Dennis Kucinich says 'yes'.

Nancy Pelosi says 'not so fast'.

Here is what Kucinich is charging Bush & Co. with:

http://kucinich.us/impeachment/articles.pdf

If based merely on the fact they wanted to impeach Clinton for lying about a purely family matter that affected nobody but the Clintons, then hell yes it should be considered. The lies that Bush has spouted - whether knowingly or otherwise - need to be accounted for and the buck stops at the presidency. If he was personally responsible for the bad intelligence upon which his words were based on, I'm pretty sure you'll find he either placed the people who were responsible or, at least, was their boss. In either case he bares a measure of responsibility.

If a manager has employees that fuck up, whether he hired them personally or not, eventually the manager will be have to face the music, as well.
Why not the president?

Badhorsie is keith olbermann? It all makes sense now..

*sigh*

I love politics.  It's the best topic I know to turn otherwise reasonable folks into raving, propoganda-spouting machines.  For the record, I'm not a supporter of either side in this horse race, but I'd like to clarify a few distinctions in this most timeless of Democratic topics -- impeaching Bush.

First off, regarding President Clinton.  While it's easy to compare the scale of the issues Clinton lied about to topics regarding Bush, the legal setting in which it took place differs dramatically.  Regardless of how you feel about Bush, he at best acted sincerely on bad and/or incorrect intelligence, and at worst negligently ignored/falsified bad intelligence in making a case to take the country into war (more on this later).  Clinton, on the other hand, outright lied to a federal grand jury.  He didn't say something that was arguably correct or incorrect, he was asked questions in a setting he knew it to be against the law to lie and chose to do so anyway.  You can lie to your boss, you can lie to the cops (under most circumstances), but it is absolutely, 100% against the law to lie when being questioned before a grand jury.  And there are sound reasons for this, it has nothing to do with a "witch hunt" against Clinton.  Should they have been investigating his personal life in the first place?  Probably not, but that doesn't give Clinton power above the law to lie to a federal prosecutor before a grand jury anyway.  Once again, I'm not defending anyone for going after him on the topic, or supporting his subsequent impeachment, but I am saying that he clearly broke the law.  (He was also impeached for obstruction of justice)

Bush, while many of you might disagree (in the same vein as you might disagree that Saudi terrorists bombed the World Trade Centers), is being accused of much more murky things than outright violation of the law.  While huge mistakes, even outright lying in making the case for war (I'm not agreeing that he did, btw), may be sloppy and/or despicable, they are not, technically speaking, illegal.  The comparison to a manager in a corporation falls apart here, since you can oust a CEO at any time, whether he's underperforming or lying to shareholders, but the articles of impeachment are not, and have never been, an avenue to replace a president who acts in a way you don't like.  That's what elections are for, sadly.  I'd be happy, and much more in agreement, to argue that Bush didn't "steal" either of the elections in 2000 or 2004, but this post is already long enough so I'll move on.  Suffice it to say, impeachment is a process put in place solely to remove the president for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." (See Art. II, Sec. 4 of the U.S. Constitution).  As to what constitutes "high crimes and misdemeanors," the exact definition is a political one, not a legal one, and it is largely left to Congress to decide.  When you move beyond the rhetoric, much of the case for war is arguably enough an exercise in poor judgment, judgment that Congress itself saw in full and supported when it voted to authorize Bush's actions in 2002.  Also worth noting, despite much shouting about "war crimes," a) there is no set definition of "international law" (treaties such as the Geneva Convention are just that -- treaties -- and violations thereof are violations by a country and not its president), and b) even if there were a set definition, they are not, should not, and never have been binding law within the United States.  I'm not saying that no case could be made to bring articles of impeachment against Bush, but that, especially given the current political climate, you can be sure that the Democrat-majority Congress would be eager to do so if it were viable.  The mere fact that it's not should be an indication of how grey the true case against the Bush administration is.

But hey, the other great hallmark of politics is that no one ever really changes anyone's mind, so I'm not posting this with much hope for anything but large bolded text and all-caps responses.

((And finally, for the record, I don't believe we should have gone into Iraq, and I disagree with a great deal of how the war was perpetrated and carried out.  Likewise, I don't believe a president's sex life is any of my business and certainly not worth wasting our tax dollars to investigate, but I can't stand hyperbolic rhetoric from either side.))

The answer to all of it is "the people." If a president deceives 300 million people, but in a "legal" way, the people can vote him out of office. You might point out that Bush was re-elected in 2004, but elections are often about more than one issue (including domestic ones like gay marriage), as well as the potential alternative (i.e. Do people actually prefer John Kerry over George Bush). Also you can bet the Republicans losing Congress in 2006 was a result of popular dissatisfaction with the war and its handling (as well may the 2008 presidency).

The same is true about politicians "losing their careers" for "defying" Bush. If their votes cause the people to vote them out of office, that's both our democracy at work and a good thing! Our politicians are supposed to represent the majority of voters, and if they cease to do that, we can hold them accountable. I strongly disagree with much of the policy on both sides of the aisle, including things like the war and the Patriot Act. But on those specific things, the blame goes as much to Congress and our corrupt political system as to the administration itself. Whether it's Bush and homeland security or Democrats and taxes, if our government is allowed to claim the power, they will. It's the nature of the beast. And at some point, it's bound to be put to nefarious purposes for which it was not intended.

You didn't have to change my mind as I already agreed with you on all points(except maybe going into Iraq, but that's another debate), but I really appreciated how well you put it all together.  I tend to lack that kind of academic grace in my arguments. lol

orly?

I don't disagree with invading Afghanastan, just the manner in which we did it. I think we were overly hasty. We wanted to strike back at someone and I didn't think we paid enough mind to who that was. We ended up invading a sovereign nation with minimal international support. Of Afghanistan Bush said "They will hand over the terrorists or they will share in their fate" - elementary school politics could tell you that ultimatums are rarely effective.

As for the people losing the will to continue the fight. Can you blame them? We were attacked by Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. Al Qaeda still exists. Bin Laden is still alive, as far as we know. And our fight against them in Afghanastan has turned the Taliban and several other terrorist factions' attention towards us. Meanwhile Afghanistan has seen very little improvement and, in fact, several problems escalate such as opium production.

Then Bush, the "white knight of the War on Terror", lies and misleads the American people and international community into supporting an invasion of Iraq, turning the collective attention away from those who attacked us on 9/11. Two perpetual wars for the price of one. Two unstable countries we've made a mess of for NATO to clean up.

The problem with one person spearheading a cause is that that one person can also taint the cause, diminishing its appeal and influence.