[From the diaries by susanhu with minor edits.]
Why We Can No Longer Afford George W. Bush
by Lewis H. Lapham
I would like to draw your attention to this essay in March 2006 issue of HARPER’S. Lapham bases much of his material on Congressman John Conyers Jr.’s December 18, 2005 Resolution. This Resolution invited the House of Representatives to investigate the Administration’s intent to go to war before congressional authorization, its manipulation of pre-war intelligence, its encouraging and countenancing torture, and its retaliating against critics. He also makes recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.
Of course, the request attracted little attention in the press, “scattered applause from left-wing blogs, heavy sarcasm on websites flying the flags of the militant right.”
Lapham wonders why Conyers did it. In January, in a telephone conversation, Conyers explains:
Continued below:
“To take away the excuse,” he said “that we didn’t know.” So that two or four or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, “Where were you, Conyers, and where was the United States Congress?” when the Bush Administraion declared the Constitution inoperative and revoked the license of parliamentary government, none of the company now present can plead ignorance or temporary insantiy, can say that “somehow it escaped our notice” that the President was setting himself up as a supreme leader exempt from the rule of law.
There’s a portrait of Bush that is halfway erased.
We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country’s good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world’s evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation’s wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal – known to be armed and shown to be dangerous.
Who could add anything to that. I hope you can read the entire article, in Harper’s -better still Conyer’s Resolution. You see, Democrats are at work.
[note: It seems the Resolution was presented before the information of NSA domestic spying.]
