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Gold9472
07-25-2007, 11:15 AM
John Conyers Is No Martin Luther King
What do Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and President George W. Bush have in common? They both think they can dis Cindy Sheehan and count on gossip columnists like the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank to trivialize a historic moment.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/072407a.html

By Ray McGovern
July 24, 2007

I’ll give this to President Bush. He makes no pretence when he disses. He would not meet with Sheehan to define for her the “noble cause” for which her son Casey died or tell her why he had said it was “worth it.”

Conyers, on the other hand, was dripping with pretence as he met with Sheehan, Rev. Lennox Yearwood and me Monday in his office in the Rayburn building. I have seldom been so disappointed with someone I had previously held in high esteem. And before leaving, I told him so.

Throwing salt in our wounds, he had us, and some 50 others in his anteroom arrested and taken out of action as the Capitol Police “processed” us for the next six hours.

As we began our discussion with Conyers, it was as though he thought we were “born yesterday,” as Harry Truman would put it. With feigned enthusiasm he began, Let’s hold a Town Hall meeting in Detroit so we can talk about impeachment. Get out my schedule; let’s see, we need to hear from everyone about this.

Been there, done that, I reminded the congressman.

On May 29, 2007, Col. Ann Wright and I were among those who flew to Detroit for a highly advertised Town Hall meeting on impeachment, because we were assured that John Conyers would be there.

That Town Hall/panel discussion was arranged by the Michigan chapter of the National Lawyers Guild less than two weeks after the Detroit City Council passed a resolution, cosponsored by Conyers’ wife Monica Conyers—calling for the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. We had hoped that Monica’s clear vision and courage might be contagious.

I had to remind the congressman that he did not show up for the Town Hall.

Apparently, that incident was of such little consequence to the congressman that he had completely forgotten about it. Small wonder, then, that he has apparently forgotten the oath he took to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Selective Alzheimers? I don’t know. What was clear was that he had forgotten a whole lot.

When I raised James Madison’s role in crafting a Constitution that mentions impeachment no fewer than six times, he replied: Madison did not say Conyers has to impeach every one. Why, if I had to impeach everyone for high crimes and misdemeanors, that’s all my committee would have time to do.

I learned in Rhetoric 101 the name of that technique: reductio ad absurdam.

How about just Bush and Cheney, we suggested.

Conyers protested that he would need 218 votes in the House and complained that the votes are not there. His priorities showed through in his loud lament that if he fell short of the 218 votes, the Republicans and Fox News would have a field day.

There was no getting through to Conyers, who seemed astonished at the direct questions we were posing.

In reflecting on this later, the dictum of my father, also a lawyer, began to ring in my ears: “When you reach the age of ‘statutory senility,’ you do everyone a favor if you retire.”

He followed his own example, when he retired as Chancellor of the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, long before senility—statutory, or otherwise—set in for him.

Septuagenarian Conyers (and, for that matter, 80-year-old Senator John Warner, R-Virginia, who has also forgotten his sworn duty to uphold the Constitution) would do well to heed that advice.

Toward the end of the meeting, Conyers showed uncommon chutzpah in referring to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That was too much for me.

You’re no Martin Luther King, I found myself wanting to say. Instead, I quoted a portion of Dr. King’s famous address at Riverside Church almost 40 years ago:

"We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak....there is such a thing as being too late....Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity....Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’"

I used that quote in a letter I left with Conyers’ aides on Monday, in which I tried to express why my colleagues in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity feel it is URGENT to find some way to apply the Constitution to restrain a run-away Executive.

The text of that letter follows:

A Note to Congressman John Conyers:
On Impeachment and the EdmundPettusBridge

Dear John,

We each have our favored crime for which President Bush and Vice President Cheney should be impeached. Many of us have several.

But the real challenge is to look AHEAD. What are Bush/Cheney likely to do in the coming months if the impeachment process does NOT begin?

One often hears, Oh, they will do what they want anyway, impeachment process or not. Not true.

If we the people and our representatives in Congress choose the course given us by our Founders and impeachment proceedings begin, important swaths of our body politic AND military will be less likely to follow illegal orders from the White House.

These important constituencies will become sensitized to the peril into which this administration has brought us and to the extra-constitutional orders they may be asked to carry out.

