For once, I don't entirely agree with you, Articleman. On impeachment, I think there are many more issues than just the war, which is bad enough. The totality of the Bush/Cheney tenure has been one of abuse after abuse of the public trust, of the rule of law, of the separation and checks and balances of the power structure - a big fuck you to our way of government. Their destruction of emails and other records, Cheney's unsupportable secrecy, their partisan practices that undermine our government's policies... I could go on, and I haven't really even done a complete study of it all. It's so far beyond Nixon or Clinton.

OK. So you say impeachment is a waste of time, but isn't that only if you expect to remove them from power? Isn't part of an impeachment the same as a trial, to bring all the evidence forward, to examine it carefully, and ultimately to determine the verdict and the punishment? If it is a simplistic attempt to remove someone from power when you clearly do not have the power to do so (based on the partisan makeup of the body that does the decision making), then I would agree. It's not likely that it would work.

However, if the importance of impeachment is to stand up against tyrants and criminals and hold them accountable - or at least accuse them and try them and present the evidence - then shouldn't we be doing that? You're a lawyer. What happens when they leave office? What are our recourses then? Can we still try them? Can we still restore the rule of law and the Constitution and hold them accountable for their crimes against the people of the United States?

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm asking.

Sorry. The mandate was Nov. 2006. We were given the power to make changes and challenge the existing order of what was happening in this country. Pelosi/Reid.....have been a collossal failure by any measure. Not only has there been no slowing of the war effort it has increased in size and sphere with the inclusion of actual action against Iran being contemplated. The FISA was just one more indication of this lack of leadership. There is real worry that even more concentration of power won't change the result.

I don't think it is fair to conflag these issues with the current election. You can't stop trying to effect current events just because you feel your views will lose you an election. If that is what it takes to win......lowering your values....then what is the point of winning?

This has been one of the "Left's" main problems all along. We live in a nation where winning in the courts is seen as less legitimate than winning elections.

I understand that, even if I don't necessarily agree with the premise.

And I told someone in my family, who has now become (at least once) a candidate for elected office, the way to stop much of this drivel from the right is to elect enough Democrats to make their initiatives unsustainable at the legislative level, on everything form tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy to equal rights for gay Americans. Let the bad and sometimes truly hateful ideas die in state legislative hearing rooms. At the same time, work for economic and social justice, and let people see the results.

It is of that stuff that progress is made. Not court cases, no matter how well-intentioned.

Articleman:
Please re-post this; the big picture, no-nonsense points you make should be read by many -- and weekend readership is limited. It makes me wish, as a few other pieces have, that TPM had an UberRec'd list in which posts would be listed for a week or more.

The election is something like 113 days away. We can wait a little and still pursue justice can't we? One thing we can be certain of, if McCain is president, this all just goes away. I don't believe that impeachment is the only way to bring these people to justice. I believe they have committed provable crimes and the statue of limitations doesn't run out in 113 days. NPR had a very interesting guest on a few weeks ago. I'm sorry I can't recall his name, but he was an internationally well known attorney who specialized in cases of crimes against humanity. He used the example of Pinochet, who as president of Chile, ordered torture. He went to London for medical treatment and assumed that he would have no problems because he is a friend of Margaret Thatcher. While he was there, Spain charged him with crimes against humanity related to ordering torture. Both Spain and the United Kingdom, along with most other countries, had signed the U.N. Convention against torture. Because of that, England was obligated to detain him and begin the process of extradition. That case went through a lot of twists and turns and Pinochet was eventually released and sent back to Chile, but as a result, Chile began to prosecute him on one charge at a time. As soon as he wiggled free of one, he was charged with another and when he died in 2006, he was about to be brought up on charges again. According to this attorney, what that means is that a foreign leader is not exempt from charges of crimes against humanity. He said that if Bush or Cheney travel outside of the U.S. after leaving office that any signing country can press those charges and any other signing country is obligated to hold them. I agree that they should be prosecuted, but I don't want the political madhouse of an impeachment. I want them brought to a regular old American court, just like any other crook, on charges for specific crimes they have committed----one charge at a time. So that if they wiggle free, another charge can immediately be brought. I think it would be quite an excellent punishment if they spent the next twenty years defending themselves against a series of charges or else spent time in prison. Those trials would also bring out the details of what they've done. The dirty laundry needs to be aired so that we never allow this to happen again, but in my opinion, impeachment just before an election is not the answer. I believe that it really would wake up the republican party. Right now they're bored and sleepy. Let's let them stay that way for another 113 days or so. No man is above the law. The courts can handle this and it would be better for the country if they did so rather than have it appear to be a political thing. They're crooks. Let's not go after them as president and vice president. Let's go after them as crooks!

Ok, I am ambivalent about impeachment for a couple of reasons. One is simply exhaustion at the level of corruption and recognition that more revelations will only increase public faith in government - and all government gets tainted by the stench. This exhaustion includes the certain knowledge that for many it will be perceived as politically motivated, not centered in the law, but in policy differences.

On the other hand, I believe on reason that BushCo was able to completely corrupt everything it touched, to abuse the law, the courts and the Constitution in broad daylight while snickering in our faces about it is because we failed to prosecute his father and Reagan for Iran Contra and because Nixon was pardoned. Ignoring those past sins only encouraged worse. Somehow I can't imagine worse than Bush, but I keep saying he can't get any worse and he still does, so i guess worse is possible.

