If a President can be impeached for lying about a blow job then by God a Vice President should be impeached for setting in motion the forces that destroyed an intelligence network during a time of war.-Larry Johnson, a CIA operative and counter-terrorism official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, on how Congress needs to take the ball handed to them by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and run with it.
I'll go a step further. Despite my post of 9 November urging the new Congress to stay away from impeachment, I now believe that in addition to Vice-President Cheney, the President should be impeached as well. For if ever there was a case to impeach and remove from office a President and Vice-President, this is it. Misleading the American public and the world at large about the need for war with Iraq - and then mismanaging that war from the earliest stages of planning...well...I think if our founding fathers were here today they would tell you in no uncertain terms that this is exactly the scenario that played out in their minds when they drafted the impeachment clause of the Constitution.
For good measure, let's not forget the Bush administration's lack of competence on other major issues like Katrina, Walter Reed, and America's financial solvency. Or the dangerous precedent they've set by endorsing the use of torture, and the stripping away of habeas corpus.
It really is time for them to go. America can't afford to wait until November, 2008. The House of Representatives should approve articles of impeachment against both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the Senate should convict both and remove them from office, the International War Tribunal should then arrest both men and charge them with war crimes, and Speaker Pelosi should take the reigns for what remains of this presidential term.
That would irk conservatives to no end, I know, but if Pelosi agreed not to run for a full term in 2008, they'd survive.
As it stands right now, America is at a crossroads. And Congressional leadership of both parties need to understand that there is really only one appropriate way out.
Impeachment.
