Dennis Kucinich: Articles of Impeachment

Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio
In the United States House of Representatives
Monday, June 9th, 2008
A Resolution
INDEX
Article I
Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq.
Article II
Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With
Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of
Aggression.
Article III
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of
Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War.
Article IV
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat
to the United States.
Article V
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression.
Article VI
Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114.
Article VII
Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.
Article VIII
Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter.
Article IX
Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor
Article X
Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes
Article XI
Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq
Article XII
Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation’s Natural Resources
Article XIIII
Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other
Countries
Article XIV
Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in
the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency
Article XV
Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq
Article XVI
Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors
Article XVII
Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign
Captives
Article XVIII
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy
Article XIX
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to “Black Sites” Located in Other
Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture
Article XX
Imprisoning Children
Article XXI
Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist
Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government
Article XXII
Creating Secret Laws
Article XXIII
Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act
Article XXIV
Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the
Fourth Amendment
Article XXV
Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the
Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens
Article XXVI
Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements
Article XXVII
Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply
Article XXVIII
Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice
Article XXIX
Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Article XXX
Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare
Article XXXI
Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil
Emergency
Article XXXII
Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global
Climate Change
Article XXXIII
Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist
Attacks in the US, Prior to 911.
Article XXXIV
Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001
Article XXXV
Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders
____________

“Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics”

(updated below)

My new book — Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics — is available for online ordering now. It will be available in book stores beginning April 15. Ordering now can help increase visibility for the book and its arguments.

Writing a book enables a much different type of analysis and discussion than the type one is able to pursue in a daily column or blog. The day-to-day focus here is typically on a discrete event — the latest act of government lawlessness, Congressional complicity, media deceit or pundit propaganda. A book is a more deliberative process. It therefore allows one to take several steps back and think about the underlying causes of those events, identify what they have in common, and consider ways they can be changed.

From the time I began blogging in October, 2005, I’ve written about many different topics, but almost all have a similar undercurrent: the Limbaugh/Kristol/Fox-News right-wing faction that controls the Republican Party and has dominated our political life for the last 15 years, and the multiple ways that our political institutions — and particularly the Drudgified establishment press — enable them. Marketing packages aside, this book is about them; how they function; the weakness-driven bloodthirstiness, dishonesty and sleaze which defines them; the indispensable eagerness of the establishment media to be used by them; and what can be done by those opposed to them to change all of that.

All of the radical and reprehensible events of the last eight years — the commencement and endless prosecution of an indescribably disastrous war, the accelerated dismantling of our Constitutional framework, the creation of a lawless Surveillance State and a virtually omnipotent President, the legitimization of truly grotesque torture and detention regimes, the complete corruption of our political discourse — have individuals and a political movement behind them, causing all of that to happen. They have cultivated the ability to manipulate media behavior, largely as a result of a media eager to help. But what they do not have is popular support for virtually anything they are doing. And yet they continue to win elections.

How and why that happens — the deceitful electoral tactics and manipulative personality-based myths the Right has perfected and continuously deploys to win elections, and the ways in which our slothful, vapid and complicit establishment press propagates those myths — is the principal subject of this book. And understanding and exposing that right-wing/media partnership is a necessary precondition for weakening it.

Carter says U.S. tortures prisoners

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The United States tortures prisoners in violation of international law, former President Carter said Wednesday.

Former President Carter says the U.S. “has abandoned the basic principle of human rights.”

“I don’t think it. I know it,” Carter told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

“Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights,” Carter said. “We’ve said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, and we’ve said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime to which they are accused.”

Carter also said President Bush creates his own definition of human rights.

Carter’s comments come on the heels of an October 4 article in The New York Times disclosing the existence of secret Justice Department memorandums supporting the use of “harsh interrogation techniques.” These include “head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures,” according to the Times.

The White House last week confirmed the existence of the documents but would not make them public.

Responding to the newspaper report Friday, Bush defended the techniques used, saying, “This government does not torture people.”

Asked about Bush’s comments, Carter said, “That’s not an accurate statement if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honored — certainly in the last 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated.

“But you can make your own definition of human rights and say we don’t violate them, and you can make your own definition of torture and say we don’t violate them.”

Watch Blitzer’s interview with the former president »

Pres. Carter: US tortures prisoners, ‘I know it’

David Edwards and Jason Rhyne | Raw Story | Wednesday October 10, 2007

Former president Jimmy Carter isn’t just suspicious that the US is using torture to extract intelligence from detainees — he’s absolutely convinced.

Asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer if, by Carter’s definition of the word, the United States had used torture during the Bush administration, the Nobel Peace Prize winner was adamant:

“I don’t think it, I know it,” he said. “Certainly.”

Pressed by Blitzer on whether that meant that President Bush was lying, Carter was equally clear.

“The president is self-defining what we have done and authorized in the torture of prisoners,” said Carter.”Yes.”