Well, okay, I have an opinion that's just about about Bill Clinton and impeachment. I remember there was an impeachment-related proceeding (I think it's technically the trial in the Senate) and it seemed that it was all about sex and whether he was telling lies or truths). I've always thought that particular impeachment effort was a big waste of time. But there was another matter that he might have been impeached about ... I'll get to that in a minute.
When Clinton got elected I was happy and surprised. At the time I felt he was my kind of president. A few years later, a more knowledgeable friend told me that Clinton had improperly sold or given military secrets to China. That one conversation was the only time I heard or read about that. To me, improperly letting China have military secrets seems like it could be an important thing, perhaps worth impeaching about. But what do we get? A whole long show about sex and talk about sex, and nothing else. I think it was just a disgusting waste of time. I don't really care about whatever he does or says about that. But they might have done something really worthwhile by trying to impeach him about military secrets going to China. If they did that, the American people might learn something important about how their government works -- and that could lead to other worthwhile things. Generally I think impeaching (meaning, having a trial of a high public official) is a good thing because it helps to hold powerful people accountable for how they exercise the power we give them. If there were some situation where a lot of people died, and our government caused it, then that would be the kind of thing worth impeaching about. So, when the Iraq war came along, and the reason for it kept changing and the big idea about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" turned out to look like a mistake, that would be the perfect thing to have one or more impeachments about. The most obvious benefit to impeaching would be that the American people would learn something about how their government really works. Maybe the impeached official (probably Bush or Cheney) would be found innocent, or maybe found guilty, but either way we would all be learning about the process by which wars get started. And another thing: There was a trial of Saddam Hussein. I wasn't there but I think I understand something about it: That trial was arranged in a way that prevented Saddam Hussein from speaking out. And I think that's a really bad idea. The big benefit of such trials should be that the way things work would be exposed to the public, and as a result, governments and societies would improve. But by him being silenced, we were denied that discussion that would probably have revealed a lot about how things work. Similarly, we were denied an open trial of Osama bin Laden. So we missed out on that discussion too, and whatever it may have revealed about how things work. All we got was scoring revenge points, while remaining ignorant and therefore just as vulnerable as before. -jrl On Sunday, November 17, 2013 4:46:02 PM UTC-8, MJ wrote: > > > > *The Icon of Truth-Telling ... *Butler Shaffer > > Bill Clinton, has advised President Obama to tell the truth to the people > about insurance coverage (or lack thereof). The network news-babblers who > report this must either have either a tremendous sense of humor, or > blockheadedness, to be able to pass this on to us with a straight face. > �Tell the truth?� In the words of that great stand-up philosopher, the > late George Carlin, the entire political structure would collapse if > truth-telling really caught on. > -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
