A Message From Ramsey Clark About Impeachment & The March On The Pentagon

[Hissyspit]

Via Email:

A message from Ramsey Clark about the March on the Pentagon

Dear -,

Consider the consequences for the people of the planet, particularly the poor, and for “We the People of the United States” and our Constitution, if our people fail to compel the House of Representatives to do its duty and prosecute impeachment proceedings against President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the principal civil officers of our government responsible for high crimes and misdemeanors most grievous. It is clear that the last best hope for the security, for equal dignity, precious rights and well being of every child, woman and man on earth will be devastated.

I urge you to join the March on the Pentagon on March 17, if at all possible. It can be the turning point to impeachment. I’ve believed for forty years that the October 1967 March on the Pentagon was the turning point to the withdrawal from Vietnam. I felt the power of the desire for peace within the marchers from inside the Pentagon that time. It was palpable and inspiring... We cannot let impeachment fail for lack of funds. We must organize in many key congressional districts, lobby hard on Capitol Hill, lease buses, run newspapers ads, go house to house across the country to the House of Representatives to spread the word IMPEACH. Please give as much as you can now by clicking this link.

“This America is only you and me,” as Walt Whitman wrote in "By Blue Ontario’s Shore." We must act.

Let us count the consequences within the immediate future of a failure to act now.

1. As President, George W. Bush will escalate U.S. militarism and aggression. The current war in Iraq (and elsewhere) will become embedded and spread to Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan or other nations Bush may attack. The “Surge” to “win” in Iraq is a palpable fraud intended to provide the opening for further and permanent U.S. military occupation intended to reach Iran and Syria and establish U.S. domination of the region. The new “surge” General, David Petraeus, acknowledged in his first press conference on returning to Iraq in February 2007, that, “Any student of history recognizes that there is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq” while acknowledging that with the U.S. “Surge”, the Iraqi “insurgents” where stepping up their attacks. The U.S. are the real insurgents. Now we see hundreds of Pilgrims killed on their way to Holy Karbala, families destroyed in Sadr City, more blood everywhere. We must hold the Bush Administration accountable now for its crimes, or we will endure with their consequences for years.

A great American, Robert Drinan, once Dean of Boston College Law School and later a Member of the House of Representatives, who died in February, introduced a Bill of Impeachment against Richard Nixon for ordering the bombing of Cambodia in 1973. Cambodia was a neutral nation. This was a murderous crime. Had the Congress acted on that bill, rather than the comparatively minor offense of the Watergate break-in, Presidents after Nixon would have been more cautious about authorizing armed aggression against other nations and George W. Bush might not have dared attack Iraq which posed no threat to the U.S.

2. As President, George W. Bush will escalate U.S. military spending and military force. The radical increase in U.S. military spending by President Bush, which already exceeded that of all other nations combined, following his Shock and Awe assault on Iraq beginning on March 19, 2003 will escalate steadily supporting his further threats, confrontations and war with other nations. The single greatest step toward peace is the reduction of U.S. military expenditures to the level necessary to defend our country. This should be at least a 50% reduction during the next several years with further major reduction thereafter, as international developments permit.

3. As President, George W. Bush will increase U.S. nuclear armaments and missile defense leading to nuclear proliferation, a nuclear arms race, and cold war. Even while Bush threatens Iran and North Korea and warns others that they must not take any action to obtain nuclear weapons, or the ability to make them, President Bush is upgrading U.S. nuclear weapons systems and developing a new generation of nuclear weapons primarily for tactical uses in war or to destroy selected targets in foreign countries. This is a direct violation of U.S. obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which the U.S. ratified more than a third of a century ago. In addition, the U.S. is developing and installing a Star Wars nuclear missile shield. It is planning to install missiles as a part of this shield in Poland, the Czech Republic and eastern Turkey, all close to the Russian Federation, and is already creating new tension between the U.S. and the Russian Federation tending toward a new cold war. The need is to eliminate all nuclear weapons on earth as intended in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

4. As President, George W. Bush will continue to propagandize his War on Terror, increase the indiscriminate death and destruction it brings further alienating nations and people, creating fear and international tensions that will enable him to violate international laws including the Geneva Conventions and the Constitution of the United States. He will maintain the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and ignore clear international and U.S. Constitutional rights of prisoners there and in secret prisons in other countries. He will continue to authorize torture of prisoners; motivate and cover up violations of the rights of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals using the Patriot Act to obtain confidential information on people illegally, and other vehicles to cause the CIA, F.B.I., military intelligence, U.S. contractors, and surrogate government agencies of other nations to wage war on human rights.

