[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 18]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 23869-23872]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        REMARKS ON H. RES. 1106

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CYNTHIA McKINNEY

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, December 27, 2006

  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I wish to enter the following into the 
Congressional Record:

  ADDENDA TO A RESOLUTION INTRODUCING ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST 
  GEORGE WALKER BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND 
OTHER OFFICIALS: FURTHER ACTIONS BY THE PRESIDENT THAT WARRANT FURTHER 
INVESTIGATION AS POSSIBLE GROUNDS FOR IMPEACHMENT AS IDENTIFIED BY MANY 
                SCHOLARS, LAWYERS AND CONCERNED CITIZENS


         I. FAILURE TO ENSURE THE LAWS ARE FAITHFULLY EXECUTED

       (1) Self-Exemption from Laws upon Signing.
       (2) Suspension of Basic Legal Proceedings.
       (3) Promoting Illegal War.
       (4) Promoting Torture.
       (5) Promoting Kidnappings and Renditions for Torture.
       (6) Use of Illegal Weapons.


             II. ABUSE OF OFFICE AND OF EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE

       (1) Obstructing Inquiry and Detection.
       (2) Replacing the Veto with Signing Statements.


     III. FAILURE TO PRESERVE, PROTECT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION

       (1) Suspension of Due Process.
       (2) Unreasonable Searches and Seizures.
       (3) Non-Cooperation with Congress.
       (4) Establishment of an Unconstitutional, Parallel Legal 
     System.


         I. FAILURE TO ENSURE THE LAWS ARE FAITHFULLY EXECUTED

       Under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution of the 
     United States of America, the President has a duty to ``take 
     Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.'' George Walker 
     Bush, during his tenure as President of the United States, 
     has repeatedly violated the letter and spirit of laws and 
     rules of criminal procedure used by civilian and military 
     courts, and has violated or ignored regulatory codes and 
     practices that carry out the law, has contravened the laws 
     governing agencies of the executive and the purposes of these 
     agencies, and in conducting the foreign affairs of the United 
     States of America has

[[Page 23870]]

