Impeach Bush? Not Hardly!

*More in the extended section*

Local Columnist Joe Volz is apparently as out of touch with reality as the rest of his left leaning friends are. In his March 24, 2006 column he called for the impeachment of President Bush on two grounds:

“He has broken the law by illegally bypassing the courts and wiretapping American citizens in the United States. And he has violated his oath of office by misleading us about those non-existent weapons of mass destruction when he took us to war.”

Lets look at both of these accusations starting with the second one first. It was well known before the start of the Iraq Invasion that Saddam Hussein had at his disposal and has used Chemical Weapons on his own people. In fact Saddam Hussein himself told the whole world that he had Weapons of Mass Destruction and would resist all efforts to dismantle his program regardless of what UN Weapons Inspectors found or ordered him to do. Prior to President Bush coming to office, President Clinton as well as other Democratic Party leaders all called for the removal of Saddam Hussein based upon his ranting and prolific use of Chemical Weapons, and on December 24 The Hague convicted Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat, to 15 years for selling Saddam the chemicals used to kill at least 5,000 Kurds in Halabja, among others. Recently the chairman of House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, indicated that wants to reopen this case to prove once and for all that Saddam did have Chemical Weapons and that he ferried them out of Iraq using civilian aircraft before the invasion, at the core of this investigation is 12 hours of audio recordings between Saddam Hussein and his top advisers that may provide clues to the whereabouts of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

If President Bush lied then he would have had to know that Saddam had already destroyed or transferred his Chemical Weapons programs before the Iraq Survey Group even arrived and the invasion was started. This of course is not possible as it would have meant that President Bush would have to have the ability to read the minds of others, a trait that no one possesses.

Let us now address Mr. Volz’s call to impeach President Bush on the grounds that he is illegally eavesdropping on American Citizens. If Mr. Volz had taken the time to actually research this issue he would have found out that the phone calls in question were either; made to known terrorists in terror sponsoring nations or they were sent from known terrorists located in terror supporting nations. Mr. Volz apparently has never heard of the December 22, 2005 report by the Department of Justice which found these intercept cases completely legal and reasonable in time of war, nor am I sure is he aware that a vast majority of American’s approve of the government actually doing its job of protecting us from attack. Under Article II of the Constitution, including in his capacity as Commander in Chief, the President has the responsibility to protect the Nation from further attacks, and the Constitution gives him all necessary authority to fulfill that duty. The report further states that if the Nation is invaded, "the President is not only authorized but bound to resist by force . . . . without waiting for any special legislative authority" This constitutional authority includes the authority to order warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance within the United States, as all federal appellate courts, including at least four circuits, to have addressed the issue have concluded that the President does have that authority.

When he states that the impeachment process should not be used as a means to recall the election he is in fact demanding that the president be impeached simply because he “feels” that President Bush stole the election in the first place and every act the President takes is illegal because he is in office illegally. Get over it Mr. Volz, your man lost and he lost simply because he was not a viable candidate. For you to call President Bush’s acts an attempt to dismantle the Constitution or make it “inoperative” is a joke as the only group that has set about to dismantle the constitution of late has been the Democratic Party.