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FLASH: Stop the War! Which Congress
can do anytime it wants, without impeachment, and
without stopping funds. Congress, by the powers granted in the
Constitution, declares wars,
and also has the power to declare when those wars are over. So, Congress
can declare "the war and the US occupation of Iraq are over, and the
president shall remove US forces from that country." Beyond the war,
this Congress needs to Question a number of things, on the record, and in
public: if the nation is to pull back from the brink of total
annihilation.
With so long an absence, between
the traditional role of congress and the newly subordinate role that two
successive congresses have taken, in the last six years, in their
constitutional non-oversight of the executive: for the alleged government
of the US. The decider has forgotten how American government is supposed
to function. Bush needs a wake-up call. In fact he needs several!
He is not a Monarch or a King,
nor is he a legitimate dictator; he is a self-proclaimed Absolute Ruler
(in his mind) over all that he surveys. The constitutional role of the
congress is to challenge this creature whenever he exceeds whatever real
authority that the office supposedly gives him. In his recent statements:
filled with sophomoric rhetoric about "show-trials" and
"witch-hunts," intermixed with "fishing-expeditions"
and a lot of other dated stuff that has nothing to do with the substance
not-being demanded, by the congress in this sordid affair: Bush is
apparently planning on returning to the Nixon-Watergate years when such
language was current, but totally ineffective.
The decider also needs to explain
what he did on 911 and why he did not follow secret service protocol on
that day when he was supposedly told of the attacks, in the Florida grade
school. Why did he disappear, and why did Air Force One not have its
escorting fighters until the plane was over an hour out of Florida-that's
a violation of military protocol for protecting the president, especially
if the nation has just been attacked?
In the matter of Roberto
Gonzalez, the current Attorney General, who wrote the torture memos and
fired the eight US Attorneys, before he and Bush could be implicated in a
pending prosecution for possible criminal behavior. That charge is serious
enough, but it's made even more mysterious by this: "In DOJ documents
that were publicly posted by the House Judiciary Committee, there is a gap
from mid-November to early December in e-mails and other memos, which was
a critical period as the White House and Justice Department reviewed, then
approved, which U.S. attorneys would be fired while also developing a
political and communications strategy for countering any fallout from the
firings." This speaks to possible Obstruction of Justice, and is not
something that "honorable public figures" engage in. Everyone
connected with this affair needs to be sworn, and must testify publicly,
if there is to be any credibility left in this government.
In the matter of the Speaker of
the House of Representatives: Nancy Pelosi has just sold out the American
public, by making a deal with AIPAC that savaged any chance to separate
the congress from the illegal and unilateral war in Iraq, and the coming
invasion of Iran. Her decision flies in the face of the congress and the
people, and should damn her in the eyes of the world, for capitulation and
collusion with Bush & Israel. If and when Iran is attacked, Nancy
Pelosi will forever bear the blood-stains of all that shall die there...
"When House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi and her allies in the Democratic leadership initially accepted that
spending legislation designed to outline an Iraq exit strategy that should
have also included a provision barring the president from attacking Iran
without congressional approval: they opened up a monumental discussion
about presidential war powers.
As such, the decision by Pelosi
and her allies to rewrite their Iraq legislation to exclude the statement,
regarding the need for congressional approval of any military assault on
Iran sends the worst possible signal to the White House. It is not too
much to suggest that Pelosi's disastrous misstep could haunt her and the
Congress for years to come. Here's how the speaker messed up:
"The Democratic proposal for
a timeline to withdraw troops from Iraq included a provision that would
have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before using
military force in Iran. It was an entirely appropriate piece of the Iraq
proposal, as the past experiences of U.S. involvement in southeast Asia
and Latin America have well illustrated that when wars bleed across
borders it becomes significantly more difficult to end them.
