Re: This is required.
TorgoX posts a quote from article article saying, in essence, of course we should impeach Bush, based on the Conyers Report.
The problem is that the report is almost entirely crap. And I am being nice when I say that.
I don't really want to bother getting into it, but I'll give one great example. Right in TorgoX's chosen quote, the author mentions the administration's "misconduct," including "violation of the Geneva Conventions."
However, the overwhelming majority of those claims have to do with Protocol I, which the U.S. never ratified, and thus it has no legal standing in regard to the U.S. Conyers even explicitly accuses Bush of violating Protocol III, as further justification of impeachment. After the allegations are presented, Conyers adds as a quick aside, "Because we have not signed Protocol III, the United States is theoretically not legally bound by the protocol's provisions."
Theoretically? Someone's not read their Constitution recently. The United States is not bound by any law that the U.S. government has not agreed to. It did not agree to Protocol III, therefore the U.S. is not bound by it. Period, end of story.
And most of the Conyers report follows the same nonsensical pattern, cherry-picking evidence against Bush, ignoring counterevidence, and assuming that the collective weight of all the unsubstantiated claims will add up to "impeachment." It's like the SNL's classic Change Bank sketch: "How do we make a profit? Volume."
OK, I'll give one more example. Conyers tells of the "16 words" that Bush used in his State of the Union address in 2003: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
There's a strong case to be made that the information should not have been included in the State of the Union: our own intelligence agencies could not verify the information. British intelligence stood behind it, and so we generally accepted it, but we could not independently verify it, so it probably should not have been in the State of the Union.
But Conyers, while referencing that argument, disguises it with a weaker one, because it is more inflammatory: he states that the 16 words were based on the forged memos that showed Iraq bought uranium from Niger.
In fact, the 16 words had nothing to do with those memos. This is, by now, well-known. The UK's Butler Report called Bush's 16 words "well-founded," and added that the British intelligence Bush referenced not only had nothing to do with the forged memos, but actually predated them.
But who cares if the law Bush supposedly broke has any legal standing in the U.S.? He still broke it! And who cares if Bush's evidence was accurate? This other evidence was false, so we can blame him for it, even though he didn't actually use it! These things are unimportant: what matters is that I, John Conyers, am an angry man! See me report!
Maybe Bush is an evil man who should be impeached. But you won't convince me of it by being grossly dishonest.
The problem is that the report is almost entirely crap. And I am being nice when I say that.
I don't really want to bother getting into it, but I'll give one great example. Right in TorgoX's chosen quote, the author mentions the administration's "misconduct," including "violation of the Geneva Conventions."
However, the overwhelming majority of those claims have to do with Protocol I, which the U.S. never ratified, and thus it has no legal standing in regard to the U.S. Conyers even explicitly accuses Bush of violating Protocol III, as further justification of impeachment. After the allegations are presented, Conyers adds as a quick aside, "Because we have not signed Protocol III, the United States is theoretically not legally bound by the protocol's provisions."
Theoretically? Someone's not read their Constitution recently. The United States is not bound by any law that the U.S. government has not agreed to. It did not agree to Protocol III, therefore the U.S. is not bound by it. Period, end of story.
And most of the Conyers report follows the same nonsensical pattern, cherry-picking evidence against Bush, ignoring counterevidence, and assuming that the collective weight of all the unsubstantiated claims will add up to "impeachment." It's like the SNL's classic Change Bank sketch: "How do we make a profit? Volume."
OK, I'll give one more example. Conyers tells of the "16 words" that Bush used in his State of the Union address in 2003: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
There's a strong case to be made that the information should not have been included in the State of the Union: our own intelligence agencies could not verify the information. British intelligence stood behind it, and so we generally accepted it, but we could not independently verify it, so it probably should not have been in the State of the Union.
But Conyers, while referencing that argument, disguises it with a weaker one, because it is more inflammatory: he states that the 16 words were based on the forged memos that showed Iraq bought uranium from Niger.
In fact, the 16 words had nothing to do with those memos. This is, by now, well-known. The UK's Butler Report called Bush's 16 words "well-founded," and added that the British intelligence Bush referenced not only had nothing to do with the forged memos, but actually predated them.
But who cares if the law Bush supposedly broke has any legal standing in the U.S.? He still broke it! And who cares if Bush's evidence was accurate? This other evidence was false, so we can blame him for it, even though he didn't actually use it! These things are unimportant: what matters is that I, John Conyers, am an angry man! See me report!
Maybe Bush is an evil man who should be impeached. But you won't convince me of it by being grossly dishonest.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
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