ASKIAM
Senior Correspondent

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) – The grassroots movement to impeach Pres. George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other high officials is gaining momentum nationally.

On Capitol Hill Apr. 26, members of several anti-war groups even staged a noisy disruption in the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building, unfurling banners from the seventh floor, which draped to nearly the fifth floor. One banner read “Your silence, your legacy,” while the other was simply the article of the U.S. constitution providing for impeachment of the president, and Vice President, according to D.C. Indymedia.org. As the banners unfurled, the crowd on the atrium floor yelled “Impeach!”

The protestors also conducted a mock military funeral, before 14 were arrested.

Advertisement
›

Meanwhile, in Vermont, several Town Hall Assemblies, as well as the State Senate have voted to instruct the state’s Congressional delegation to support impeachment. Other cities have passed similar resolutions.

In the House, Rep. Dennis Kucinich has introduced a measure to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. “Because I believe the vice president’s conduct in office has been destructive to the founding purposes of our nation, today I have introduced House Resolution 333: Articles of Impeachment of Richard B. Cheney,” Rep. Kucinich said on Capitol Hill Apr. 24.

Mr. Kucinich says the Vice President should be held accountable for manipulating the intelligence process and deceiving the public to build support for the invasion of Iraq.

But that measure does not go far enough, according to a more than 100 prominent activists who gathered at the Capitol Apr. 25. The coalition included Washington State Senator Eric Oemig; Mayors Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City and John Shields of Nyack, N.Y.; Vietnam-era government official Daniel Ellsberg; “Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq; and retired Army Colonel and diplomat Ann Wright, who resigned the day the Iraq war began.

“Oh that’s just the first step,” Ms. Sheehan told The Final Call. “What we have to do now as grassroots, is to pressure our congressional members to co-sponsor that resolution with Dennis Kucinich. If we could get 100 to 120 co-sponsors, it actually would come out of the committee, and may come up for a vote.

“The most important thing we can do as grassroots America is show Congress that we are on board, and we will support any Congress member who does introduce articles of impeachment. Now, we only need articles of impeachment introduced against George Bush. I support HR-333,” Ms. Sheehan continued.

“The winds of impeachment are sweeping the country,” former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark said in a statement Apr. 24. Mr. Clark accuses Pres. Bush and V.P. Cheney of “actively deceiving the country with false propaganda aimed at justifying an unprovoked war of aggression.” Mr. Clark has mobilized nearly 900,000 signatures on an on-line petition at www.VoteToImpeach.org.

“There comes a time when voices of conscience must sound the alarm and recommend the remedy,” Debra Sweet, director of the World Can’t Wait–Drive Out The Bush Regime, and another impeachment coalition member said in a statement.

“To fail to identify actions of President Bush and Vice President Cheney as impeachable offenses, high crimes and misdemeanors, is for Congress to be in full complicity with the assault on the Constitution and the rule of law,” said Mr. Ellsberg, who released the classified Pentagon Papers in 1971, which revealed that Pentagon officials knew all along that the Vietnam War could not be won.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan sounded a similar alarm in Detroit during his Saviours’ Day address Feb. 25 when he said that members of Congress should impeach Pres. Bush and his entire administration for its “wicked policies,” and for “lying to America.” Min. Farrakhan then added, as he turned to face Rep. John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who stood and gestured in solidarity: “If you won’t impeach him, sanction him.”

The movement demanding impeachment is now gaining momentum. “We have seen that Congress can be moved,” said Mr. Clark. “The Bush administration is reeling from its own wrongdoing. The horror its war of aggression has wreaked on the people of Iraq and thousands of U.S. service members, must trouble the sleep of every sentient American.

“All over the country, supporters of impeachment are intensifying their efforts. Our focus must be on Congress and the priorities of full troop withdrawal and the impeachment of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other culpable officials within the administration,” Mr. Clark continued.

Impeachment now would also not be politically “divisive,” according to Ms. Sheehan. “George Bush and his administration have clearly, clearly committed impeachable offenses,” she told The Final Call. “And it is really the Constitutional duty of Congress to put forth these articles of impeachment, have them tried, and we’ll see what happens.

“The Republicans did it against Bill Clinton for totally spurious reasons, and George Bush–his regime is responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people; for spying on Americans without due process; for institutionalizing torture; and for leaving the people of the Gulf states hanging off their roofs to die during Hurricane Katrina.

“George Bush has admitted to breaking a federal offense, the FISA Law, which is also in direct opposition to the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure, and the Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment, which also violates the Geneva Convention. So clearly, they have committed these high crimes and misdemeanors. Now, let’s give them a trial. Let’s air them out in public. Let’s see what happens.

“The country’s not very clearly divided anymore. Dick Cheney has a 9 percent approval rating. George Bush has in the high 20s, and low 30s. So, most of this country wants the war to stop and they want to get George Bush and Dick Cheney out of power.

“I just think this is a time in history when it’s urgent for every single American to become involved in the process. We have to remember that we are the ones who are sovereign, and we only elect our officials to do our bidding, and not the bidding of the special interests. That’s just something we all have to realize. We have to claim our part in democracy and exercise it before we lose it,” said Ms. Sheehan.

›