In the end, i think the LEAST we must do is agree that they should stand trial for war crimes in the Hague and not battle extradition. Yes, I can hear the howling of the punditry now...but if we don't commit to global standards of humanity ourselves; we are lost.

For the long term health of our nation, and this would damage the Democrats short term, Bush, Cheney and their co-conspirators should all be prosecuted. We have to prove we are governed by laws, not men.

“Our party’s leaders need to be made to do oversight.”

Exactly, and Obama is the Party leader right now. But if they refuse to do so because for political reasons, as you also argue, pressure should be brought to bear. Whitewater et al., have not made the country litigation-happy. The opposite is true. The strictly-political Clinton impeachment has made Congress averse to challenging a President run amuck.

If the investigation and prosecution of the Exectuive is ignored to win office, then that will be a referendum to do nothing and move on. Make no mistake, if this is dropped now, it will be impossible to do a real investigation once they are out of office and the mess they have made has to be cleaned up.

It’s a false dichotomy anyway. It is only an either/or situation because that is the way the Dems play it. Obviously, public investigations, exposure of crimes and holding the Republican administration accountable would be a political boon to the Democratic candidate. Would Carter have been elected if Watergate had been swept under the rug?

Even if excusing the crimes is what it takes to win, the question is: what do you win? Do you win leadership of a corrupt, plutocratic government in the pocket of the corporate elite? And will you have normalized that plutocracy by not opposing it? The Dems have co-opted and neutralized the anti-war and impeachment movements because they are part of a system that protects itself and they see political gain in extending public animosity without resolving it. This is the not just the “era of the strong Executive.” This Executive has illegally assumed powers it does not have by fiat.

The crimes done were in our name. If we do not prosecute them, they are on our heads. Jonathon Turley believes that an international tribunal may be necessary to adjudicate war crimes and Turley is not some raving radical. Bush and Cheney going off to spend their misbegotten gains is not going to destroy what they have created or restore justice and checks and balances of government. The rule of law must be upheld or it becomes meaningless.

America was persuaded through lies and propaganda that Iraq was a threat. That Bush was re-elected says nothing about that illegal war. Was the 2004 election a referendum on all of the abuses? What has allowed this to continue is the strategy espoused in this post- winning is the only objective and that means cowering at their fear-mongering instead of standing up to them. This is not about dirty campaign tricks or even about reading our emails looking for terrorists. And of course, we don’t even know all of what has gone on. It is about serious abuse of power.

Let’s put aside the war crimes (now affirmed by the Red Cross). Let’s put aside the corruption throughout government. Let’s put aside politicization of government to the point of railroading political opponents into prison. Let’s put aside a DoJ that not only ignored government crimes but colluded in them. Let’s put aside the millions who died destroyed that country that was not threatening us. Let’s put aside illegally detaining tens of thousands of innocent people with no due process. Let’s put aside torturing thousands to varying degrees with dozens dying from the torture. Let’s put aside grabbing people off the street in any country to disappear them to a secret prison or rendition them to a country that practices even crueler torture. Let’s put aside illegal spying and what, for all we know, is already a surveillance state with a TIA program. Let’s put aside the $billions in no-bid contracts to the likes of Halliburton and then covering up their malfeasance. Let’s put aside the use of mercenaries and covering up their crimes. Let’s put aside protecting corporations instead of overseeing them and prosecuting violations. Let’s put aside obstruction of numerous investigations including the outing of a covert CIA agent.

Can we put aside the totality of an unscrupulous government acting without restraint? Can we forgive and forget an administration that declared they were above the law and proceeded to hold the law and the American people in contempt? If we put all of this aside, we are complicit in it.

To Alex & A-man. Law--Elections--Culture. Nice image, that the legal system is the smoke. The issues and elections, the fire. And I would only add, the culture, the American people, added or became the fuel.

There's time for trials. Win the election first, yes. But when a nation (and nations) has participated, succumbed, been complicit - such a range of ways of supporting/opposing this war - it's critical not only to have an electoral majority, but wider/deeper culture support for any trials.

Bush turned his 50.1% (or 49.9%) into a steamroller with which he ran over the wishes of everyone else. This was as deep a wrong as any article of impeachment. The Democrats must not (and likely could not) do this as well. They need to win, and help move the culture. Anything else is simply a continuation of an insanely damaging Civil War. And meanwhile, many other crises are rising - and people dying or being wounded as surely as in Iraq. Impeachment trials NOW strike me as narrow, splitting, damaging - larger movements are underway, and the focus should be on them first. The election, the culture. Galactica and Star Wars are important in this, odd though it sounds to say it. But right now, in my view, more important that DK's articles.

Articleman. For the record, I think this is a great post and a great discussion. My disagreements with you are not meant to show any disrespect for your opinion or positions. I think there are pragmatic positions to take that often seem to be the most intelligent and productive. There are radical positions that sometimes get people in trouble, but sometimes can galvanize much needed change.

The ability to know when to be pragmatic and when to be radical is probably only truly known within the hearts and minds of each person. I often tend toward the pragmatic, but sometimes the inner radical comes out. Most often, my personal attachment to fairness and justice can override pragmatism.

So I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm simply saying that there is more than one way to look at these issues, and, perhaps, we'll never know if one would turn out better than another, because we can't really walk both paths. The road less traveled always presents different scenery, but we'll never know whether it was better or not if we don't take that path. That's just life. So I'm ok with it, but thankful to have a respectful discussion among well-meaning people.