From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 24, 2007 3:59:09 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fwd: John Conyers Is No Martin Luther King
it's necessary to look AHEAD. What are Bush and Cheney likely to do
during the coming months if impeachment proceedings do NOT begin?
Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com.
From: "Jim S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: July 24, 2007 12:03:15 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: John Conyers Is No Martin Luther King
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/072407a.html
*John Conyers Is No Martin Luther King*
By Ray McGovern
July 24, 2007
What do Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, chair of the House Committee
on the
Judiciary, and President George W. Bush have in common? They both
think they can
dis Cindy Sheehan and count on gossip columnists like the
Washington Post's Dana
Milbank to trivialize a historic moment.
Ill give this to President Bush. He makes no pretence when he
disses. He would
not meet with Sheehan to define for her the "noble cause" for which
her son Casey
died or tell her why he had said it was "worth it."
Conyers, on the other hand, was dripping with pretence as he met
with Sheehan,
Rev. Lennox Yearwood and me Monday in his office in the Rayburn
building. I have
seldom been so disappointed with someone I had previously held in
high esteem.
And before leaving, I told him so.
Throwing salt in our wounds, he had us, and some 50 others in his
anteroom
arrested and taken out of action as the Capitol Police "processed"
us for the
next six hours.
As we began our discussion with Conyers, it was as though he
thought we were
"born yesterday," as Harry Truman would put it. With feigned
enthusiasm he
began, 'Let's hold a Town Hall meeting in Detroit so we can talk about
impeachment. Get out my schedule; let's see, we need to hear from
everyone about
this.'
Been there, done that, I reminded the congressman.
On May 29, 2007, Col. Ann Wright and I were among those who flew to
Detroit for a
highly advertised Town Hall meeting on impeachment, because we were
assured that
John Conyers would be there.
That Town Hall/panel discussion was arranged by the Michigan
chapter of the
National Lawyers Guild less than two weeks after the Detroit City
Council passed
a resolution, cosponsored by Conyers wife Monica Conyers --
calling for the
impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. We had hoped
that Monicas
clear vision and courage might be contagious.
I had to remind the congressman that he did not show up for the
Town Hall.
Apparently, that incident was of such little consequence to the
congressman that
he had completely forgotten about it. Small wonder, then, that he
has apparently
forgotten the oath he took to protect and defend the Constitution
of the United
States from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Selective Alzheimer's? I don't know. What was clear was that he
had forgotten a
whole lot.
When I raised James Madison's role in crafting a Constitution that
mentions
impeachment no fewer than six times, he replied: 'Madison did not
say Conyers has
to impeach every one. Why, if I had to impeach everyone for high
crimes and
misdemeanors, thats all my committee would have time to do.'
I learned in Rhetoric 101 the name of that technique: reductio ad
absurdam.
How about just Bush and Cheney, we suggested.
Conyers protested that he would need 218 votes in the House and
complained that
the votes are not there. His priorities showed through in his loud
lament that
if he fell short of the 218 votes, the Republicans and Fox News
would have a
field day.
There was no getting through to Conyers, who seemed astonished at
the direct
questions we were posing.
In reflecting on this later, the dictum of my father, also a
lawyer, began to
ring in my ears: "When you reach the age of 'statutory senility,'
you do everyone
a favor if you retire."
He followed his own example, when he retired as Chancellor of the
Board of
Regents of the University of the State of New York, long before
senility --
statutory, or otherwise -- set in for him.
Septuagenarian Conyers (and, for that matter, 80-year-old Senator
John Warner,
R-Virginia, who has also forgotten his sworn duty to uphold the
Constitution)
would do well to heed that advice.
Toward the end of the meeting, Conyers showed uncommon chutzpah in
referring to
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That was too much for me.
Youre no Martin Luther King, I found myself wanting to say.
Instead, I quoted a
portion of Dr. King's famous address at Riverside Church almost 40
years ago:
"We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our
limited vision,
but we must speak....there is such a thing as being too late....
Life often
leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost
opportunity.... Over the
bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic
words: Too late."
I used that quote in a letter I left with Conyers aides on
Monday, in which I
tried to express why my colleagues in Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for
Sanity feel it is URGENT to find some way to apply the Constitution
to restrain a
run-away Executive.
