Letters to the Editor
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My Theory
By any standards of justice and reason Bush should have been impeached long ago. However, up until the November '06 elections, we had a Republican-dominated congress that did not practice oversight of the Executive branch. Bill Clinton had been under investigation for years by a special prosecutor intent on finding a reason to hang him. Then Clinton finally tripped up and obliged him. Most people found the grounds for impeachment ridiculous, but congress went ahead with it, since it was pre-determined that they would find some way to pry a Democratic president from power.
The newly elected Democratic congress is finally practicing oversight for the serious crimes of the Bush administration. Democrats do not feel that it is their perogative to remove a president from power just because they disagree with their policies, unlike the Republican congress under Clinton.
Despite early pronouncements that they would not move to impeach, Congress has been uncovering things like the scandal at the Justice Department that may prove too egregious to escape justice.
Another thing that has happened is the dessication and consolidation of the press. Independent journalists are the exception, not the rule. I don't think that the press that existed in the VietNam War era would have given Bush a free pass for so long on the Iraq war or displayed the entropy of the current MSM in accepting the unacceptible and failing to look under the surface of spin.
As for the people? Well, I didn't vote for Bush in 2000 or 2004, and it remains an open question whether he won either election fair and square. His supporters are a diverse group and not all are stupid. Some just give the benefit of the doubt to those in authority who claim to represent their values. Many others are from the raw-meat crowd that is fueled by anger and resentment. Those two groups are naive. His real supporters are the fossil-fuel industry and the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned about.
I believe that to honor the rule of law, the integrity of the Constitution, and the continuing validity of America's founding principals Bush and Cheney must be impeached. If the people demand it loudly enough, it will happen. The Congress and the press are not going to drive an impeachment effort this time around.