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Kucinich Files Articles of Impeachment Against Cheney
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Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) announced yesterday that he would file articles of impeachment against vice president Dick Cheney. The charges are among the most serious ever contemplated under either domestic or international law.
The resolution claims the Vice President "purposely manipulated the intelligence process" and "fabricated a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" in order to "deceive the American public" and the Congress and launch a war of aggression against Iraq. It also accuses him of actively seeking to launch a second war against Iran. (You can download the complete text of the resolution here, or view a clip of Kucinich's press conference here.)
Not only do the charges constitute the "high crimes" that were contemplated by the founders as the basis of impeachment, they're also included in the principles set out during the Nuremberg Tribunal that followed World War II.
The judges that made up the Tribunal said that launching a war of aggression was "not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Other legal precedents were established at Nuremberg. Principle Three is unequivocal: "The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law."
As the Kucinich resolution makes clear, Cheney's alleged crimes violate treaties ratified by the U.S. Congress -- meaning that they are also part of United States law -- second in force only to the Constitution itself.
In most of the world, this would be considered a grave matter. Given the enormous loss in blood, treasure and prestige that's resulted from the disastrous occupation of Iraq, it should be here, as well. But in Washington there seems to exist a perverse rule that's followed slavishly by the DC Press corps: the more serious the matter, the more one should treat it as a joke.
So it was that the news was greeted with the derision that only a city cloistered in a bubble like DC's could muster when discussing an illegal war that's killed more than a half-million human beings.
The trivialization started with the media quoting unnamed "Democratic aides" making statements like: "We'll see a Kucinich Administration before we'll see a Cheney impeachment."
Today, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank turned his middle-aged frat-boy analytical skills to taking Kucinich down a peg; his typically dismissive lede:
"I do not stand alone," Dennis Kucinich said as he stood, alone, in front of a cluster of microphones yesterday evening.
That passes for funny in Dana Milbank's mind. Milbank (who is himself a very, very short man) also got in a few crucially important thoughts about Kucinich's height:
See more stories tagged with: impeachment, cheney, kucinich
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
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