Originally posted by: Enig101
I'm having a hard time understanding why Clinton was impeached for a personal affair, and with all that Bush has done, lying, screwing up, misleading us, he is still President.
First, it's important to understand that the word,
impeachment means an accusation, not a conviction.
Clinton was not
impeached for having a personal affair. He was
impeached for the crime of purjury as a result of allegations that he lied during grand jury testimony regarding his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky and for obstruction of justice in his actions during the investigation of his grand jury testimony. He was tried by the Senate, but he was NOT convicted.
That's not a statement of support for Clinton's actions or about the merits of the proceedings. It's just a statement of the facts.
Getting back to Bush and his gang of thugs, I think a good case can be made to charge him and the entire administration with several felonies, including murder and numerous abuses of office and assaults on the Constitutional rights of American citizens
under color of authority.
Under color of authority is a legal phrase used in the United States indicating a person is claiming or implying the acts he or she is committing are related to and legitimized by his or her role as an agent of governmental power.
The phrase can refer to lawful or unlawful acts. The statutes that define what powers police officers can exercise in the course of their duty will often state the officer must be acting "under the color of authority." On the other hand, charges of police brutality will often include the formal charge of assault "under color of authority," as they did in the Rodney King case.
Under one definition of
murder, a person who recklessly engages in conduct or the commision of acts under circumstances showing reckless disregard or depraved indifference to human life which creates a grave risk of death to another person and thereby causes the death of that person.
By definition, war includes the foreseeable possiblity, and in fact, the certainty, of the deaths of some of those sent into battle. To date, the war in Iraq has cost over 2,900 American lives (that we know about) and tens (and possibly hundreds) of thousands of other deaths to innocent civilians, and the end of this carnage is not in sight.
There are legitimate reasons to take a nation to war, but when the President and his administration start such a war, and that war is elective, not defensive in response to an attack, and every reason given to the citizens of the nation for starting that war is based entirely on lies, it is not unreasonable to view their actions as "reckless disregard or depraved indifference to human life" which, in fact, created the grave risk of death to others and did, infact, cause those deaths.
I could rummage through probably hundreds of threads on this forum about the Bushwhackos' abuses of the Constitutional rights of American citizens, most notably warrantless domestic spying, denying citizens of the right of habeus corpus and holding citizens without access to legal defense cousel, so there's no need to divert the discussion by rehashing the details. For discussion, it's enough just to note that there's plenty of reason to believe many members this administration have commited hundreds of felonies under their own self-agrandizing delusions of the
color of authority of their offices.
Of course, that's before we get to their international crimes, including the use of torture at secret sites in other countries in violation of international laws and treaties.
Whether they are impeached during their term of office, or whether they face criminal charges when they leave, I think it's extremely important that their crimes are documented so that they are not swept under the carpet or glossed over in history by the passage of time.
If they are convicted, I think it would be appropriate to sentence them to some number of years at the lovely downtown Guantanamo Hilton with free enforced daily access to the exciting and ever popular waterboard ride.
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