Gideon Polya, “First Steps to Bush Impeachment”, MWC News, 4 May 2006.
First Steps to Bush Impeachment
BILL CLINTON faced a very real prospect of impeachment because of a white lie about a sexual dalliance. According to Matthew Cardinale (Atlanta Progressive News, May 01, 2006): “36 US House Representatives have signed on as sponsors or co-sponsors of H. Res 635, which would create a Select Committee to look into the grounds for recommending President Bush’s impeachment.” The main grounds for potential impeachment of Bush relate to the false premises for the Iraq War and the consequences of that utterly flawed and illegal course of action (see: here ). [In the event, Bill Clinton, President of the United States, was impeached by the House of Representatives on December 19, 1998, and acquitted by the Senate on February 12, 1999].
From the narrow perspective of Mainstream America, Bush is under a cloud because of the numerous UNTRUTHS that were used to justify the War on Iraq, notably the false assertions of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Al Qaeda links, mobile biological warfare laboratories, uranium supplies from Niger, ability to strike the West within 45 minutes and acute threat to the world. Further, the Iraq War proceeded without sanction from the UN and is deemed by international authorities to be illegal; 2620 Coalition soldiers have died, 2406 of them American, and about 18,000 US soldiers have been wounded, half of them very seriously ; and estimates by no less than US 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia) are that the Iraq War will cost America US$1-2 trillion (see: MWC News ).
However other consequences of George Bush’s actions that have simply NOT been reported by lying Mainstream Media are also relevant to the possible impeachment:
1. Horrendous mass mortality in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories.
The post-invasion avoidable mortality (excess mortality) and under-5 infant mortality (90% avoidable) total 0.5 million and 0.4 million, respectively for Iraq and 1.8 million and 1.4 million, respectively for Afghanistan (April, 2006; from the latest UN data). This humanitarian disaster has happened because of non-provision of the life-sustaining requisites demanded unequivocally of Occupiers by the Geneva Conventions and in consequent violation of both International and US Federal law (see: MWC News ).
2. Did the Bush Administration betray American soldiers by ignoring huge Australian and other funding of Saddam and the insurgency?
The Sanctions-busting system of bribery to Saddam Hussein was "common knowledge" since the middle 1990s to traders and diplomats involved with Iraq. Informed by the Echelon spy satellite system, UK and US intelligence HAD to have been aware of what was blatantly obvious to everybody on the ground. The biggest corruption of the UN Oil-for-Food program involved the monopoly Australian Wheat Board (AWB) that corruptly diverted US$250 million from this life-saving program to Saddam Hussein and thence to the insurgency, killed up to 21,000 Iraqi infants through diversions from scarce food and medical funding, "funded the Iraqi insurgency" and "killed or maimed two divisions worth of American soldiers and countless thousands of Iraqis” (according to staunchly pro-American but anti-Iraq War Australian Opposition Leader, Mr Kim Beazley) (see MWC News: and here ). If Bush and Blair knew of this diversion of immense funds to Saddam and did nothing then they betrayed their people, their Coalition allies and their own SOLDIERS IN THE FIELD. Coalition military deaths (so far) total 2,620 (May, 2006).
3. Huge collateral global mortality due to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry.
Post-2001 global opiate drug-related deaths total about 0.45 million, due substantially to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry – comprising 60,000 US deaths, 3,200 British, 3,000 Canadian, 1,600 Australian and 1,200 Scots deaths (see MWC News ). The annual per capita income in non-Arab Africa and South Asia is generally substantially below $1,000, annual avoidable mortality in the Third World is about 16 million each year (44,000 each day) and the huge increase in the price of oil due to the Bush Wars has no doubt impacted heavily on this ongoing disaster.
The 2005 Nobel Laureate for Literature, British playwright Harold Pinter, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech entitled “Art, Truth and Politics” (delivered by videotape on 8 December 2005; ) accused US President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair of war crimes in Iraq and called for the arraignment of Bush and Blair before the International Criminal Court, declaring: “How many people do you have to kill before you qualify as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought.”
The Sanctions-busting system of bribery to Saddam Hussein was "common knowledge" since the middle 1990s to traders and diplomats involved with Iraq. Informed by the Echelon spy satellite system, UK and US intelligence HAD to have been aware of what was blatantly obvious to everybody on the ground.
Bill Clinton faced possible impeachment over a white lie about a sexual indiscretion. Richard Nixon was impeached over the Watergate dishonesties - but NOT over the bombing of Cambodia and the deliberate prolongation of the Vietnam War that killed millions. About 2.7 million have died so far because of the Iraq and Afghan Wars – and now remote, non-expansionist and impoverished Iran is facing acute threat of US and Israeli attack, a nightmare possibly involving nuclear weapons. How many millions more innocent people will have to die before George Bush is impeached? Decent Americans must write urgently to their Congressman about George Bush’s horrendous crimes against humanity.