     proceeded in flagrant violation of the core body of 
     international laws, to which the United States of America is 
     bound by treaty.
       With respect to domestic law, this conduct has included one 
     or more of the following:
       (1) Self-Exemption from Laws upon Signing. Since assuming 
     the office of President of the United States, George Walker 
     Bush has attached signing statements to more than one hundred 
     bills before signing them, within which he has made over 
     eight hundred challenges to provisions of laws passed by 
     Congress, a figure that exceeds the total number of such 
     challenges by all previous presidents combined, and has used 
     this practice to exempt himself, as President of the United 
     States, from enforcing or from being held accountable to 
     provisions of the said laws.
       (2) Suspension of Basic Legal Proceedings. In dereliction 
     of his duty to uphold the law, George Walker Bush has 
     systematically violated basic legal and criminal procedures 
     that require any search, seizure, arrest or detention to be 
     non-discriminatory, based on probable cause and sufficient 
     evidence to warrant a stated charge, that provide access to 
     legal counsel, arraignment and the option of bail within a 
     period of days, and that require reasonable and non-coercive 
     interrogations, rights of silence, as well as privy 
     communications with counsel and with others, pending an 
     outcome of either release or a speedy and public trial, 
     conducted in accord with federal and state statutes on 
     criminal and court process, the provisions of the Uniform 
     Code of Military Justice, applicable international law, or 
     appeals to higher courts that apply. By ordering mass arrests 
     and indefinite detentions based on indiscriminate profiling 
     of specific populations, George Walker Bush has also 
     systematically violated laws prohibiting harmful 
     extraditions, secret arrest and custody, and denial of 
     defined and legal periods of detention or incarceration.
       With respect to international law, this conduct has 
     included one or more of the following:
       (3) Promoting Illegal War. Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1848, 
     ``Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever 
     he shall deem it necessary to repel an invaslon and you will 
     allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it 
     necessary for such purpose, and you will allow him to make 
     war at pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks 
     it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from 
     invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, `I 
     see no probability of the British invading us,' but he will 
     say to you, `Be silent; I see it, if you don't.''' In direct 
     violation of Articles 41 and 42 of the United Nations 
     Charter, a treaty ratified by the United States Senate in 
     1945 and therefore the supreme law of the land as according 
     to Article VI of the Constitution, George Walker Bush has 
     advanced and executed a policy based on so-called pre-emptive 
     or preventive war, whereby the United States of America 
     claims the right to unilaterally assault, invade or occupy 
     other nations without first engaging in collective measures 
     with other member states of the United Nations or first 
     gaining the prior assent of the United Nations Security 
     Council, and whereas George Walker Bush did apply this 
     doctrine by launching a war of aggression against the 
     sovereign nation of Iraq, resulting in the deaths of tens of 
     thousands of Iraqi civilians and thousands of United States 
     military personnel, without United Nations Security Council 
     authorization, whereby said George Walker Bush, as President 
     of the United States, by advancing a doctrine of preventive 
     war and initiating and continuing the invasion and occupation 
     of Iraq by United States forces did commit and was guilty of 
     precisely such abuses as Abraham Lincoln foresaw.
       (4) Promoting Torture. In direct violation of, and as part 
     of a pattern of consistent attempts through executive orders, 
     legal memoranda and alterations to regulations such as the 
     Army Field Manual, to undermine the Federal Torture Statute 
     [18 USC Sec. 2340A]; the Third Geneva Convention banning 
     torture and abuse of Prisoners of War, as well as non-
     combatants and unarmed (``enemy'') combatants held in 
     detention; and Articles 4 and 32 of the Fourth Geneva 
     Convention, which expressly prohibit not merely torture but 
     physical abuse of any kind being inflicted upon ``persons 
     protected by the Convention,'' defined as ``those who, at a 
     given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, 
     in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party 
     to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not 
     nationals,'' this language being written as a precaution 
     against and in anticipation of alternate definitions of 
     torture, these declarations and treaties being ratified by 
     the United States Senate and therefore the supreme law of the 
     land as according to Article VI of the Constitution, George 
     Walker Bush, as President of the United States of America, 
     has condoned and presided over a vast expansion of the use of 
     torture against unarmed combatants and civilian non-
     combatants, both foreign and domestic, detained or kidnapped 
     by forces or agents of the United States, leading to extreme 
     pain, psychological trauma, disfigurement and in some cases, 
     death. By signing a legal memorandum on February 7, 2002 
     (declassified on June 17, 2004), in which he wrote that ``The 
     war on terror ushers in a new paradigm,'' one which requires 
     ``new thinking in the law of war,'' and decreeing that, 
     contrary to all past military practices of an official 
     nature, the United States would no longer be constrained by 
     the laws of war presently in force in its treatment of those 
     captured during its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan 
     and subsequently detained, a legal opinion which the Supreme 
     Court struck down on June 29, 2006 (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld) by 
     its ruling that the Third Geneva Convention did apply to 
     detainees in the custody of the United States, George Walker 
     Bush, President of the United States, by his concerted 
     efforts to undermine any legal limits on the use of torture 
     by United States personnel, did commit and was guilty of high 
     crimes against the United States of America.
       (5) Promoting Kidnappings and Renditions for Illegal 
     Torture. In direct violation of the United Nations Convention 
     Against Torture, Article 3, which states that ``No State 
     party shall expel, return or extradite a person to another 
     state where there are substantial grounds for believing that 
     he would be in danger of being subjected to torture,'' and 
     the Fourth Geneva Convention, Articles 31 and 45, the said 
     conventions having been ratified by the United States Senate 
     and therefore the supreme law of the land as according to 
     Article VI of the Constitution, George Walker Bush, as 
     President of the United States of America, did sign, on 
     September 17, 2001, an executive order (still classified) 
     granting unilateral authority to the Central Intelligence 
     Agency to render detainees to countries where torture is 
     routinely practiced for the express purpose of interrogation, 
     thereby subverting an established program of rendering 
     detainees to justice by bringing them to the United States or 
     to a country in which they were wanted to face criminal 
     charges in a court of law. And whereas the Central 
     Intelligence Agency did thereafter carry out this order not 
     only by rendering hundreds of detainees to countries where 
     they were subsequently tortured, but also in many cases first 
     illegally kidnapping the detainees, and did subsequently 
     establish secret detention centers, operating outside any 
     known laws, for the express purpose of circumventing all 
     legal protections to which the said detainees were entitled 
     under international law.
       (6) Use of lllegal Weapons. In violation of multiple and 
     diverse tenets of international law, George Walker Bush, as 
     President of the United States, has authorized or sanctioned 
     the use of illegal weapons, including but not limited to the 
     following:
       (a) land mines, deployed by United States forces in 
     Afghanistan and Iraq, which indiscriminately injure and kill 
     combatants and innocent civilians alike, and which are 
     therefore illegal under Geneva Conventions Protocol I, 
     Article 85, which states that it is a war crime to launch 
     ``an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population 
     in the knowledge that such an attack will cause an excessive 
     loss of life or injury to civilians,'' and which are banned 
     under the Protocol II of the Convention on Certain 
     Conventional Weapons, which forbids the deployment of any 
     ``mine, booby-trap or other device which is designed or of a 
     nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary 
     suffering;''
       (b) cluster bombs, including those which upon explosion 
     project lethal plastic fragments not detectable by X-ray, 
     deployed by United States forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, 
     which leave unexploded ordnance known to maim and kill 
     innocent civilians and which are therefore also illegal under 
     Geneva Conventions Protocol I, Article 85, as well as under 
     Protocol I of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, 
     which bans the use of ``the use of any weapon the primary 
     effect of which is to injure by fragments which in the human 
     body escape detection by X-rays,'' and under Annexed Articles 
     22 and 23 of the Hague Convention IV, which states that ``It 
     is especially forbidden to kill treacherously individuals 
     belonging to the hostile nation or army;''
       (c) depleted uranium munitions, being radiological weapons 
     used extensively by United States Forces in Iraq and 
     Afghanistan, in violation of Geneva Conventions Protocol 1, 
     Articles 35.2, 35.3, 48 and 55.1, which prohibit the use of 
     ``projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature 
     to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering'' or 
     weapons ``which are intended, or may be expected, to cause 
     widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural 
     environment'' or damage to ``the health or survival of the 
     population,'' and which have been classified as ``weapons of 
     mass destruction'' by the United Nations Subcommission on 
     Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities;
       (d) napalm, a weapon widely used in Vietnam, an upgraded 
     kerosene-based version of which has more recently been used 
     by United States forces in Iraq, being dubbed the ``Mark 77 
     firebomb'', in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, 
     Article II.1.b, which expressly prohibits ``Munitions and 
     devices, specifically designed to cause death or other harm 
     through the toxic properties'' of the device when used as a 
     weapon;
       (e) white phosphorous, which Defense Department spokesman 
     Lieutenant-Colonel

