Feb 25 2007

While impeaching President Bush might be political suicide for the Democrats, as a practical matter, it would elevate Vice President Cheney to the presidency, something no one wants to see. But maybe there is another way to demonstrably change the behavior of the Bush administration. In the latest issue of GQ Magazine, Will Hylton presents a case for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. Images3

Hylton’s articles of impeachment cover everything from Iraq to the Vice President’s corporate connections. It is the first article of its kind that I have read and continues GQ’s trend toward publishing edgy, thought provoking articles. I strongly suggest you take a few moments to read it. Here is an excerpt:

But none of these apply to Vice President Cheney, and not only because it was Cheney (and not God, or George W. Bush, or anybody else) who selected himself as vice president back in 2000. With Cheney, there are also no lingering questions about capacity, motive, or malice. Over the past six years, as the country has spiraled into military misadventure, fiscal madness, and environmental meltdown, the vice president has not merely been wrong about the issues; he has been duplicitous, deceitful, and deliberately destructive to the American democracy. These things can no longer be denied by rational minds:

That in the buildup to war in Iraq, the vice president, lacking confidence in the true casus belli, conspired to invent additional ones, misrepresenting the available intelligence, crafting new “intelligence,” and then spreading these falsehoods to the public, perverting the democratic process that he is sworn to uphold.

That as the war devolved into occupation, the vice president again sabotaged the democratic system, developing back channels into the Coalition Provisional Authority, a body not under his purview, to remove some of the most effective staff and replace them with his own loyal supplicants—undercutting America’s best effort at war in order to expand his own power.

That in his domestic capacity, the vice president has been equally reckless with the trust of his office, converting the vice presidency into a de facto prime ministership, conducting secret meetings with secret policy boards to determine national policy and then refusing to share the details of those meetings with the other branches of government.

Finally, that the vice president has repeatedly promoted the interests of a corporation, Halliburton, over the interests of the nation, causing untold harm to American economic, military, and public health.

For these and other offenses against the nation, Vice President Cheney, clearly, is guilty of crimes against the state.