NEW ELEMENT: Even the Scaife-owned newspapers have begun to question Bush’s MENTAL STABILITY.

What could be more important at this juncture?

We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been applying all of our analytical techniques to assess the Bush/Cheney administration. We have helped to establish the long record of abuses and usurpations of the past. What about the future?

Iraq is going to hell in a hand basket. A Tet-type incident becomes more and more likely. The Green Zone is being hit by mortar fire more frequently than before. It may be just a matter of time before the Resistance gets lucky and lobs a shell onto our spanking new $600-million embassy, killing a bunch of Americans in the process.

What then? Will Cheney tell the president the US military has found Iranian markings on the shell fragments and we need to retaliate...and, actually, while we’re at it, let’s implement Plan A and hit all Iranian nuclear-related facilities.

With Congress voting resolution after resolution against Iran, how would the president react to such a suggestion from Cheney?

Many of us intelligence analysts have found utility in relying, in part, on short studies applying psychoanalysis to develop profiles of foreign leaders. (This marriage of psychoanalysis and intelligence work actually goes back to the early 1940s, when the OSS commissioned such studies on Hitler.) We called them “at-a-distance personality assessments.”

Three years ago Justin Frank, M.D., a psychiatrist here in Washington, wrote a book “Bush on the Couch” in which he provided keen insights into the president’s mode of thinking—or not thinking.

Eager to use every tool at our disposal, VIPS recently asked Dr. Frank to update his observations, with a view to forecasting, to the extent possible, how Bush is likely to react to the building pressures of the coming weeks and months. We will issue, perhaps as early as this week, Dr. Frank’s latest analysis, fortified by our own input. But we already have his preliminary analysis; there is no other word for it: Scary.

In a quick note to us this morning [July 23], Dr. Frank noted we are “dealing with a potentially cornered man [who] could lash out, and it is possible that the best way would be to bomb Iran.... Whatever the root causes of Bush’s pathology, we have a dangerous man running things...grandiose and unchecked.”

Some snippets from the Memorandum that Dr. Frank is drafting for issuance under VIPS auspices:

“George W. Bush is without conscience...and destructive, willfully so. He has always likes to break things...most shocking is the way he is breaking our armed forces.

“He doesn’t care about others, is indifferent to their suffering...He is almost constitutionally missing the ability to sympathize or empathize...More indifferent to reality than out of touch with it, he makes up whatever story he wants.

“Ultimately, he is psychologically unstable...His goal is to destroy things [and he can do that] without experiencing anxiety or a sense of responsibility. An equally important goal is to protect himself from shame, from being wrong, from being found small and weak.”

So what do we do?

At a similarly critical juncture, Dr. King was typically direct: "We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.... there is such a thing as being too late.... Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity.... Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’"

There is today another Edmund Pettus Bridge to cross, John. And it has fallen to you to lead us across.

With respect,

Ray McGovern (for VIPS)

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He is a 27-year veteran analyst of the CIA and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Chana3812
07-25-2007, 01:40 PM
Gosh darn it. I had no idea that Conyers was such an ass. I trust Ray to bring the truth and put it on the table. Conyers isn't the force I thought he was :(

simuvac
07-25-2007, 02:19 PM
Anyone else feel like Conyers became a different person after the 2004 election?

To his credit, he was one of the few who gave a damn about election fraud. But once that initiative failed, he seemed to become the guy in this article.

Or maybe I just gave him too much credit for caring about election fraud.

Gold9472
07-25-2007, 04:03 PM
Anyone else feel that John Conyers is in Washington D.C. to give us the illusion that there is someone there representing the people, but in actuality, there isn't?

Eckolaker
07-25-2007, 04:34 PM
minus Ron Paul

Gold9472
07-25-2007, 05:03 PM
Even Ron Paul. He's not an idiot. He must know that the 9/11 Commission was a complete whitewash, and a thorough investigation into 9/11 has never taken place. I'll vote for him because he's the best that's available, but he's far from perfect. In my eyes anyway.

