade Iraq. President Bush might become the first American president to lose two wars at once.
In addition, yesterday, several high level generals excoriated Secretary Rumsfeld for failing to provide our troops with proper equipment and for invading Iraq without a plan for the occupation. While they are correct, these failings are not Rumsfeld's alone. President Bush is ultimately responsible. As my book details, Bush, the "decider," should have insisted on a serious and thorough plan for the occupation. He didn't. He should also have ensured proper equipment for our troops. He didn't. The consequences for our troops, for Americans, and for Iraqis have been disastrous. Particularly because there was no urgency to the invasion, which had been in planning for more than a year, these failures violate Bush's constitutional duty to "take care" that the laws are faithfully executed.
Every day brings a new justification for impeachment.
Bush Seeks Retroactive Immunity for Violating War Crimes Act
By Elizabeth Holtzman
The Chicago Sun-Times Saturday 23 September 2006Thirty-two years ago, President Gerald Ford created a political firestorm by pardoning former President Richard Nixon of all crimes he may have committed in Watergate - and lost his election as a result. Now, President Bush, to avoid a similar public outcry, is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees.
The "pardon" is buried in Bush's proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The "pardon" provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11.
Press accounts of the provision have described it as providing immunity for CIA interrogators. But its terms cover the president and other top officials because the act applies to any U.S. national.
Avoiding prosecution under the War Crimes Act has been an obsession of this administration since shortly after 9/11. In a January 2002 memorandum to the president, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pointed out the problem of prosecution for detainee mistreatment under the War Crimes Act. He notes that given the vague language of the statute, no one could predict what future "prosecutors and independent counsels" might do if they decided to bring charges under the act. As an author of the 1978 special prosecutor statute, I know that independent counsels (who used to be called "special prosecutors" prior to the statute's reauthorization in 1994) aren't for low-level government officials such as CIA interrogators, but for the president and his Cabinet. It is clear that Gonzales was concerned about top administration officials.
Gonzales also understood that the specter of prosecution could hang over top administration officials involved in detainee mistreatment throughout their lives. Because there is no statute of limitations in cases where death resulted from the mistreatment, prosecutors far into the future, not appointed by Bush or beholden to him, would be making the decisions whether to prosecute.
To "reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act," Gonzales recommended that Bush not apply the Geneva Conventions to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Since the War Crimes Act carried out the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales reasoned that if the Conventions didn't apply, neither did the War Crimes Act. Bush implemented the recommendation on Feb. 7, 2002.
When the Supreme Court recently decided that the Conventions did apply to al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the possibility of criminal liability for high-level administration officials reared its ugly head again.
What to do? The administration has apparently decided to secure immunity from prosecution through legislation. Under cover of the controversy involving the military tribunals and whether they could use hearsay or coerced evidence, the administration is trying to pardon itself, hoping that no one will notice. The urgent timetable has to do more than anything with the possibility that the next Congress may be controlled by Democrats, who will not permit such a provision to be adopted.
Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent. The president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution; that document requires him to obey the laws, not violate them. A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along.
--------
Elizabeth Holtzman, a former New York congresswoman, is co-author with Cynthia L. Cooper of The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens.
PREFACE "The Impeachment of George W. Bush"
Why This Book:
Time to BeginI stopped short when I saw a front page New York Times
article about the Bush administration and domestic eavesdropping
in late 2005. The story exposed a secret wiretapping
program in the United States, set up with the approval
of President Bush. Without court oversight, without judicial
warrants, the domestic spying described by James Risen and
Eric Lichtblau defied a federal statute. In the weeks following
the mid-December publication, the president declared it was
within in his power to authorize the program, despite the law.
The president said he would continue to do so.I experienced the same sick sensation in my stomach that I
had during the Watergate hearings when I was a member of
Congress, sitting on the House Judiciary Committee while
we considered the impeachment of President Richard M.
Nixon. Then, the flagrant abuse of our constitutional system
at the hands of the president made an undeniable case for
impeachment.Now I was hearing George Walker Bush, president of the
United States, declare that he had the right to eavesdrop on
hundreds, possibly thousands or millions, of people in the
United States without getting court approval. He claimed
that right despite the prohibitions of the Federal Intelligence
Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution.Richard Milhous Nixon, when president, also engaged in
illegal wiretaps. He, too, said it was for national security. He,
too, put himself above the law. This formed one of the
grounds for impeaching Nixon. Now I realized that it was
time to look at President Bush in the same light.With Nixon, the American people finally demanded that
Congress act. The House of Representatives empowered the
Judiciary Committee to begin an inquiry into presidential
impeachment in late fall 1973. After months of careful work,
a bipartisan majority of the thirty-eight committee members
voted for the impeachment of President Nixon in July 1974.
Ultimately all of the committee members, Democrats and
Republicans, supported his impeachment.We had many grounds for the impeachment of Nixon.
Illegal wiretapping sat high on the list; misleading the public
and abusing the powers of his office figured prominently.
The Judiciary Committee proceedings were thorough and
fair. The grounds for impeachment were strong. As a result,
Nixon resigned from office, the first president ever to do so.
In resigning, he avoided becoming the first president ever to
be removed from office.I thought at that time that our work—careful and
bipartisan—would send the strongest possible signal to
future presidents about the need to obey the rule of law. I
was wrong.Thirty-three years later, the same issues, the same arrogance,
the same abuse of power emanate from the White
House, threatening our constitutional system. President Bush
had completed one year of his second term when the illegal
wiretapping scheme became public. The president’s response
was to carry on, regardless of the law against it and regardless
of his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws of the
United States. The only way to stop him is impeachment.
Having watched the unfolding of Watergate from the inner
halls of Congress, I understood that the impeachment of
President Bush wouldn’t happen quickly. The American
people need to evaluate the president’s conduct and to recognize
that his removal from office is the only way to preserve
our democracy. People need an opportunity to see and hear
and weigh the evidence. This book offers that possibility.