Doug Thompson, founder of Capitol Hill Blue, is asking the right question--"Why?"--but he continues to make the same mistake, which is to blame everything on Bush. Thompson does not even mention Dick Cheney in his indictment below, which concerns Bush's record as a king-sized fabulist. 

The fact is, Bush was proud to admit that he knew nothing about foreign affairs prior to being elected President. He ran for President in 2000 as a Washington "outsider", and it was true. He had no Washington experience. He recognized--and more importantly the Republican establishment recognized--that Bush Jr. needed Dick Cheney, who had been a White House and Washington insider for almost 25 years. If Karl Rove was "Bush's Brain" with respect to politics, Cheney was "Bush's Brain" with respect to "governance". It is Cheney who has been running the executive branch of the U.S. federal government since January 2001, while Bush has been content to act the part of a front man, clown, and spokesperson. 

Why is Bush still President? Simple. If you impeach him, the phony President, you get stuck with his replacement, the malefactor who has been the real President all along, to wit, vice-president Dick Cheney. What would that have accomplished? What was required? A joint impeachment. Of course, it is too late in the day for any of that now. Secondly, Bush served as the perfect cartoon character for the opposition Democrats. Why would they want to get rid of him? Thirdly, with respect to the Iraq war, as I have said many times, the Democrats could not impeach because they were in on it with Bush and Cheney from the start. They voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, primarily because it was the pet project of the "Israel Lobby" in 2002, as it had been for years, just like bombing Iran is the Lobby's pet project today. 

Things have not gone exactly as planned, of course, but no one in Washington can afford to blow their cover and come clean. Impeachment would have done that. In the meantime, America is stuck with the economic consequences of the Iraq war and of the larger "war on terror". And Cheney/Bush have destroyed the Republican party.

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Published on Capitol Hill Blue (http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont)

Why is Bush still President?  

by Doug Thompson

A new study documents “hundreds of false statements” by President George W. Bush and his administration in the days leading up to the Iraq war. Each carefully-crafted lie was designed to bolster Bush’s case for invasion of Iraq.

The news is not that Bush lied. Everybody with a functioning brain knows the President of the United States is a serial liar. The news is not that someone managed to document the hundreds of falsehoods used to justify an illegal and immoral war. Lies, when examined closely, fail the smell test.

Sadly, the real news is that Bush continues to serve as President, continues to lie at will and no one in a position to do anything about it will lift a finger to serve the needs of the United States.

If we can tear ourselves away from the breathless news of the drug-induced death of another celebrity or the name-calling of the Presidential primary season we need to concentrate of the reality of Americans continuing to die for a war based on hundreds, if not thousands, of lies.

George W. Bush is a murderer. There is no diplomatic way to put it. He lied to fulfill his plans to invade Iraq at any cost. He and his administration manufactured a mountain of lies about phony weapons of mass destruction, fantasy mobile chemical plants and a non-existent link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden to launch the most-expensive war in American history, sending thousands of Americans to their death and crippling the U.S. economy.

He abused, and continues to abuse, the power of his office, shredded the Constitution, approved illegal wiretaps and surveillance of Americans, sanctioned torture of prisoners, authorized abuse of civil and individual rights, and put together the most corrupt Presidential administration of modern times.

Yet he is still President. Why? Why doesn’t the collective power of Congress – Democrat and Republican – rise up in righteous indignation? Why doesn’t the House impeach this criminal and the Senate try him and throw him and his cabal out of office?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi took “impeachment off the table” as soon as the Democrats took over control of Congress in the 2006 midterm election. Why? Whose palms got greased? What deals were cut? The people spoke and the Democrats ignored the tide of political opinion. Why?

The standard line out of Pelosi’s office is that the nation cannot, in a time of war, endure the trauma of a Presidential impeachment. So she and her fellow co-conspirators, leave America at risk every day that Bush remains in office.

Bush is a liar. That is a proven fact. Bush is a criminal. That has been established. Bush is a mass murderer. When he sent Americans to die in a war based on lies he crossed that line as well.

Congress, under the Democrats, has failed to serve the will of the American people. Every day that they allow George W. Bush to remain in office is another day that the future of America remains in doubt.

Source URL:

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/4319