[NYTr] Breslin: Impeach Bush Now to Stop War, Lies, Deaths

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

sent by MichaelP (activ-l)

NY Newsday - Jul 22, 2007
http://www.newsday.com/search/ny-nybres225303032jul22,0,1796819.story

IMPEACH GEORGE BUSH TO STOP WAR LIES, DEATHS

by Jimmy Breslin

I  am  walking  in Rosedale on this day early in the week while I wait
for the  funeral of Army soldier Le Ron Wilson, who died at age 18 in
Iraq. He was 17 1/2 when he had his mother sign his enlistment papers
at the Jamaica recruiting office. If she didn't, he told her, he would
just  wait for  the  months to his 18th birthday and go in anyway. He
graduated  from Thomas  Edison High School at noon one day in May. He
left  right  away for  basic  training.  He  came  home in a box last
weekend. He had a fast war.

The war was there to take his life because George Bush started it with 
bold-faced lies.

He got this lovely kid killed by lying.

If  Bush  did this in Queens, he would be in court on Queens Boulevard
on a murder charge.

He did it in the White House, and it is appropriate, and mandatory for
the good  of the nation, that impeachment proceedings be started. You
can't live  with lies. You can't permit them to be passed on as if it
is the thing to do.

Yesterday,  Bush didn't run the country for a couple of hours while he
had a colonoscopy at the presidential retreat, Camp David. He came out
of  it all right. He should now take his good health and go home, quit
a job he doesn't have a clue as to how to do.

The other day, Bush said he couldn't understand why in the world would 
some  people  say that millions of Americans have no health insurance.

"Why, all they have to do is go to the emergency room," he said.

Said  this  with  the  smirk,  the  insolent smug, contemptuous way he 
speaks to citizens.

People,  particularly  these  politicians, these frightened beggars in 
suits,  seem  petrified about impeachment. It could wreck the country.

Ridiculous.  I've  been around this business twice and we're all still 
here  and  no politician was even injured. Richard Nixon lied during a
war and  helped  get some 58,500 Americans killed and many escaped by
hanging onto  helicopter skids. Nixon left peacefully. Mike Mansfield
of  Montana, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said on television
that  the Senate  impeachment  trial  of Nixon would be televised and
there  would be  no immunity. That meant Nixon would have to face the
country  under oath  and if he lied he would go to prison. He knew he
was  finished  as he heard this. Mansfield said no more. He got up and
left. Barbara Walters, on the "Today" show, said, "He doesn't say very
much, does he?" The  second  time  the subject was Bill Clinton for
illegal holding in the hallway.

This time, we have dead bodies involved. Consider what is accomplished
by the  simple  power  of  the  word  impeachment.  If you read these 
broken-down  news  writers  or  terrified politicians claiming that an 
impeachment  would  leave the nation in pieces, don't give a moment to 
them.

It opens with the appointing of an investigator to report to the House
on evidence  that  calls  for  impeachment.  He could bring witnesses 
forward.  That  would  be  all  you'd  need.  Here  in the impeachment 
proceedings  against  Richard  Nixon came John Dean. His history shows
how far down the honesty and honor of this country has gone. Dean was
the White  House counsel. Richard Nixon, at his worst, never told him
not  to appear or to remain silent in front of the Congress. Dean went
on  and did  his  best  to  fill  prisons.  After that came Alexander
Butterfield, a nobody. All he had to say was that the White House had
a  taping system that caught all the conversations in the White House.

Any of them not on tape were erased by a participant.

The  same  is desperately needed now. Curious, following the words, an 
investigator  -  the mind here sees George Mitchell and Warren Rudman,
and you name me better - can slap a hand on the slitherers and sneaks
who have kept us in war for five years and who use failing generals to
beg  for more  time  and  more  lives  of  our young. A final word in
September? Two years more, the generals and Bush people say.

Say impeachment and you'll get your troops home.

As  I  am  walking in Rosedale, on these streets sparkling with sun, I 
remember the places I have been in the cold rain for the deaths of our 
young  in  this  war. Rosedale now, Washington Heights before, and the 
South  Bronx,  and  Bay  Shore and Hauppauge and too many other places 
around here.

And  in  Washington  we  had  this Bush, and it is implausible to have 
anyone  who is this dumb running anything, smirking at his country. He 
sure doesn't mind copying those people. On his PBS television show the 
other  night,  Bill  Moyers  said  he was amazed at Sara Taylor of the 
White   House  staff  saying  that  she  didn't  have  to  talk  to  a 
congressional committee because George Bush had ordered her not to. "I 
took an oath to uphold the president," she said.

That  president  had  been  in  charge of a government that kidnapped, 
tortured,  lied,  intercepted  mail  and  calls,  all  in  the name of 
opposing  people  who are willing to kill themselves right in front of 
you.  You  have  to  get rid of a government like this. Ask anybody in 
Rosedale, where Le Ron Wilson wanted to live his young life. His grave 
speaks out that this is an impeachable offense.