[[Page 23871]]

     Barry Venable confirmed on November 15, 2005 was deployed 
     ``as an incendiary weapon'' in urban areas of Fallujah, Iraq, 
     where there were high concentrations of civilians, during 
     Operation Phantom Fury (November 2004-January 2005), making 
     the said deployment of white phosphorous a violation of the 
     Chemical Weapons Convention, Article II.1.b;
       (f) BLU-82B/C-130 ``daisy cutter'' bombs, being massive 
     incendiary bombs deployed by United States forces in 
     Afghanistan, and which upon detonation create a firestorm the 
     size of five football fields or greater, and a vacuum 
     pressure capable of collapsing internal organs, in violaton 
     of Geneva Conventions Protocol I, Articles 35, 48, 51 and 55, 
     which expressly forbid such indiscriminate destruction of 
     civilian life and the environment;

     the United States of America being a signatory to all the 
     above cited international legislation, as ratified by the 
     Senate and therefore being the supreme law of the land under 
     Article VI of the Constitution, whereby said George Walker 
     Bush, President of the United States, did commit war crimes.
       In all of this, George Walker Bush's conduct has followed a 
     pattern of not merely failing to uphold the laws he took an 
     oath to defend as President of the United States, but of 
     flouting such laws with the impunity of a dictator. Indeed, 
     on numerous occasions, George Walker Bush has openly 
     expressed his desire to become a dictator, as he did while 
     President-Elect on December 18, 2000, when he stated: ``If 
     this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier . . 
     . just as long as I'm the dictator . . .''
       This arrogant posture has also been typical in foreign 
     aftairs where he has made concerted efforts to undermine 
     international law and international treaties, including his 
     termination of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty without the 
     assent of the legislative branch, his decision to rescind the 
     authorizing signature of the United States from the Rome 
     Statute of the International Criminal Court, his willingness 
     to offend the 152 nations who are signatories to the Ottawa 
     Treaty by refusing to sign and continuing the use of land 
     mines by the world's most powerful military rather than 
     asserting America's moral leadership, his willingness to 
     offend the 93 nations who are parties to the Convention on 
     Certain Conventional Weapons Protocol III by refusing to sign 
     and continuing the use of incendiary weapons against civilian 
     targets, his defiance of the United Nations Security Council 
     by launching a unilateral war of aggression against the 
     government and the people of Iraq, and in general showing 
     little remorse over or regard for the tens of thousands of 
     innocent civilians and American service personnel who have 
     perished as a direct or indirect result of his foreign 
     policy.


