Americans Favor Bush’s Impeachment If He Lied about Iraq

Americans Favor Bush’s Impeachment If He Lied about Iraq
By Dave Lindorff

More people today want to see President Bush impeached than wanted Clinton impeached on the eve of the House’s vote on his impeachment.

According to a poll by the Zogby organization, just released by the group Afterdowningstreet.org, 50 percent of the American public now would like to see the House impeach Bush if it were found that he had lied about the reasons for going to war in Iraq (if?).

Compare that to December 17, 1998, only days before Clinton’s impeachment by the House of Representatives, when an AP poll found that only 36 percent of the American public wanted to see the president impeached.

Clearly Americans view the flawed invasion of Iraq and other actions by the Bush administration, like the placing of business cronies in high places, the bankrupting of the federal government, and the failure to come to the rescue of an American…

city as far more serious than Clinton’s sex romp and the lying about it that followed. And there’s plenty more bad news to come for Bush, beginning with likely indictments in the Plame outing affair.

So, is the campaign by After Downing Street and other organizations to seek Bush’s impeachment just tilting at windmills? It certainly isn’t likely to happen with the current Republican domination of the House, but if public anger against Bush continues to grow, that could all change in November 2006, when all House seats are up for reelection.

Passion for Impeachment is Major Unreported Story

The strong support for impeachment found in this poll is especially surprising because the views of impeachment supporters are entirely absent from the broadcast and print media, and can only be found on the Internet and in street protests, including the large anti-war rally in Washington on September 24.

The lack of coverage of impeachment support is due in part to the fact that not a single Democrat in Congress has called for impeachment, despite considerable grassroots activism by groups like Democrats.com (http://democrats.com/impeach).

“We will, no doubt, see an increase in activism following this poll,” said David Swanson, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org.  “But will we see an increase in media coverage? The media are waiting for action in Congress.  Apparently it’s easier to find and interview one of the 535 members of Congress than it is to locate a representative of the half of the country that wants the President impeached if he lied about the war.  The media already accepts that Bush did lie about the war.  We know this because so many editors and pundits told us that the Downing Street Memo was ‘old news.’  What we need now is journalism befitting a democracy, journalism that goes out and asks people what they really think about their government, especially George Bush.”