Brattleboro, Vermont, Votes to Indict Bush and Cheney

Brattleboro, Vermont, Votes to Indict Bush and Cheney
Wed, 2008-03-05 00:32.

By David Swanson

Brattleboro, Vt., voted today in support of a measure calling on the town's police force
to
arrest and indict Bush and Cheney. The vote was 2012-1795.

Marlboro, Vt., passed a similar measure at its town meeting today at which the vote to
indict
Bush and Cheney was 43-25-3. That's 43 in favor and 3 abstaining. Thus Marlboro beat
Brattleboro to it by a few hours. In Brattleboro, the indictment question was on the
primary
ballots for both parties.

Here's a kit for other towns to use: http://afterdowningstreet.org/indictkit

Here is background on Brattleboro's indictment ballot initiative, written prior to the
vote:

When citizens and voters go to the town meeting and primaries in Brattleboro, Vermont, on
Tuesday, there will be a question on the back of all ballots, and a circle to mark Yes and
one
to mark No:

"Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against
President Bush
and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution and publish said indictments
for
consideration by other authorities, and shall it be the law of the Town of Brattleboro
that the
Brattleboro police, pursuant to the above mentioned indictments, arrest and detain George
Bush
and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro if they are not duly impeached, and prosecuted or
extradite
them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them?"

A public forum was held Sunday in Brattleboro to discuss the upcoming vote. Kurt Daims,
the
Brattleboro citizen who drafted the measure, was there, along with leading New England
activists for peace and justice, including U.S. Senate candidate from Maine Laurie Dobson
who
is seeking indictments of Bush and Cheney in Maine as well.

If this thing passes on Tuesday I know a lot of cops around the country who are going to
be
jealous of the Brattleboro police force. I'm thinking of all the police officers I've seen
arrest activists in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, but accept impeachment t-shirts from
them
and hide them under their hats. Here is an opportunity for law-abiding and law-upholding
working men and women to arrest the biggest criminals of our age, and the two men most
responsible for the human and financial costs we and others have suffered these past seven
years. Who wouldn't want to be in on this?

Now, I know what you're thinking. If we just wait one more year, only a couple of more
hundred
thousand Iraqis and some hundreds of US troops will die, we'll only launch at most one
more
foreign war beyond the ones we're running now, our actions might not provoke an attack in
this
country, we'll still have several years left in which we can try to reverse global warming
if
we hurry, the millions of American families about to lose their homes to foreclosures will
only
have one winter to brave and it may be a warm one, and then a completely unreliable and
probably fraudulent election will give us in 2009 a new president who - if we're lucky -
won't
be that crazy old senator who wants to stay in Iraq for 10,000 more years, and if we're
really
lucky future presidents will go ahead and obey laws even though they're not required to
anymore
. . . so what are we getting all excited about? Right? Admit it, that's what you're
thinking,
isn't it?

How could you not be when THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN HISTORY is forecast as imminent
every
day for two straight years every four years? Seriously, raise your hand if you do not know
which presidential candidates are married, how many kids they each have, what their
religions
are, or if you could not rank them by age, height, or hair color.

Do you know what the most important election in history was? It was the one they decided
not to
hold between King George of England and his challenger. If they had held that election,
and the
American colonists had devoted all of their energies for two straight years to reading
pamphlets about who had the whiter wig, we never would have had a Declaration of
Independence,
and we never would have had a democracy.

Oh, well, but that was different. Those colonists weren't fat and happy like we are, and
that
King George had committed crimes.

Had he? I think legally, it's the other way around. As Vermont impeachment activist Dan
DeWalt
has pointed out, it was the Declaration of Independence that had no force of law. The
current
president and vice president, on the other hand, live and work in a society of laws under
a
Constitution, and their violations of the law and of the Constitution are firmly
established.

In a December 31, 2007, editorial, the New York Times faulted Bush and Cheney for
kidnapping
innocent people, denying justice to prisoners, torturing, murdering, circumventing U.S.
and
international laws, spying in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and basing their actions
on
"imperial fantasies."

Bush and Cheney's lies about Iraqi ties to al Qaeda are on videotape and in writing, and
they
continue to make them to this day. Their claims about Iraqi weapons have been shown in
every
detail to have been, not mistakes, but lies. Their threats to and lies about Iran are on
videotape. Bush being warned about Katrina and claiming he was not are on videotape. Bush
lying
about illegal spying and later confessing to it are on videotape.

Torture, openly advocated for by Bush and Cheney and their staffs, is documented by
victims,
witnesses, and public photographs. Torture was always illegal and has been repeatedly
re-criminalized under Bush and Cheney. Bush has reversed those and other laws with signing
statements. Those statements are posted on the White House website, and a GAO report found
that
with a significant percentage of Bush's signing statements in which he announces his right
to
break laws, he has in fact proceeded to break those laws.

Bush and Cheney have exposed an undercover agent as punishment of a whistleblower. They've
commuted the sentence of a top assistant who obstructed an investigation that included
themselves. They've hired and fired public prosecutors based on their willingness to abuse
the
law in support of a political party.

Bush and Cheney have stripped the people of this country of protections under Amendments
1, 4,
5, 6, 7, and 8, not to mention 13 and 15. We now arrive at the question of whether there
is any
life left in Amendments 9 and 10. The Ninth Amendment reads:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to
deny or
disparage others retained by the people."

