Effort To Impeach Cheney A Pointless Political Gesture

Joe Bell

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich continues his quixotic campaign to be the Democrat’s presidential candidate by struggling to have Vice President Dick Cheney impeached. The effort will fail, as it should, but those who inhabit the fringe of the liberal landscape are excited by the possibility of a carnival spectacle. For liberals, politics is a playground where outrage is animatedly expressed, not a workshop where serious challenges are met.

An aid for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said even the Speaker was not interested in pursuing the charge. Pelosi is reluctant to impair U.S. policy by engaging in a political adventure that is doomed to fail but she willingly exposed her lack of understanding of world events by journeying to Syria earlier this year to meet with President Bashir Assad. Pelosi said she went “to Syria in friendship, hope and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace.”

A desire for genuine peace is laudable but not universal. On April 9, 2007, reflecting on Pelosi’s trip, Michael Barone, senior writer at U.S. News & World Report, offered a more reasoned assessment of the situation. Barone observed the world’s dictators don’t hate America “because the Republican Congress didn’t raise the minimum wage” but because America is free and works to “export those freedoms around the world.”

Whether through pointless proposals that are unsupported by facts, such as Kucinich’s impeachment endeavor, or through junkets like Pelosi’s effort to convince skeptics that tyrants really want a just peace for all mankind, the American left wildly directs the nation’s ship of state towards the nearest sandbar.

Introducing his bill Kucinich trudged across the same barren tundra the left has rambled over ever since it became obvious Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power. That event occurred after a decade of his ignoring United Nations resolutions that demanded he comply with the terms of a cease-fire he never honored.

Kucinich said Cheney “purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress … by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq …”

The charge is false. On January 28, 2004, Dr. David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group, spoke before the Senate Armed Services Committee. During an exchange with Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, Kay responded to the charges Kucinich cited. The entire transcript is enlightening, but an abbreviated segment makes clear how phoney Kucinich’s assertions are.

Cornyn asked Kay if he agreed that “Democrats, Republicans, President Clinton, President Bush, France, Germany, Britain all believed that Saddam had stockpiles of WMD?”

Kay replied, “I think that’s true.”

Anyone who saw documentation regarding Iraq’s WMD programs was convinced the threat was real.

Cornyn asked Kay if he was aware of any attempt to take intelligence and “manipulate it and present it as fact for some improper purpose?”

Kay responded, “No, I know of no manipulation.”

Cornyn asked, “Although it now appears that Saddam … did not have large stockpiles of WMD, he did continue research on chemical and biological and even nuclear weapons, correct?”

Kay said, “Absolutely.”

The conversation continued:
“Cornyn: Would you say … it was just a matter of time before Saddam would build such stockpiles or have that capability in a way that would threaten not only people in Iraq, but people in that neighborhood and perhaps others?

Kay: I think you will have, when you get the final ISG report, pretty compelling evidence that Saddam had the intention of continuing the pursuit of WMD when the opportunity arose and that the first start on that … was this restart of the long-range missile program.

Cornyn: So that, given time, these programs would have matured and Saddam would have been able to reconstitute his WMD arsenal?

Kay: …I think that that’s the safe assumption. …

Cornyn: …You said that there was a risk of a willing seller meeting a willing buyer of such weapons or weapon stockpiles … whether it’s information that Iraqi scientists might be willing to sell or work in cooperation with rogue organizations or even nations. But do you consider that to have been a real risk in terms of Saddam’s activities and these programs - the risk of proliferation?

Kay: Actually, I consider it a bigger risk. …I consider that a bigger risk than the restart of his programs being successful. I think the way the society was going, and the number of willing buyers in the market, that that probably was a risk that if we did avoid, we barely avoided.”

Anyone willing to look at the situation through the lens of reality and not through the lens of political intrigue will accept that Saddam Hussein posed a threat and keeping U.S. forces forever patrolling a no fly zone was not the answer to the dilemma the despot posed. Danger flowed not only from Saddam Hussein possessing such weapons but also from the threat of proliferation to other outlaw states or to a terrorist organization. In addition, Kay’s October 2, 2003, testimony revealed that inspectors did find WMDs in Iraq. Never has so much information meant so little to so many. The Bush administration hoodwinked no one and there is no evidence of the purposeful manipulation of intelligence. Also, there was never any need to allege that Saddam Hussein had to be removed due to the matter of WMDs or his connection to terrorism. The case was easily made without addressing those matters.

America is at war but liberals reject reality just as they denied the facts about Iraq from the beginning. They place the ills of the world not at the feet of those who have carved a path of destruction from Baghdad to Bali, from Madrid to London, and from New York to Washington, D.C. but at the door of the Bush administration. Liberals believe if Bush and Cheney could be booted from office peace would reign and health care would be free for everyone. They are wrong. It is not Bush and Cheney who caused Hezbollah to attack Israel, that caused al Qaeda to declare war on America in 1998 or who provokes Iran’s leaders to pursue nuclear weapons. Liberals find problems everywhere except where they actually exist.

Kucinich’s bill is unimportant because it will never go anywhere but it is significant because many Americans agree that the Bush administration has done something sinister with respect to Iraq. Should the nation be unfortunate enough to have a Democrat win the next presidential election it will become obvious, rather quickly, that terrorists are not motivated by the fact that Bush is in the White House as much as they are motivated by the fact that the White House exists.

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Joseph Bell has hosted a radio talk show and is a former editorial writer/columnist for several Connecticut newspapers. A former liberal Democrat, Bell has not been on the conservative side of the aisle for very long. He voted for Clinton/Gore in 1992. Abandoning the convictions that he had held and defended through adolescence and into adulthood was not easy. Sincere soul-searching and a commitment to distinguish fact from fiction compelled him to accept that liberal ideology was bankrupt.

jbellopedresponse@hotmail.com