Impeach Bush and Cheney! No new war against Iran!
A message from Ramsey Clark
President George Bush plans to attack Iran. From coast to coast, the people of this country are demanding impeachment, which may be the only way to stop him. We are acting now because a failure to impeach Bush with Vice President Cheney and other civil officers for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity may condemn the world to war without end. Has he not made it clear that he intends to attack Iran?
Again and again he has threatened Iran with attack if it does not abandon its nuclear program and act to please him. The threat, like the use of force against a nation, is a violation of Article 2.4 of the Charter of the United Nations just as the threat of assault, like assault itself, is a crime in all legal systems. President Bush has unilaterally imposed the most comprehensive economic sanctions within his power against Iran, excepting of course the purchase of Iranian oil. Sanctions are crueler than the colonial whipping post because they harm infants, children, the elderly and the infirm.
When President Bush decides to launch missiles at Iran, he will proclaim the necessity for his action to prevent nuclear terrorism, and save freedom and democracy. "This government does not torture people," President Bush assures us despite Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, rendition, the staunch defense of torture by his legal advisers throughout his Presidency and what We the People know, as he knows we know. We are being told that truth is what the Decider says it is. As with Iraq before, he now says Iran is a nuclear threat to the U.S. and brooks no dispute of his decision.
At the same time, President Bush is accelerating U.S. nuclear weapons programs, new generations of tactical warheads, replacing older nuclear weapons and seeking to place U.S. missile interceptors (and what else?) in and near the Russian border in Poland and the Czech Republic, to antagonize Russia and provoke a new arms race.
From Florida with its anti Castro votes, he warned Cuba that the U.S. will not accept what he calls a transition in its government from Fidel to Raul Castro to remind Cuba who the Decider is. But he has celebrated intra family transitions of government leadership in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and elsewhere while supporting and rewarding military dictatorships in Pakistan, among other nations, when in the interest of the United States as he conceives it.
He passionately demanded that Cuba empty out its prisons while the U.S. prison at Guantanamo, Cuba unlawfully holds, abuses and violates fundamental human rights far beyond any claim against Cuba and he supports the steady increase to the more than 2 million prisoners in the U.S. without any thought of reducing their numbers, or addressing the causes of crime in America to reduce its occurrence.
He warns of World War III, as if he lusts for it, to place himself with Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt among U.S. presidents, and to validate his criminal assault and occupation of Iraq as prescient. He uses the same tone with Iran that he used to warn Iraq that it must reveal, surrender and destroy its non existent weapons of mass destruction.
Meanwhile his advisors and those of the leading Republican candidate to succeed him, Rudy Giuliani, are guided by pundits like Norman Podhoretz who conjures, then condemns "Islam Fascism" and predicts, with seeming pleasure, the continuation of the present war for 3 or 4 decades.
George Bush has committed the very highest crimes in international and U.S. law. Based on deception, he waged a war of aggression against Iraq, the Supreme International Crime as determined by the Nuremberg Tribunal. He knew there was no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He knew Iraq had no role in 9/11 and that Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were inherently antagonistic. He knew above all that Iraq was exhausted from the 8-year Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), and the nearly 13 years from August 1990 to March 2003, of genocidal sanctions that took more that a million and a half lives, half under the age of five. The Gulf War from January to March 1991 destroyed 80% of Iraq’s war materiel, and major elements of Iraq’s infrastructure: water supply from reservoir dams to pipelines to pumping stations to filtration plants; electricity generation and transmission; telephone, radio and T.V. communications; shattered major parts of urban sanitation and sewer systems, rail transportation, bridges, commercial centers; food manufacture, processing and storage facilities; markets; attacked agriculture by destroying fertilizer and insecticide production; leaving Iraq a broken country, its military unable to defend it.
Even his wide-eyed lie that, "This government does not torture people" is a serious impeachable offense intended to bolster public support, conceal criminal conduct, and outface truth.
