[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 73 (Friday, May 4, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E954-E955]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     WHY CHENEY SHOULD BE IMPEACHED

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. WM. LACY CLAY

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 3, 2007

  Mr. CLAY. Madam Speaker, I am a proud cosponsor of H. Res. 333, the 
resolution to Impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. Four years after the 
start of this war, it is obvious that Mr. Cheney deliberately 
manipulated the intelligence process to deceive Congress and the 
American people. At the urging of my constituents in Missouri's 1st 
Congressional District, and from Americans across the country, I 
cosponsored Congressman Kucinich's resolution because there is ample 
evidence that Mr. Cheney systematically evaded the truth and used scare 
tactics to build support for this unjust war. Mr. Cheney's betrayal has 
resulted in a tragic, unnecessary war that has already cost the lives 
of over 3,300 brave Americans and has cost the taxpayers over $400 
billion. The Vice President has taken the integrity out of his office 
and breeched the trust of the American people.
  Madam Speaker, below is Richard Cohen's column from yesterday's 
Washington Post, headlined, ``A Case Against Cheney.'' I agree with Mr. 
Cohen's conclusion, ``the harping on weapons of mass destruction was an 
attempt to scare the American people into supporting a war that need 
not have been fought.'' I encourage my colleagues to read this column 
and make a conscious decision to hold Vice President Cheney accountable 
by cosponsoring H. Res. 333.

                [From the Washington Post, May 2, 2007]

                         A Case Against Cheney

                           (By Richard Cohen)

       The resolution offered by the gentleman from Ohio reads 
     sensibly. It alleges crimes high and low, misdemeanors 
     galore--all of them representing an effort to mislead the 
     American people and take them into war. It is Dennis 
     Kucinich's articles of impeachment directed at Dick Cheney. 
     The vice president will, of course, deny being a liar. As 
     long as Kucinich is at it, add that to the articles.
       The congressman's case is persuasive, although his remedy 
     may be too radical. He calls for Cheney to be impeached by 
     the House and tried by the Senate, just as Bill Clinton was 
     for what turned out to be neither a high crime nor much of 
     a misdemeanor. What was it, anyway, compared with more 
     than 3,300 American dead?

[[Page E955]]

       In his articles of impeachment, Kucinich details the many 
     statements Cheney made that turned out to be factually wrong. 
     For instance, he quotes Cheney as saying, ``We know they [the 
     Iraqis] have biological and chemical weapons,'' which of 
     course, they didn't. Still, that was excusable, since it was 
     early in the game and little contradictory evidence was being 
     presented. As Condi Rice said Sunday, ``When George [Tenet] 
     said `slam dunk,' everybody understood that he believed that 
     the intelligence was strong. We all believed the intelligence 
     was strong.''
       But in Cheney's case, the slam-dunking went on and on--way 
     past the point where it was possible anymore to believe him. 
     He continued to insist that Saddam Hussein had high-level 
     contacts with al-Qaeda--``the evidence is overwhelming,'' he 
     once said--while others in the government not only knew that 
     the evidence was not overwhelming but that it hardly existed. 
     It was the same with Cheney's insistence--not just wrong, but 
     irrefutably so--that Hussein ``has weapons of mass 
     destruction,'' and ``[t]here is no doubt he is amassing them 
     to use against our friends, against our allies and against 
     us.'' The percussive march of these statements is so 
     forceful, one after another after another, that it suggests 
     Cheney wanted war no matter what. If he was lying to himself 
     as well as to the rest of us, that is only a mitigating 
     circumstance--sort of an insanity defense.
       Kucinich also alleges that Cheney ``purposely manipulated 
     the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and 
     Congress.'' That, as the expression goes, is the gravamen of 
     the charge. Kucinich doesn't stand a ghost of a chance of 
     making it stick because Congress is not about to vote 
     impeachment. But no one who reads Kucinich's case against 
     Cheney can fail to conclude that this is a rational, serious 
     accusation. It's possible that each individual charge can be 
     rebutted, but the essence of it is shockingly apparent: We 
     were being manipulated.
       It is something of a joke that Washington is now transfixed 
     by l'affaire Wolfowitz. This is the contretemps at the World 
     Bank in which an architect of this misbegotten war stands 
     accused of favoring his girlfriend. Do not be concerned with 
     the details--this is a parody of a Washington scandal--but 
     concentrate instead on what else Wolfowitz has done in 
     government and how, now, it is a salary increase awarded to a 
     companion that might do him in. This is tantamount to getting 
     Al Capone for tax evasion.
       In the same vein, we tend to focus on single events or 
     statements regarding Iraq (to slam dunk or not to slam dunk, 
     that is the question) and how poor George Tenet, a self-
     deceived careerist, is misunderstood--as if he had uttered a 
     statement of principle dramatically resigning over the 
     manipulation of intelligence and it is suspiciously missing 
     from the record. In all this back-and-forth, what gets lost 
     is the immensity of the outrage, the enormousness of the 
     breach of trust, the naive faith some of us had that when it 
     came to the making of war, we'd be told the truth. This was 
     not the case. The harping on weapons of mass destruction was 
     an attempt to scare the American people into supporting a war 
     that need not have been fought.
       Kucinich is an odd guy for whom the killer appellation 
     ``perennial presidential candidate'' is lethally applied. But 
     he is on to something here. It is easy enough to ad hominize 
     him to the margins--ya know, the skinny guy among the 
     ``real'' presidential candidates--but at a given moment, and 
     this is one, he's the only one on that stage who articulates 
     a genuine sense of betrayal. He is not out merely to win the 
     nomination but to hold the Bush administration--particularly 
     Cheney--accountable. In this he will fail. What Cheney has 
     done is not impeachable. It is merely unforgivable.

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