Chana3812
07-25-2007, 07:43 PM
Ron Paul is the only candidate I'd consider voting for.... well maybe Dennis Kucinick :)

Eckolaker
07-25-2007, 07:46 PM
Even Ron Paul. He's not an idiot. He must know that the 9/11 Commission was a complete whitewash, and a thorough investigation into 9/11 has never taken place. I'll vote for him because he's the best that's available, but he's far from perfect. In my eyes anyway.

Pretty sure he is on record stating something to that effectr about the 9/11 commission.


I agree, people need to start making waves, or we're fucked...Forget money, political gain, employment, etc. Just come out and speak!

AuGmENTor
10-11-2007, 01:52 PM
Articles of Impeachment

of

President George W. Bush

and

Vice President Richard B. Cheney,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales



The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. - - ARTICLE II, SECTION 4 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have committed violations and subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to carry out with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rights of the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and those reserved to the people of the United States, by the following acts:

1) Seizing power to wage wars of aggression in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter and the rule of law; carrying out a massive assault on and occupation of Iraq, a country that was not threatening the United States, resulting in the death and maiming of over one hundred thousand Iraqis, and thousands of U.S. G.I.s.

2) Lying to the people of the U.S., to Congress, and to the U.N., providing false and deceptive rationales for war.

3) Authorizing, ordering and condoning direct attacks on civilians, civilian facilities and locations where civilian casualties were unavoidable.

4) Instituting a secret and illegal wiretapping and spying operation against the people of the United States through the National Security Agency.

5) Threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently changing its government by force and assaulting Iraq in a war of aggression.

6) Authorizing, ordering and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secret and other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and psychological coercion of prisoners to obtain false statements concerning acts and intentions of governments and individuals and violating within the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agents elsewhere, the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

7) Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about the conduct of foreign governments and individuals and acts by U.S. government personnel; manipulating the media and foreign governments with false information; concealing information vital to public discussion and informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate of fear and destroy opposition to U.S. wars of aggression and first strike attacks.

8) Violations and subversions of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, both a part of the "Supreme Law of the land" under Article VI, paragraph 2, of the Constitution, in an attempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes in wars and threats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and others and usurping powers of the United Nations and the peoples of its nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejecting treaties, committing treaty violations, and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroy any means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate the exercise of U.S. military and economic power against the international community.

9) Acting to strip United States citizens of their constitutional and human rights, ordering indefinite detention of citizens, without access to counsel, without charge, and without opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the Executive of a citizen as an "enemy combatant."

10) Ordering indefinite detention of non-citizens in the United States and elsewhere, and without charge, at the discretionary designation of the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense.

11) Ordering and authorizing the Attorney General to override judicial orders of release of detainees under INS jurisdiction, even where the judicial officer after full hearing determines a detainee is wrongfully held by the government.

12) Authorizing secret military tribunals and summary execution of persons who are not citizens who are designated solely at the discretion of the Executive who acts as indicting official, prosecutor and as the only avenue of appellate relief.

13) Refusing to provide public disclosure of the identities and locations of persons who have been arrested, detained and imprisoned by the U.S. government in the United States, including in response to Congressional inquiry.

14) Use of secret arrests of persons within the United States and elsewhere and denial of the right to public trials.

15) Authorizing the monitoring of confidential attorney-client privileged communications by the government, even in the absence of a court order and even where an incarcerated person has not been charged with a crime.

16) Ordering and authorizing the seizure of assets of persons in the United States, prior to hearing or trial, for lawful or innocent association with any entity that at the discretionary designation of the Executive has been deemed "terrorist."

17) Engaging in criminal neglect in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, depriving thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and other Gulf States of urgently needed support, causing mass suffering and unnecessary loss of life.

18) Institutionalization of racial and religious profiling and authorization of domestic spying by federal law enforcement on persons based on their engagement in noncriminal religious and political activity.

19) Refusal to provide information and records necessary and appropriate for the constitutional right of legislative oversight of executive functions.

20) Rejecting treaties protective of peace and human rights and abrogation of the obligations of the United States under, and withdrawal from, international treaties and obligations without consent of the legislative branch, and including termination of the ABM treaty between the United States and Russia, and rescission of the authorizing signature from the Treaty of Rome which served as the basis for the International Criminal Court

thumper
10-12-2007, 02:50 AM
but they're both black