             II. ABUSE OF OFFICE AND OF EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE

       In taking his oath of office, the President swore to 
     ``faithfully execute the office of President of the United 
     States.'' George Walker Bush, in his conduct while President 
     of the United States, has consistently demonstrated disregard 
     for that oath by obstructing and hindering the work of 
     investigative bodies, by seeking to expand the scope of the 
     powers of his office, by failing to ensure a swift response 
     to a natural disaster where lives were in the balance, and by 
     failing to appoint competent officials or to hold those whom 
     he appoints or those to whom the government grants contracts 
     accountable in cases of dereliction of duty, abuse and 
     outright fraud.
       (1) Obstructing Inquiry and Detection. At the Virginia 
     Convention on ratification of the Constitution, George Mason 
     argued that the President might usurp his powers to ``pardon 
     crimes which were advised by himself'' or prior to indictment 
     or conviction ``to stop inquiry and prevent detection,'' to 
     which James Madison responded that if he did so, ``the House 
     of Representatives would impeach him.'' In an effort to 
     conceal the high crimes and misdemeanors here mentioned, 
     George Walker Bush, in his conduct as President of the United 
     States of America, has presided over the most secretive 
     Presidency in this nation's history, and an administration 
     which actively interferes with the free flow of information 
     by manipulating the press and frustrating its ability to 
     provide an oversight function by being actively hostile to 
     questioning from the press, by placing imposters posing as 
     agents of the press at press conferences, by threatening 
     reporters with prosecution under espionage laws, and by 
     purchasing television segments and placing newspaper stories 
     falsely posing as unbiased reporting in an effort to promote 
     Administration policies. The conduct of this Administration 
     follows a pattern of seeking to hush ``whistleblowers'' who 
     come forward to share potentially incriminating information 
     with the public, rather than investigating the alleged crime. 
     This Administration has also refused to provide key 
     information to Congressional investigations, and to 
     prosecutors investigating the outing of a Central 
     Intelligence Agency Officer in an apparent act of 
     retribution, or to actively pursue the identity of the guilty 
     informant, despite the President's public pledge to fire the 
     guilty party once discovered, and even after one 
     Administration official was charged in the case with 
     obstruction of justice. George Walker Bush has abused his 
     office by consistently invoking executive privilege in order 
     to shelter his office and his appointees from both 
     Congressional oversight and judicial accountability.
       (2) Replacing the Veto with Signing Statements. By 
     declining to veto even one bill, and instead attaching 
     signing statements challenging hundreds of laws passed by 
     Congress, thereby seeking to exempt the executive branch from 
     accountability to said laws, George Walker Bush has subverted 
     the very nature of his office by seeking to add to his office 
     extraordinary and unconstitutional powers and privileges.


