On Scooter Libby, the War Dead, and Impeachments
by Don Williams

The Declaration of Independence reads like a bill of impeachment.

Authors of bills to impeach President Bush or Vice-president Cheney could do worse than start with, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…."

Yes, they'd need to make the wording friendly to 21st century gender and religious sensibilities. Still, if we agree that all are born with "certain unalienable rights," then lists of high crimes and misdemeanors put forth by myself and others against George W. Bush make a lot of sense. 

Thomas Jefferson knew that once you lay down the bedrock principle that everyone is deserving of a fair run at life, liberty and happiness, it follows that the powers of leaders to lie, cheat, torture, wage war, falsely accuse, kidnap and worse must be curtailed. And so it was striking when Bush chose the hours leading to July Fourth to commute the sentence of Scooter Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Hand it to Dubya. It was as near to genius as this president is likely to come, for the timing did double duty. By the evening of July 2 most Americans were headed, mentally at least, to purple mountains' majesty where they'd ignite barbecue grills and fireworks. What patriotic American politician would call his or her President a crook and a tyrant leading up to Independence Day? What news anchor would dwell on it long enough to consider the magnitude of what Libby, Bush and Cheney managed to obscure in getting Libby off the hook? No doubt Bush and his pal Karl Rove figured July 2 was as good a time as any to get the Libby business out there.

Still, there was bitter irony to be had in listening to voices on the radio read the Declaration of Independence on the morning of July Fourth. That's because the Libby case embraced the very sort of abuses King George III visited on America 231 years ago. The Libby case is about nothing if it's not about human rights abuses, war crimes, bearing false witness, lack of participatory democracy and worse.

The roots of Libby's crimes reach into graves of dead people. Lots of dead people. Their remains hallow our hills even now, if Lincoln was right in suggesting the war-dead bring honor to this earth. I have my doubts, because if that's true, then Iraq grows more sacred by the day. Still, it’s not the living you should think about when mulling Libby's crimes, for the scandal is really about the reasons people are dying in Iraq.

These are not dignified deaths by and large. I can show you that many have been tortured, beheaded, sickened by depleted uranium, starved, caramelized by chemicals and heat, strangled, raped, eviscerated. Most have been shot or else blown up by bombs from airplanes and exploding cars. All have suffered, civilians most of all.

Horrible things happen in war. That’s why preventing war is honorable and why Jesus said, “Blessed be the peacemaker."

Libby, Cheney, Bush, New York Times reporter Judith Miller and others did not try to prevent war. They beat the drums for war in Iraq, and they beat those drums loudly and often, until war became inevitable, even celebrated by many in a manipulated public. At bottom, that’s what the Libby affair is about.

Can you remember?

It’s about our so-called leaders exposing Valerie Plame to public scrutiny after her husband Joe Wilson disputed lies and exaggerations that Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet and others expounded to get us into war, most pointedly regarding yellowcake uranium. There were many other lies and acts of treason on the road to subverting our democracy, however.

And that's why so many of the crimes alleged against King George III and his ministers resonate 231 years later, and why a list of impeachable offenses against George Bush 43, sound similar to these…

This is as true now as ever. Bush's stance even before the swearing in was an "in your face" Texas swagger. He's shown no "decent respect for the opinions of mankind" and our nation's the poorer for it, spiritually, morally, financially, and in regard to certain rights that turn out to be all too alienable. The pity is that unless we answer the call to deal soon with abuses of Bush-Cheney and the shadowy figures they've empowered, they'll still strut the stage 500 days from now, wrecking our Constitution, our republic, our world.

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