On the Road to Impeachment

On December 8, 2006, Representative Cynthia Mc Kinney (D-Georgia) introduced House Resolution 1106 which calls for the impeachment of President George W. Bush, and the removal of Vice-President Richard Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

In the House Resolution, Ms. Mc Kinney establishes three Articles that warrant such an action. These Articles include failure to preserve, protect and defend the constitution; abuse of executive privilege; and failure to ensure the laws are faithfully executed.

According to Ms. Mc Kinney, Bush failed to uphold his oath of office through his conduct of "manipulating intelligence and lying to justify war". She states that Mr. Bush is constitutionally obligated to share intelligence information with the U.S. Congress and failed to do so leading up to the subsequent "invasion" of Iraq.

To this charge, Ms. Mc Kinney suggests that Bush and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created the Office of Special Plans wherein Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence information was redacted and tailored toward the manipulation of both Congress and the American people.

In the second Article, Ms. Mc Kinney charges that Bush "failed to take responsibility for, investigate or discipline those responsible for an on-going pattern of negligence, incompetence and malfeasance to the detriment of the American people". This latter charge falls equally upon the heads of both Cheney and Condoleezza Rice.

In the third and final Article, Representative Mc Kinney states that Mr. Bush willingly and knowingly violated Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution which notes the presidential obligation to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed'.

Ms. Mc Kinney cites past violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). President Bush clandestinely directed the National Security Agency and various other intelligence agencies, in secret and/or outside the lawful scope of their mandates, for purposes unrelated to any lawful function of his office. This measure was taken to conduct electronic surveillance of citizens of the United States on U.S. soil.

In addition, this action occurred without seeking to obtain, before or after, a judicial warrant, thereby subverting the powers of the Congress and the Judiciary by circumventing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA courts established by Congress whose express purpose is to check such abuses of executive power, provoking the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to file a complaint and another judge to resign in protest, the said program having been subsequently ruled illegal (ACLU vs. NSA).

Representative Cynthia Mc Kinney concludes House Resolution 1106 with the following statement:

"In all of this, George Walker Bush has repeatedly and unapologetically misled the American people and has sought to undermine the system of checks and balances established by the Founding Fathers. Wherefore George Walker Bush, by such conduct, and in the interest of saving our Constitution and our democracy from the threat of arbitrary government, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office"

Currently, House Resolution 1106 sits in the House Committee on the Judiciary where it awaits further action.