Under pressure from some
conservative members of her caucus, and from the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) and from lobbyists associated with
neoconservative groupings that want war with Iran, Pelosi agreed on Monday
to strip the Iran provision from the spending bill that has become the
House leadership's primary vehicle for challenging the administration's
policies in the region." (1)
In the matter of the
Vice-President of the United States: Dick Cheney has secretly created an
entirely separate government under his sole direction, outside the
organizational charts of the government of this country. He will not
answer any questions concerning who he has employed or in what capacities
these people might be working. He has an entirely separate intelligence
organization that reports only to him. It is rumored that he has a shadow
version of the Department of State, and that he has 'people' within the
Bush cabal that keep him abreast of developments, in order to facilitate
secret contracts and other perks for his companies and his people, who do
not necessarily represent the best interests of this country or its
people. To date Mr. Cheney has overseen the development and implementation
of US Energy policy for the United States, yet he has refused all attempts
to reveal who he consulted with, to create these key policies. Oil
companies are now reaping record profits that have shattered all previous
profits ever reported; not just by one but by any group of corporations.
Cheney has also more than a
passing interest in Halliburton, in Kellogg, Brown & Root, and in
other recipients of secret no-bid contracts. His relationship with
Blackwater is unclear, but that private security company provides
mercenary contractors, and other services for many different federal
agencies, including the Pentagon and the U.S. Department of State.
Blackwater is currently expanding into intelligence gathering for private
corporations and some foreign countries. Blackwater and other private
security companies have supplied roughly 100,000 contractors for use on
the ground, and in the surge, inside Iraq and Afghanistan. Blackwater is
also working on establishing themselves as security for several US ports,
and at other key points around the coastline of the continental United
States. It is unclear what part if any Cheney has played in the use of
Blackwater in Iraq or elsewhere, however they do seem to be his kind of
people, and it would seem that they are natural partners in some way. (2)
However perhaps the most serious
potential charge against Cheney has to do with his role in the 911
attacks. He has said that he was in his office overseeing several war
games with the US Military on that September morning. Cheney is not a
trained military officer, and as Vice-President he has never had any
official military role to perform, in government. Yet on 911 Cheney was
directing the war games that were identical to the actual events that
played out in New York City on that day, and during that exact same time
frame. The tapes made for the war-games had to pre-date 911 by several
months - and they had to come from the Northeast Air Corridor from NORAD
headquarters command. This means that the Commander of NORAD & Cheney
together conspired to bring down the World Trade Center Towers, by
creating these diversionary war-games to confuse any possible interceptors
from intruding into the hijacker's plans on that day. Congress needs to
subpoena the Vice-President and the Commander of NORAD to appear before
Congress in Open Session - in order to explain this plot to the nation,
and their parts in what happened to those fighter-interceptors that never
appeared on 911. Dick Cheney needs to be Impeached-NOW!
It might seem like a great deal
to ask of congress-but it's been six long years since any oversight
functions were exercised: so there's a huge backlog. But there is no more
important business for this congress to attend to now, than the issues
surrounding war and peace, including charges against Pelosi and Dick
Cheney. There is also the grave and potential corruption within the
Justice System; not to mention the unfinished business of 911, Katrina
& Blackwater in New Orleans, along with the missing funds from the
Bush-wars that could almost bring this nation back to solvency; if that
money and the other misplaced or misspent funds allocated to those who
hold the secret no-bid contracts, could ever be located.
Congress should not waste time
over the posturing of the corrupted White House, or its beaten and
besieged occupants. Congress should caucus and then begin to line up the
witness lists, and begin issuing subpoena's for "all the president's
men and women" that have each played a part in the obscene theft and
perversion of this nation. If congress can't or won't do the job, then the
public will have to decide what to do with them, because they really have
no other job than protecting the constitution, which they failed to do in
1871, and now they're failing again to even slow the rot that is consuming
what's left of the United States.
This may look like an impossible
task, but if the congress goes forward immediately, they might find that
the public is not nearly as disinterested in these proceedings as it might
now appear to be. Depending on both the depth of the investigations and
the outcomes, there might actually be a resurgence in the public's view,
as to what it might be possible to save. of this once proud nation...
Jim Kirwan
NOTES:
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