The text of that letter follows:
A Note to Congressman John Conyers:
*On Impeachment and the EdmundPettusBridge*
Dear John,
We each have our favored crime for which President Bush and Vice
President Cheney
should be impeached. Many of us have several.
But the real challenge is to look AHEAD. What are Bush/Cheney
likely to do in
the coming months if the impeachment process does NOT begin?
One often hears, Oh, they will do what they want anyway,
impeachment process or
not. Not true.
If we the people and our representatives in Congress choose the
course given us
by our Founders and impeachment proceedings begin, important swaths
of our body
politic AND military will be less likely to follow illegal orders
from the White
House.
These important constituencies will become sensitized to the peril
into which
this administration has brought us and to the extra-constitutional
orders they
may be asked to carry out.
NEW ELEMENT: Even the Scaife-owned newspapers have begun to
question Bush's
MENTAL STABILITY.
What could be more important at this juncture?
We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (V.I.P.S.) have
been applying
all of our analytical techniques to assess the Bush/Cheney
administration. We
have helped to establish the long record of abuses and usurpations
of the past.
What about the future?
Iraq is going to hell in a hand basket. A Tet-type incident
becomes more and
more likely. The Green Zone is being hit by mortar fire more
frequently than
before. It may be just a matter of time before the Resistance gets
lucky and
lobs a shell onto our spanking new $600-million embassy, killing a
bunch of
Americans in the process.
What then? Will Cheney tell the president the U.S. military has
found Iranian
markings on the shell fragments and we need to retaliate...and,
actually, while
were at it, let's implement Plan A and hit all Iranian nuclear-
related facilities.
With Congress voting resolution after resolution against Iran, how
would the
president react to such a suggestion from Cheney?
Many of us intelligence analysts have found utility in relying, in
part, on short
studies applying psychoanalysis to develop profiles of foreign
leaders. (This
marriage of psychoanalysis and intelligence work actually goes back
to the early
1940s, when the O.S.S. commissioned such studies on Hitler.) We
called them
"at-a-distance personality assessments."
Three years ago Justin Frank, M.D., a psychiatrist here in
Washington, wrote a
book "Bush on the Couch" in which he provided keen insights into
the president's
mode of thinking -- or not thinking.
Eager to use every tool at our disposal, V.I.P.S. recently asked
Dr. Frank to
update his observations, with a view to forecasting, to the extent
possible, how
Bush is likely to react to the building pressures of the coming
weeks and months.
We will issue, perhaps as early as this week, Dr. Franks latest
analysis,
fortified by our own input. But we already have his preliminary
analysis; there
is no other word for it: Scary.
In a quick note to us this morning [July 23], Dr. Frank noted we
are "dealing
with a potentially cornered man [who] could lash out, and it is
possible that the
best way would be to bomb Iran.... Whatever the root causes of
Bush's pathology,
we have a dangerous man running things...grandiose and unchecked."
Some snippets from the Memorandum that Dr. Frank is drafting for
issuance under
V.I.P.S. auspices:
"George W. Bush is without conscience...and destructive,
willfully so. He has
always likes to break things...most shocking is the way he is
breaking our armed
forces.
"He doesnt care about others, is indifferent to their
suffering... He is almost
constitutionally missing the ability to sympathize or empathize...
More
indifferent to reality than out of touch with it, he makes up
whatever story he
wants.
"Ultimately, he is psychologically unstable... His goal is to
destroy things
[and he can do that] without experiencing anxiety or a sense of
responsibility.
An equally important goal is to protect himself from shame, from
being wrong,
from being found small and weak."
So what do we do?
At a similarly critical juncture, Dr. King was typically direct:
"We must speak
with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision,
but we must
speak.... there is such a thing as being too late.... Life often
leaves us
standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity.... Over
the bleached
bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words:
'Too late'."
There is today another Edmund Pettus Bridge to cross, John. And it
has fallen to
you to lead us across.
With respect,
/s/
Ray McGovern (for V.I.P.S.)
~~~
[Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the
ecumenical
Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. He is a 27-year veteran
analyst of the
C.I.A. and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity (V.I.P.S.).]
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------------------------
"America is a nation founded on the principle that all human life
is sacred
Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not
ethical."-- G.W.
Bush on the occasion of vetoing Congressional bill on stem cell
research
June 20, 2007
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