Dave Lindorff, veteran investigative reporter, writes today to challenge the false moral equivalence evident in the congressional reponse to two sets of improprieties in the Clinton and Bush administrations respectively.
False Moral Equivalence
Douglas Feith, who headed up the insidious OSP at the Pentagon that was created to manufacture "evidence" to justify a U.S. attack on Iraq, has been reprimanded in a long-delayed report by the Pentagon Inspector General's office, which concludes that the whole OSP project, while perhaps not illegal, was "inappropriate."
Feith and the Republican establishment are taking that as the final word, and as an official okay for the OSP's activities.
During Bill Clinton's impropriety in the Oval Office, the Republican Congress considered his "inappropriate" behavior as grounds for impeaching him in the House and trying him in the Senate. Feith's "inappropriate" behavior, however, organized by the White House, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was central to the president's obsessive plan to invade Iraq.
False Linkage
It was Feith's OSP operation that developed the false evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, that developed false evidence of Iraqi efforts to develop a uranium centrifuge, and that developed the false evidence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium ore from Niger. Feith and the OSP were central to the administration's success in gaining Congressional support for an attack on Iraq, and for the ensuing conflict that has killed over 3,100 Americans and as many as 650,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children.
Investigate and Impeach
Were there any sense of integrity, courage, and patriotism in Congress today, members of the House would be lining up to file a bill creating a special prosecutor to investigate Feith, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, the White House, and the whole OSP story. They'd be lining up too, to file bills of impeachment against the president and vice president.
If there is any sense of integrity, courage, and patriotism in the nation at large, we will see resolutions of impeachment passed in coming weeks in the legislatures of Vermont, New Mexico, New Jersey, and perhaps other states such as Washington, Oregon, Rhode Island, and California, demanding the commencement of impeachment hearings in the House.
Even if what the OSP did was not technically illegal - a big if - it was clearly inappropriate, as well as duplicitous, and in a matter as serious as sending the nation to war, clearly rises to the level of an impeachable offense.
Equally inappropriate is the House leadership's refusal to take action on such a serious matter as fraudulent evidence being used to justify a war.
Americans and Iraqis are continuing to die in ever-greater numbers because no one in Congress has shown the courage to put a stop to the ongoing atrocity. Now that the Pentagon's own inspector general has at least had the courage to rule that the activities of Feith and his treacherous colleagues was "inappropriate," such legislative cowardice can no longer be tolerated.
Impeachment Watch, updated 2/12/07, provides over three dozen websites, articles, and resources on impeachment. Stop by to browse when you have a few moments. More soon,
Ticia
