Cheney’s Articles
The text of the Articles of Impeachment for Cheney can be found here. The quick summary is as follows:
Article 1: Cheney purposefully misrepresented intelligence to deceive the people of the United States and the US Congress about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Article 2: Cheney purposefully misrepresented intelligence to deceive the people of the United States and the US Congress about Iraqi ties to al Qaeda
Article 3: Cheney has openly threatened aggression against Iran without any real threat to the US being evident, and done so with proven US capability to carry out that threat.
Not serious enough for impeachment, SL. If it was a blow job in the oval office, on the other hand….
I doubt many Democrats will stand behind those articles except as a political stunt. The precedent would prove very restraining to their next stint in the White House.
If the articles pass Cheney could likely survive the required conviction supermajority. Or he could cut the drama short by resigning, and a new VP would be appointed. It puzzles me that this late in the cycle the Democrats would do anything to reduce the likelihood that on election night 2008 the president and VP will be Bush and Cheney.
Harpers Magazine ran a cover story entitled, The case for impeachment: Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush almost exactly a year ago (March, 2006, subscribers only) It was out-going editor Lewis Lapham’s parting shot at an administration that he had lost all respect for. Why: lying to the U.S. Congress and the people, undermining the U.S. Constitution, sending Americans to war based on falsified intelligence and fabricated threat, violations of international conventions, possible war crimes, and so on.
The argument was that the actions by the Bush administration had increased the risk to Americans at home and abroad, more than before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
[...] Lets hope the US Congress will have the gonads necessary to do the right thing when his Articles of Impeachment come to them. [...]