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When will House Republicans
call for Bush’s impeachment?
By Steve Pittelli
It has now become clear that President Bush lied to the American people
in order to promote a war. That war continues and has already led to the
death of thousands of Iraqi civilians, hundreds of US soldiers, and countless
Iraqi soldiers. In truth, Bush’s lies are more than just lies. They
are high crimes and the President should now be subject to impeachment.
There are those who say that the President’s current popularity or
the Republican majority in the House and Senate preclude the possibility
of his impeachment. Perhaps they are underestimating the moral integrity
of our Republican congressmen. In fact, some of them have already publicly
stated their opinions on this subject. They did so in February of 1999
when they served as Impeachment Trial Managers for the Senate Impeachment
Trial of former President Clinton. Let’s look at what they had to
say then:
“There is a visibility factor in the president’s public acts,
and those which betray a trust or reveal contempt for the law are hard
to sweep under the rug...They reverberate, they ricochet all over the
land and provide the worst possible example for our young people.”
— Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Illinois)
“The truth is still the truth, and a lie is still a lie, and the
rule of law should apply to everyone, no matter what excuses are made
by the president’s defenders…We have done so because of our
devotion to the rule of law and our fear that if the president does not
suffer the legal and constitutional consequences of his actions, the impact
of allowing the president to stand above the law will be felt for generations
to come…laws not enforced are open invitations for more serious and
more criminal behavior.” — Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin)
“It would be wrong for you to tell America’s children that some
lies are all right. It would be wrong to show the rest of the world that
some of our laws don’t really matter.” — Steve Chabot (R-Ohio)
“I have also heard some senators from both sides of the aisle state
publicly, “I think these offenses rise to the level of high crimes
and misdemeanors.” Now, to state publicly that you believe that high
crimes and misdemeanors have occurred but for some reason you have this
desire not to remove the president — that desire, though, does not
square with the law, the Constitution, and the Senate’s precedents
for removing federal judges for similar offenses.” —Steve Buyer
(R- Indiana)
“The president of the United States sets atop of the legal pyramid.
If there’s reasonable doubt about his ability to faithfully execute
the laws of the land, our future would be better off if that individual
is removed. And let me tell you where it all comes down to me. If you
can go back and explain to your children and your constituents how you
can be truthful and misleading at the same time, good luck.” —
Rep. Lindsey Graham (R - South Carolina, now Senator)
These, of course, are just a few examples. It is likely that most of those
who voted to impeach Clinton are on record as to the high ethical standards
they were following. Certainly, they must follow these same standards
when considering Bush’s egregious lies and the consequences of those
lies. It is time to draft the Articles of Impeachment and let those who
oppose them state why this case deserves more leniency than was given
to former President Clinton.
Source: Common Dreams
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Bush to NGOs: watch your mouths
By Naomi Klein
The Bush administration has found its next target for pre-emptive war,
but it’s not Iran, Syria or North Korea — not yet, anyway.
Before launching any new foreign adventures, the Bush gang has some homeland
housekeeping to take care of: It is going to sweep up those pesky non-governmental
organizations that are helping to turn world opinion against US bombs
and brands.
The war on NGOs is being fought on two clear fronts. One buys the silence
and complicity of mainstream humanitarian and religious groups by offering
lucrative reconstruction contracts. The other marginalizes and criminalizes
more independent-minded NGOs by claiming that their work is a threat to
democracy. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is in charge
of handing out the carrots, while the American Enterprise Institute, the
most powerful think tank in Washington, DC, is wielding the sticks.
On May 21 in Washington, Andrew Natsios, the head of USAID, gave a speech
blasting US NGOs for failing to play a role many of them didn’t realize
they had been assigned: doing public relations for the US government.
According to InterAction, the network of 160 relief and development NGOs
that hosted the conference, Natsios was “irritated” that starving
and sick Iraqi and Afghan children didn’t realize that their food
and vaccines were coming to them courtesy of George W. Bush. From now
on, NGOs had to do a better job of linking their humanitarian assistance
to US foreign policy and making it clear that they are “an arm of
the US government.” If they didn’t, InterAction reported, “Natsios
threatened to personally tear up their contracts and find new partners.”