President Bush will not bring our troops home in his remaining fourteen months in office. He consistently seeks more billions for the military, even immediately after vetoing medical care legislation for our own children who are not receiving it.
He has done nothing to show any humane concern for, or alleviate the heartbreaking suffering he has inflicted on the Iraqi people, not even shed a tear over a million deaths, five million homeless refugees, three-fourths of the population without safe drinking water, a sky rocketing infant mortality rate, now the highest in the world, misery for all and constant sickening, inescapable fear. Good job, George. The great majority of the Iraqi people want U.S. troops to leave their country now.
Offers to negotiate U.S. withdrawal free from attack and agreements among Iraq’s hostile sectors for a negotiated peace will never be accepted by the Bush Administration, or any other U.S. administration that seeks domination and exploitation of the region, though agreements are possible.
President Bush will continue to make peace negotiations impossible by refusing to talk to essential parties, making war inevitable as President Kennedy once observed. He will continue to try to coerce other countries to fight his wars and to enlist mercenaries and contract for paramilitary personnel to expand our military capacity.
He will continue to violate his Constitutional oath of office to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," purging fundamental rights essential to the dignity of humanity from its protection. Freedom in America has been radically eroded under his government and he is primed for more extreme restraints while simultaneously making America far less safe.
He has made enemies for the United States worldwide and the tolerance of the American people for his criminal acts has inculpated us.
An expanded war following an attack on Iran can pale the crimes against Iraq and involve us in a war from which withdrawal may become impossible and defeat inevitable.
In 4 years we have been unable to control a country of 25 million debilitated citizens that had no significant war fighting capacity as was shown by the ease of the U.S. invasion. What can we hope to do militarily against Iran with 70 million strong and angry citizens in Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other nations, if rebellions burst forth?
It was the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia that motivated Osama Bin Laden to condemn his own country for permitting foreign troops on Saudi soil and attack the United States for its presence there, just as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan inspired his resistance there, which the U.S. supported.
What kind of assistance from other countries can President Bush coerce following an attack on Iran if he could enlist no support for his sanctions and acted alone?
What kind of resistance to further aggression by the U.S. is likely to follow an assault on Iran when we see rising insurrection and resistance already throughout the region and beyond?
George Bush has rejected all efforts to live in peace with peoples he labels evil empires. His efforts to control by war, force and threats, and unilaterally at that, have made the U.S. the enemy of scores of governments and people around the world. On his latest sanctions against Iran which he flaunted before the U.N. and the international community he found not a single friend to join his antagonistic act.
The House of Representatives has the "sole Power of Impeachment" under the Constitution. Article I, sec. 2. The Senate has the "sole Power to try all impeachments." Article I, sec. 3.
There is a clear duty under the Constitution for the House of Representatives to impeach President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other "civil Officers of the United States" and the Senate to try them for the "High Crimes" they have committed.
"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Article II., sec. 4.
Failure to act will place the United States and much of the rest of the world in great danger of spreading war and violence resulting from a direct attack ordered by President Bush against Iran, retaliation by Iran and the fueling of existing tensions and conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region. Given President Bush’s record, who will doubt the high risk that he will carry out his threats and seek the illusions of his advisers? Who can justify giving him the opportunity to wage another war of aggression?
The Congress will not act to impeach and try President Bush and the principal officers of the United States, despite its Constitutional duty, unless We, the People, demand it. It has failed utterly to resist the continuing war against Iraq or respond to President Bush’s threats against Iran, Cuba and other nations.
We dare not fail. We must demand Impeachment now, trials and removals from office and firm control of the war powers placed in the Congress by the Constitution, Article I, sec. 8 until President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the other principal civil officers of the United States are removed from office.
We can form Impeachment committees in every Congressional District, focusing first on the Judiciary Committee members in the House of Representatives.
We need to run newspaper ads in the major national and regional papers to energize and recruit concerned persons. This needs lots of money.
We must organize an effective presence in Washington to press for impeachment.
