[Mb-civic] Near Paul Revere Country, Anti-Bush Cries Get Louder - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Near Paul Revere Country, Anti-Bush Cries Get Louder

By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 25, 2006; A01

HOLYOKE, Mass. -- To drive through the mill towns and curling country 
roads here is to journey into New England's impeachment belt. Three of 
this state's 10 House members have called for the investigation and 
possible impeachment of President Bush.

Thirty miles north, residents in four Vermont villages voted earlier 
this month at annual town meetings to buy more rock salt, approve school 
budgets, and impeach the president for lying about Iraq having weapons 
of mass destruction and for sanctioning torture.

Window cleaner Ira Clemons put down his squeegee in the lobby of a city 
mall and stroked his goatee as he considered the question: Would you 
support your congressman's call to impeach Bush? His smile grew until it 
looked like a three-quarters moon.

"Why not? The man's been lying from Jump Street on the war in Iraq," 
Clemons said. "Bush says there were weapons of mass destruction, but 
there wasn't. Says we had enough soldiers, but we didn't. Says it's not 
a civil war -- but it is." He added: "I was really upset about 9/11 -- 
so don't lie to me."

It would be a considerable overstatement to say the fledgling 
impeachment movement threatens to topple a presidency -- there are just 
33 House co-sponsors of a motion by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) to 
investigate and perhaps impeach Bush, and a large majority of elected 
Democrats think it is a bad idea. But talk bubbles up in many corners of 
the nation, and on the Internet, where several Web sites have led the 
charge, giving liberals an outlet for anger that has been years in the 
making.

"The value of a powerful idea, like impeachment of the president for 
criminal acts, is that it has a long shelf life and opens a debate," 
said Bill Goodman of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which 
represents Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted last month to urge Congress 
to impeach Bush, as have state Democratic parties, including those of 
New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin. A Zogby International 
poll showed that 51 percent of respondents agreed that Bush should be 
impeached if he lied about Iraq, a far greater percentage than believed 
President Bill Clinton should be impeached during the Monica S. Lewinsky 
scandal.

And Harper's Magazine this month ran a cover piece titled "The Case for 
Impeachment: Why We Can No Longer Afford George W. Bush."

"If the president says 'We made mistakes,' fine, let's move on," said 
Rep. Michael E. Capuano (D-Mass.). "But if he lied to get America into a 
war, I can't imagine anything more impeachable."

Democrats remain far from unified. Prominent party leaders -- and a 
large majority of those in Congress -- distance themselves from the 
effort. They say the very word is a distraction, that talk of 
impeachment and censure reflect the polarization of politics. Activists 
spend too many hours dialing Democratic politicians and angrily 
demanding impeachment votes, they say.

In California, poet Kevin Hearle, an impeachment supporter, is 
challenging liberal Rep. Tom Lantos -- who opposes impeachment -- in the 
Democratic primary in June.

"Impeachment is an outlet for anger and frustration, which I share, but 
politics ain't therapy," said Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts liberal 
who declined to sign the Conyers resolution. "Bush would much rather 
debate impeachment than the disastrous war in Iraq."

The GOP establishment has welcomed the threat. It has been a rough patch 
for the party -- Bush's approval ratings in polls are lower than for any 
president in recent history. With midterm elections in the offing, 
Republican leaders view impeachment as kerosene poured on the bonfires 
of their party base.

"The Democrats' plan for 2006?" Republican National Committee Chairman 
Ken Mehlman wrote in a fundraising e-mail Thursday. "Take the House and 
Senate and impeach the president. With our nation at war, is this the 
kind of Congress you want?"

The argument for an impeachment inquiry -- which draws support from 
prominent constitutional scholars such as Harvard's Laurence H. Tribe 
and former Reagan deputy attorney general Bruce Fein -- centers on 
Bush's conduct before and after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

It is argued that Bush and his officials conspired to manufacture 
evidence of weapons of mass destruction to persuade Congress to approve 
the invasion. Former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill told CBS News's 
"60 Minutes" that "from the very beginning there was a conviction that 
Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go . . . it was 
all about finding a way to do it." And a senior British intelligence 
official wrote in what is now known as the "Downing Street memo" that 
Bush officials were intent on fixing "the intelligence and the facts . . 
. around the policy."

Critics point to Bush's approval of harsh interrogations of prisoners 
captured Iraq and Afghanistan, tactics that human rights groups such as 
Amnesty International say amount to torture. Bush also authorized 
warrantless electronic surveillance of telephone calls and e-mails, 
subjecting possibly thousands of Americans each year to eavesdropping 
since 2001.

"Bush is saying 'I'm the president' and, on a range of issues -- from 
war to torture to illegal surveillance -- 'I can do as I like,' " said 
Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "This 
administration needs to be slapped down and held accountable for actions 
that could change the shape of our democracy."

Tribe wrote Conyers, dismissing Bush's defense of warrantless 
surveillance as "poppycock." It constituted, Tribe concluded, "as grave 
an abuse of executive authority as I can recall ever having studied."

But posed against this bill of aggrievement are legal and practical 
realities. Not all scholars, even of a liberal bent, agree that Bush has 
committed "high crimes and misdemeanors." Bush's legal advice may be 
wrong, they say, but still reside within the bounds of reason.

"The Clinton impeachment was plainly unconstitutional, and a Bush 
impeachment would be nearly as bad," said Cass R. Sunstein, a professor 
of constitutional law at the University of Chicago. "There is a very 
good argument that the president had it wrong on WMD in Iraq but that he 
was acting in complete good faith."

Sunstein argues that Bush's decision to conduct surveillance of 
Americans without court approval flowed from Congress's vote to allow an 
armed struggle against al-Qaeda. "If you can kill them, why can't you 
spy on them?" Sunstein said, adding that this is a minority view.

Here in Massachusetts and Vermont, though, in the back roads and on the 
streets of Holyoke and Springfield, the discontent with Bush is 
palpable. These are states that, per capita, have sent disproportionate 
numbers of soldiers to Iraq. Many in these middle- and working-class 
towns are not pleased that so many friends and cousins are coming back 
wounded or dead.

"He picks and chooses his information and can't admit it's erroneous, 
and he annoys me," said Colleen Kucinski, walking Aleks, 5, and Gregory, 
2, home.

Would she support impeachment? Kucinski wags her head "yes" before the 
question is finished. "Without a doubt. This is far more serious than 
Clinton and Monica. This is about life and death. We're fighting a war 
on his say-so and it was all wrong."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/24/AR2006032402248.html?nav=hcmodule
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