For aid workers, there are even more strings attached to US dollars. USAID
told several NGOs that have been awarded humanitarian contracts that they
cannot speak to the media — all requests from reporters must go through
Washington. Mary McClymont, CEO of InterAction, calls the demands “unprecedented,”
and says, “It looks like the NGOs aren’t independent and can’t
speak for themselves about what they see and think.”
Many humanitarian leaders are shocked to hear their work described as
“an arm” of government; most see themselves as independent (that
would be the “non-governmental” part of the name).
The best NGOs are loyal to their causes, not to countries, and they aren”t
afraid to blow the whistle on their own governments. Think of Médecins
Sans Frontières standing up to the White House and the European
Union over AIDS drug patents, or Human Rights Watch’s campaign against
the death penalty in the United States. Natsios himself embraced this
independence in his previous job as vice-president of World Vision. During
the North Korean famine, he didn’t hesitate to blast his own government
for withholding food aid, calling the Clinton administration’s response
“too slow” and its claim that politics was not a factor “total
nonsense.”
Don’t expect candor like that from the aid groups Natsios now oversees
in Iraq. These days, NGOs are supposed to do nothing more than quietly
pass out care packages with a big “brought to you by the USA”
logo attached — in public-private partnerships with Bechtel and Halliburton,
of course.
That is the message of NGO Watch, an initiative of the American Enterprise
Institute and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies,
which takes aim at the growing political influence of the non-profit sector.
The stated purpose of the web site, launched on June 11, is to “bring
clarity and accountability to the burgeoning world of NGOs.”
In fact, it is a McCarthyite blacklist, telling tales on any NGO that
dares speak against Bush administration policies or in support of international
treaties opposed by the White House.
This bizarre initiative takes as its premise the idea that there is something
sinister about “unelected” groups of citizens getting together
to try to influence their government. “The extraordinary growth of
advocacy NGOs in liberal democracies has the potential to undermine the
sovereignty of constitutional democracies,” the site claims.
Coming from the AEI, this is not without irony. As Raj Patel, policy analyst
at the California-based NGO Food First, points out, “The American
Enterprise Institute is an NGO itself and it is supported by the most
powerful corporations on the planet. They are accountable only to their
board, which includes Motorola, American Express, and ExxonMobil.”
As for influence, few peddle it quite like the AEI, the looniest ideas
of which have a way of becoming Bush administration policy. And no wonder.
Richard Perle, member and former chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense
Policy Board, is an AEI fellow, along with Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice-president;
the Bush administration is crowded with former AEI fellows.
As President Bush said at an AEI dinner in February, “At the American
Enterprise Institute, some of the finest minds in our nation are at work
on some of the greatest challenges to our nation. You do such good work
that my administration has borrowed 20 such minds.” In other words,
the AEI is more than a think tank; it’s Bush’s outsourced brain.
Taken together with Natsios’s statements, this attack on the non-profit
sector marks the emergence of a new Bush doctrine: NGOs should be nothing
more than the good-hearted charity wing of the military, silently mopping
up after wars and famines. Their job is not to ask how these tragedies
could have been averted, or to advocate for policy solutions. And it is
certainly not to join anti-war and fair-trade movements pushing for real
political change.
The control freaks in the White House have really outdone themselves this
time. First they tried to silence governments critical of their foreign
policies by buying them off with aid packages and trade deals. (Last month
US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said that the United States would
only enter into new trade agreements with countries that offered “co-operation
or better on foreign policy and security issues.”) Next, they made
sure the press didn’t ask hard question during the war by trading
journalistic access for editorial control.
Now they are attempting to turn relief workers in Iraq and Afghanistan
into publicists for Bush’s Brand USA, to embed them in the Pentagon,
like Fox News reporters.
The US government is usually described as “unilateralist,” but
I don’t think that’s quite accurate. The Bush administration
may be willing to go it alone, but what it really wants is legions of
self-censoring followers, from foreign governments to national journalists
and international NGOs.
This is not a lone wolf we are dealing with, it’s a sheep-herder.
The question is: Which of the NGOs will play the sheep?
Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows.
Source: The Globe and Mail
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