The Tenth Amendment reads:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by
it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

If those people referred to in that old document still exist anywhere, it is in
Brattleboro,
Vermont. And nowhere does the Constitution deny the people of Brattleboro the power to
arrest,
detain, or try in a fair trial individuals whom they have probable cause to believe guilty
of
mass murder.

Imagine if one of the esteemed Selectmen in Brattleboro were discovered to be accepting
bribes,
handing out public dollars to his friends, and torturing children in the basement. Would
an
appropriate response be "How awful, but you know he's retiring in another year and
those
children are used to being tortured by now anyway?" That response is not even
imaginable.

But when the crime becomes larger and less intimate, when we begin discussing hundreds of
thousands of murders and countless cases of torture carried out at a distance by loyal
underlings, all of a sudden our conviction that accountability is called for becomes less
absolute. Why, though, should the need for accountability shrink as the crime grows? This
makes
no sense to me and would have made none to the authors of the Declaration of Independence
and
the Constitution.

Now, that Constitution provides very prominently and discusses in six places a remedy for
presidents and vice presidents who abuse it. In such cases, the Congress can impeach, try,
remove from office, and bar from ever holding office again. But Article I, Section 3 also
says:

"the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial,
Judgment
and punishment, according to Law."

In other words, whether a president or vice president or other civil officer of the United
States is impeached and convicted in the U.S. Senate or not, he or she is subject before,
during, or following that process to exactly what Brattleboro may propose to do on
Tuesday.

And I would suggest that the failure of Congress to even consider impeachment gives
Brattleboro
and every other town in this country something more than the right to take justice into
their
own hands. We have a responsibility to make use of our democracy in those places where it
still
resides, where money and military and media have not killed it off. We have a duty, not
just a
right, to attempt at this late hour to make this again a nation ruled not by men but by
laws.

The United States Department of Justice could take up this matter at the national level,
it's
true. It's also true that a chicken can squawk before a fox comes in the door. It's true
that
Blackwater can investigate itself. It's true that the New York Times comes with a built-in
critic of its own mistakes. The trouble is that the Department of Justice is now an arm of
the
Republican Party. The most spineless Congress in the history of the country has asked that
Justice Department to hold noncompliant witnesses in contempt, and it has refused.

Congress has a tool called inherent contempt in which the Capitol Police arrest and hold
witnesses on Capitol Hill, but our invertebrate representatives are afraid to use that
even on
former staffers. They are not about to use it on Bush and Cheney.

We are in completely uncharted waters in Washington. We have not only unprecedented
spinelessness from the first branch of our government, but we have previously unimagined
offenses by the second branch, offenses that can best be called, in the words of the
Brattleboro initiative, crimes against the Constitution.

Congress can now pass horrendous bills that become law or good bills that get vetoed. Or
it can
pass mixed bills in which the bad parts become law, but anything Bush doesn't like is
undone
with a signing statement. Yes, previous presidents wrote signing statements, but not in
this
volume and not in this way, not to announce the intention to violate laws and proceed to
violate them. Congress has held hearings on this and countless other abuses. Some of these
hearings lay out all the facts, but then nothing is done because the only thing Congress
could
do would be to impeach, and that would require integrity. At other hearings, witnesses
don't
show up, or show up having forgotten everything prior to breakfast that day. And Congress
thanks them for coming, turns the other cheek, and begs to be slapped. Sometimes an abused
spouse needs an intervention from a friend, and Congress right now has no better friend
than
the people of Brattleboro, Vermont.

Who would dare tell Brattleboro it is not its place to act? In recent times, we have seen
nations around the world indict foreign criminals for crimes committed elsewhere. The
crimes of
Bush and Cheney directly impact the people of Brattleboro. The people of Brattleboro have
officially paid some $11 million so far to occupy Iraq, or six times that if you consider
the
costs calculated by nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. Vermont and Brattleboro have lost
lives in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and had lives devastated. Vermont's national guard has been sent to
guard
somebody else's nation. You have the right to bear arms, but they have the right to put
you on
a plane and ship you to wherever the most oil is.

The abuse inflicted on our nation by the current president and vice president makes a lot
of
people angry. Responding with violence would be foolish and counterproductive. Responding
with
an election might be cathartic, but would not solve the problem. The only response that
can
work is one that calls the crimes what they are and upholds the rule of law. If we had
really
gotten this right under Nixon or Reagan or Clinton, we might have prevented some of the
same
people involved back then from committing new offenses.

More importantly, only a serious law-enforcement response will set a precedent for future
administrations. Raise your hand if you are a Republican who wants Hillary Clinton or
Barack
Obama to have the power to spy without warrants, detain without charges, torture, murder,
and
rewrite any law passed by Congress.

And only a proper criminal trial can possibly lead to the restorative justice the occasion
demands, to an open confession and apology for the crimes committed, and to a plan for
those
war profiteering individuals and corporations closest to the president and vice president,
and
including the vice president, to make restitution to the people of this country and the
people
of Iraq.

This must be about the law, but not merely the law. We need a restoration of our culture.
Far
too often around this nation we are seeing local police officers engage in brutality that
seems
to imitate the actions of those taking their orders from the White House and abusing
captives
in foreign lands. Let's begin to bring a new world out of this toxic one through the noble
and
honest actions of local police officers, those employed by Brattleboro.

Their first job can be assisting with poll watching, exit polling, and observation of a
hand-count of Tuesday's ballots. Their next job can be making sure that Bush and Cheney
get
something they've denied so many other people: a fair trial.

[ Auf dieses Posting antworten ]

Antworten

J.Cobb (06.03.2008 22:28)