Not even President Bush is above the law

President Bush has committed high crimes and misdemeanors and must be impeached and removed from office. His impeachable offenses include lies and deceptions to drive the country unnecessarily into war in Iraq, deliberately violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on wiretapping in the United States and facilitating the mistreatment and torture of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes Act.

Most Americans understand the gravity of President Bush’s constitutional and immoral misconduct. Public anger at Bush has been mounting rapidly. In just the last year impeachment has won wide acceptance in America, now much higher than it was for Clinton or Nixon pre-impeachment. Polls clearly show this.

Speaker Pelosi supposedly took impeachment “off the table.” Her position doesn’t mean impeachment is dead. It simply means Congress must commence investigations to reveal the full truth and let public pressure build to the point where the House will be compelled to hold Bush accountable for his crimes. The horrible consequences of these crimes must be made clear to all. This is no different from what took place during Watergate. In 1973 impeachment was not “on the table” for many months while President Nixon’s cover-up unraveled.

Our founding fathers provided the power of impeachment to prevent the subversion of the Constitution. President Bush has subverted and defied the Constitution in many ways. His defiance and his subversion continue. We are even now seeing Bush’s defiance of Congress and the public will by escalating his war in Iraq and threatening to expand it into Iran.

Failure to impeach Bush would be to condone his crimes. It would allow him to operate outside the law. People who love America have become deeply alarmed and believe we must remove this president from office.

Joe Howard Crews