     III. FAILURE TO PRESERVE, PROTECT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION

       At the Constitutional Convention, James Madison argued that 
     ``high Crimes and Misdemeanors'' intentionally included 
     ``[a]ttempts to subvert the Constitution.'' In taking his 
     oath of office, the President swore to ``preserve, protect, 
     and defend the Constitution of the United States'' to the 
     best of his ability, which includes the duty not to abuse his 
     powers or transgress their limits, the duty not to violate 
     the rights of citizens, including those guaranteed by the 
     Bill of Rights, and not to act in derogation of powers vested 
     elsewhere by the Constitution, George Walker Bush, in his 
     conduct while President of the United States has not only 
     failed in this regard, but has demonstrated a pattern of 
     disregard or contempt for the Constitution itself, as he 
     clearly demonstrated in November 2005 when he shouted at a 
     group of Republican lawmakers, ``Stop throwing the 
     Constitution in my face. It's just a [expletive] piece of 
     paper!''
       This conduct has included one or more of the following:
       (1) Suspension of Due Process. In direct dereliction of his 
     duty to defend the Constitution, George Walker Bush has 
     systematically deprived citizens and residents of the United 
     States of their constitutional rights to due process under 
     the law, by sanctioning or ordering, at the discretion of the 
     executive, their detention without charge and without trial, 
     a fundamental right to which they are entitled under habeus 
     corpus and the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights; by 
     denying the right to a fair and speedy trial and blocking 
     access to counsel for the defense, both of which are rights 
     guaranteed under the Sixth Amendment in the Bill of Rights; 
     by denying those so illegally detained the opportunity to 
     appear before a judicial officer that they might challenge 
     the legal grounds of their detention; by sanctioning and 
     ordering mass arrests and detentions which inevitably involve 
     all of the above named abuses; and by refusing to disclose 
     the identities and locations of those detained.
       (2) Unreasonable Searches and Seizures. In violation of the 
     Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, George Walker Bush did 
     clandestinely direct the National Security Agency, the 
     Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Pentagon and the 
     Department of Homeland Security to conduct electronic 
     surveillance, including a new form of spying using 
     sophisticated software to track internet usage, of citizens 
     of the United States on U.S. soil without seeking to obtain, 
     before or after, a judicial warrant, including spying on 
     groups and individuals who had committed no illegal acts, 
     involving penetration, entrapment and provocation, thereby 
     reviving practices previously discontinued after they were 
     deemed prejudicial to justice by the United States Senate 
     Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with 
     Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank 
     Church.
       (3) Non-Cooperation with Congress. In derogation of the 
     legislative functions of the Congress, granted under Article 
     I, Section 1 of the Constitution, and the implied power to 
     see that the laws made by Congress are faithfully executed, 
     George Walker Bush, in his conduct as President of the United 
     States, has engaged in a consistent pattern of obstructing 
     and frustrating Congressional investigations. George Walker 
     Bush opposed and delayed the formation of a commission to 
     investigate the attacks of September 11, 2001, and once it 
     was formed, refused to turn over key documents and 
     information in compliance with subpoenas, and also sought and 
     gained exemption from testifying under oath for all but one 
     top administration official. (Condoleezza Rice). He refused 
     requests from the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate 
     the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina and 
     requests from the 9/11 Commission to turn over key documents 
     and information. Under his administration the Justice 
     Department made it official policy to refuse cooperation with 
     Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, to refuse the 
     release of records or testimony, central to informing 
     government decisions, to re-classify previously unclassified 
     records and to withhold even non-secret documents. These 
     actions severely restrict the ability of the people and their 
     representatives in Congress seeking to hold government 
     officials accountable for their decisions to have access to a 
     record of how official decisions were reached, or even to 
     know what the official polices are. Wherefore, George Walker 
     Bush, by obstructing the work of the Congress, did commit and 
     was guilty of high misdemeanors against the United States of 
     America.

[[Page 23872]]

       (4) Establishment of an Unconstitutional, Parallel Legal 
     System. Edmund Randolph stated at the Constitutional 
     Convention that: ``The Executive will have great opportunitys 
     [sic] of abusing his power, particularly in time of war when 
     the military force, and in some respects the public money 
     will be in his hands.''
       In direct dereliction of his duty to defend the 
     Constitution, George Walker Bush has, during his tenure as 
     President of the United States of America, sanctioned the 
     establishment of a parallel legal system operating outside 
     the scope of the Constitution under which the participants 
     would not be bound by due process or basic rights of the 
     accused to speedy and fair trials, access to counsel, or even 
     the right to know the charges and evidence against them, by 
     replacing these measures with a new form of law involving: 
     secret and indefinite detention without trial or hearing; 
     renditions to other countries outside the reach of law and 
     justice; the use of military tribunals to replace civilian 
     courts; detentions outside normal writ of habeus rules and 
     without access to effective counsel, unmonitored 
     conversations or judicial attention and review; exclusion of 
     the accused from portions of the trial and from access to 
     evidence used against them; acceptance of hearsay, including 
     testimony gained under torture or duress; and a lack of 
     independent judiciary or appeal of conviction. An unknown 
     number of individuals, many of whose names the Administration 
     has refused to release, have already been held in undisclosed 
     locations or secret prisons, and mass arrests have been 
     accompanied by deportations. By failing to conduct timely 
     status review hearings, as required under Article 5 of the 
     Geneva Convention, the Bush Administration has made it 
     effectively impossible to determine the status and the rights 
     of those held in secret detention. Although the Supreme Court 
     has ruled that the denial of rights under the Geneva Accords 
     is illegal [Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld], new proposals from the Bush 
     Administration expand the definition of those who can be 
     detained as ``enemy combatants'' as no longer limited to 
     aliens abroad, and assert that neither the Uniform Code of 
     Military Justice alone, nor federal criminal procedures will 
     guide the functions of these new courts. George Walker Bush, 
     as President of the United States of America, in defiance the 
     Supreme Court, and in keeping with a pattern of conduct 
     seeking to exempt himself from its rulings and from 
     constitutional law, did commit violations of domestic law and 
     was guilty of war crimes.
       In all of this, George Walker Bush has sought to arrogate 
     unprecedented power to his executive office and to undermine 
     the system of check and balances established by the Founders, 
     by using war and national emergency as the basis for his 
     claims in support of a unitary presidency.

                          ____________________