by Colin Donoghue
Daily Lobo columnist
Whether it be unwarranted spying on peaceful Americans, the incompetence in response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster or the memo detailing President Bush's intention to invade Iraq regardless of Iraq's weapons capabilities or United Nations' support, the number of reasons why Bush and Cheney should be immediately impeached steadily increases.
A recent Zogby poll found 52 percent of Americans support impeaching Bush if he wiretapped Americans without a judge's approval. An earlier Zogby poll found that a majority of Americans believe Bush should be impeached if he lied about the reasons for invading Iraq.
So if the majority is for impeachment, why have the proceedings not begun?
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It is because our republic has become vastly less democratic in recent years, and the voice of the people has been silenced more and more.
You may have heard briefly about the use of white phosphorous in Iraq by the American military, but maybe you're not too concerned about it, since they explained it wasn't a chemical weapon and doesn't violate the chemical weapons convention. Well, the bodies of chemically burned women and children found in Fallujah disprove that theory. The use of depleted uranium weaponry is another violation of international law, which states that no weapon can "continue to act after the battle is over, be unduly harmful to the environment" and "must not kill or wound inhumanely." I'm pretty sure having people chemically burned to death and causing countless deformed babies from radiation in Iraq is inhumane.
In Afghanistan in February of 2002, Moazzam Begg answered a midnight knock at his door, while his wife and daughter continued to sleep. After opening the door, armed men threw him to the floor, hooded and shackled him, and then threw him in the trunk of their car with no explanation given.
The Bush administration had designated Begg as an enemy combatant and held him at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan, where he was tortured on a regular basis for a year, then transferred to solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where conditions were even more hellish.
To make a long story short, three years later, Begg is back home with his family, thanks largely to the work of Amnesty International, after never being charged with a crime. Begg never committed any act of terrorism or cooperated with terrorists in any manner, and he is one of countless others who have experienced the fascist side of the war on terrorism.
Ever hear of the writ of habeas corpus? It's a centuries-old international law that says a government can't detain an individual without charges for an indiscriminate amount of time. Or how about the Geneva Conventions barring torture, or the United Nations charter banning wars of aggression? Remember from history class the trials in Nuremberg, in which Nazi officials were tried for war crimes, including participating in a war of aggression? U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has declared that the war on Iraq is illegal - a war of aggression that was not justified as an act of self-defense. Regime change in Iraq was not a legal response to Saddam Hussein's alleged failure to disarm, especially when that allegation turned out to be completely false.
The unbelievable cruelty that has emerged from the Iraqi occupation should appall - but not surprise - us. As the recently re-released Vietnam-era film "Winter Soldier" shows, the atrocities of war repeat themselves throughout history. Civilians are killed, raped and injured in horrific ways in every war, and these tragedies only plant the seeds for future wars in the minds of the friends, lovers and family members of those that suffered so wretchedly.
So what's the solution here, besides complying with international law? Simple: Impeach Bush, Vice President Cheney and all members of the administration who have willingly partaken in war crimes and also participated in lying to Congress and the American people about the justifications for this war in the first place.
