Web Letters: Cheney on Trial

The entire regime is crumbling! The Impeachment Train left the station and Pelosi/Conyers should either grab a strap or clear the platform.

Here's an excerpt from my soon to be #1 hit song: Impeach

So make yourself a resolution Protect and defend our constitution It’s the patriotic and the democratic way Let’s impeach old George and all his cronies Load up all his jesters and his one trick ponies Put em all in a FEMA trailer Gulf coast USA

Tom Chelston
TomSongs

Cranford, New Jersey

What angers me is that Fitzgerald can say that Vice President is under a "cloud" but then announce that his investigation of the entire matter is complete.

I heard a pundit recently say that Cheney shouldn't be impeached because none of the lies he said in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was spoken under oath. All that means is that Congress needs to sub poena him and question him under oath. He will either admit that he was lying (yeah, right!), or he will continue lying, either by reaffirming the content of known untruths (about the bogus connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, for example) or by denying that he made those statements. It seems to me that either way, he will have committed an impeachable offense.

Joseph C. Welling

St. Louis, Missouri

The NIE was not declassified in full, because the Senate Intelligence Committee dissent of David Rockefeller was being restricted, to the point he wrote internal letters over the matter.

Bush and Cheney thus lied to Congress about the nature of intelligence documents classification. The intelligence they pushed was itself false. Also, by the law's letter they are forbidden to selectively present the information to Congress while telling journalists about it without full disclosure and transparency.

It is an impeachable offense to present false evidence to Congress. You cannot retroactively declassify/classify. You cannot claim both apply to the same material, the method of disclosure employed is in effect a line item veto, which is also unconstitutional.

Cheney's extraconstitutional use of power through a vague negative construct of the Vice President's power restraints, which are fully worded toward the President, is yet another doctrine of tyranny. Unless his powers are expressly worded in grant he cannot assume them in any manner even with the approval of the Chief Executive if one applied the same argument literally.

The Ninth Amendment does not make the Vice President the final arbiter of law, the body of public opinion does that through elected delegates of the Congress, "or to the People."

It's quite clear that tacit grant of express law applies towards government authority, and the broad swath of individual rights are retained by vague, expanding applications of Liberty.

Chris Murphy

Blytheville, AR

David, you (like every other journalist on the story) have taken at face value Libby's report that Cheney was authorized by the President to release (declassify) a classified document. How do we know Bush authorized it? Only because Cheney (allegedly) told Libby so. This is first year law school stuff: The fact that Cheney claimed to be acting under Presidential authority doesn't make it so.

I haven't seen any references to any written (and non-backdated) document authorizing the Vice President to assume Presidential authority to declassify documents. If there were one, surely Libby would have mentioned it somewhere along the line. Given what we know about how Cheney operates, it seems much more likely that Cheney just took on himself the authority to declassify (or the willingness to leak it regardless), and that Bush and his side of the White House knew nothing about it until after the fact.

So please be more cautious about saying that Bush in fact authorized the disclosures. Maybe, maybe not. If not, it looks like pretty clear grounds to impeach and/or indict the Vice President (first) for improper release of classified information and abuse of power.

Betsy Cazden

Providence, RI

It has long been postulated that Bush will pardon Cheney and resign, Cheney will pardon Bush and resign...and the whole lot will avoid prosecution. One might think that is clear evidence that Bush's alleged Christian beliefs do not extend into an afterlife that includes judgment.

In the meantime for the rest of us, perhaps this is the second baby step away from the slide into fascism--perhaps a badly abused word. Yet we still sit in a country where one raving lunatic can start a war with Iraq or another "target of opportunity."

We can hope the retreat from madness will continue, perhaps with Karl Rove in the box next. But it will not be easy. As Cheney feels more desperate, he will become more dangerous.

Leaving him to run loose, however, is quite a bit more dangerous for us all.

David Robbins

Princeton, NJ