5. As President, George W. Bush will continue to frustrate and prevent the two state solution he claims he seeks in the Middle East Peace process by such acts as punishing Palestine through life threatening economic sanctions for the election of Hamas by the people of Palestine in a fair democratic contest, by further isolating the U.S., paralyzing its ability to function effectively among Arab states and subjecting U.S. citizens to physical danger.

6. As President, George W. Bush will continue to cause, or tolerate serious violations of U.S. law as in the I. Louis Libby case, to cover-up the falsity of U.S. propaganda that Iraq sought to purchase raw materials for Niger to manufacture weapons of mass destruction by having high officials in his office lie under oath even if their acts endanger a covert CIA employee and the projects she has worked on. He will cause and condone the removal of United States Attorneys from office, if they fail to protect political friends of his Administration in violation of law. The U.S. Attorney is the chief prosecutor in his federal judicial district of crimes against the laws of the United States and the lawyer for the U.S. in civil litigation. At least eight U.S. Attorneys have been wrongfully dismissed for political reasons. It is not known how many of the other 84 U.S. Attorneys retained their offices by illegally submitting to political pressure to protect interests of friends of the Bush Administration corrupting the rule of law.

7. As President, George W. Bush will continue to damage the United States by failing to provide competent government services including medical care for the 20,000-30,000 seriously wounded veterans of his Iraq war even at the flagship Walter Reed Hospital, FEMA services in Louisiana and other Gulf States after hurricane Katrina, and through his own travels in Europe, South America, and elsewhere, to nations where the people do not welcome him, where he is met with angry crowds and requires unprecedented protection for his own safety further alienating the U.S. from friendship essential to friendly relations and peace.

The authors of the Constitution were serious about impeachment and intended that the carefully prescribed procedures and principles for impeachment written into the text be faithfully executed. Provisions for impeachment appear in Article I creating the Legislative Branch, Article II creating the Executive Branch and Article III creating the Judicial Branch. No other issue is treated with such detail and care in the Constitution.

Article II, Section 4 mandates:
“The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office or impeachment for and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”.

The authors of the Constitution were steeped in English history. It was largely their history. They knew the power of impeachment had liberated England from the tyranny of the King. That history described impeachment as “The chief instrument for the preservation of government” and “the most powerful weapon in the political armory, short of civil war.”

At the very time the Constitution was drafted, impeachment proceedings in England against Warren Hastings, Governor General of India for corruption and abuses against the Indian people were at a critical stage. That trial resonated strongly with their own experience leading to the U.S. war for independence.

We must make the Members of the House of Representatives become as serious and courageous about the power of impeachment as the Founding Fathers were.

I urge you to join the March on the Pentagon on March 17, if at all possible. It can be the turning point to impeachment. I’ve believed for forty years that the October 1967 March on the Pentagon was the turning point to the withdrawal from Vietnam. I felt the power of the desire for peace within the marchers from inside the Pentagon that time. It was palpable and inspiring. The New York Times, reviewing Norman Mailer’s book on the March in 1968, wrote "The Armies of the Night is witness to a victory..." So can this March be. We need you.

The impeachment struggle is expensive. We cannot let impeachment fail for lack of funds. We must organize in many key congressional districts, lobby hard on Capitol Hill, lease buses, run newspapers ads, go house to house across the country to the House of Representatives to spread the word IMPEACH. Please give as much as you can now by clicking this link.

Sincerely,

Ramsey Clark