A recent Zogby poll found that 52 % of Americans believe President Bush should be impeached if he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) using warrant-less wiretaps. Of those surveyed in this poll, 25% identified themselves as very conservative. A Republican Congress is unlikely to consider an impeachment trial. Nevertheless, a significant number of Americans seriously consider impeachment appropriate. But, what is really on trial?
Let us consider the values of George Bush.
Bush lied to America and to Congress to justify the Iraq war. Colin Powell regretfully admits he was duped into false misrepresentations about Iraqs WMDs to the UN. Bushs invasion of Iraq violated international law. The numbers of dead, maimed, and wounded are in the tens of thousands. An estimated $1 trillion will ultimately be poured into Iraq, 80% of whose citizens want Americas military to leave now.
Bush ignored the known deteriorated condition of the New Orleans levees long before Katrina struck. Bush cut funding for levee construction, watched New Orleans drown, and then trusted his incompetent crony Brownie (youre doen a heck of a job) to manage the chaos.
Bush's No Child Left Behind program has overburdened our national educational system and nearly gutted state budgets.
Bush's Leave No Millionaire Behind tax policy has taken a national surplus and turned it into a humungous debt for our grandchildren to repay.
Bushs Medicare/Medicaid drug plan has plunged the nation's vulnerable and pharmacies into total chaos while driving the states closer to bankruptcy.
Bush's "War on Terror" has become a war on civil rights and liberties, threatening to strip the US of its democratic values. All the while, terrorism has increased exponentially. America is no safer today then before 9/11/01.
Bush's "Homeland Security" agencys under-funding and mismanagement makes us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks on nuclear plants, chemical facilities, shipping ports and airports.
Bush's Patriot Acts I & II have shredded our Bill of Rights, taking America ever closer to a dictatorship.
Bush's use of torture casts America in the role of a sadistic tyrant making us like the terrorists we abhor, and violates the "cruel and unusual punishment" forbidden by our Constitution.
Bush's spying on Americans has turned a nation founded on reverence for privacy, free speech and due process into a contemptuous Orwellian snoop.
Bush fails to confront global warming lest corporate polluter profits suffer. Bush will allow an estimated 17,000 outdated power stations and factories to increase their carbon emissions with impunity. The resulting fine-particle soot contributes to asthma, emphysema, and lung cancer.
Bush implements unproven, arbitrary Christian fundamentalist doctrines, impairing the wall of church state separation, solely to accommodate the religious rights rant n rave fanaticism.
Bush is unfazed by his Republican culture of corruption. The fraud, corruption and official malfeasance exposed at Enron inundates K Streets Republican lobbyists.
Space prohibits the seemingly endless list of irresponsible, destructive Bush policies.
All this while, George Bush gladly represents bible-believing Christianity. Millions of Christians led by the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson intercede for him. George Bush claims to make his decisions through prayer. Supposedly, Christianitys omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God has an American President representing Him, a President whose every decision should parallel this Gods alleged values of righteousness, justice, wisdom and integrity.
So where is the righteousness, justice, wisdom and integrity in George Bushs decisions? Read the above list again and show me where these alleged qualities are? Is this the benefit of being one nation under God? Most Christian Bush supporters would rather keep playing church then face these realities. What is on trial in the minds of Americans is not just George Bush, but his God and his brand of Christianity.
Nevertheless, either, Nietzsche was right when he said, God is dead or God just plain doesnt give a dam! No wonder our founding fathers kept the mention of God out of the Constitution.
Copyright 2006 by AxisofLogic.com
Additional essays and biography of Axis Columnist, Lee Salisbury
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