I wonder how Nancy Pelosi feels now about her "Impeachment Is Off the Table," when she

[Cal33]

had every reason, and duty required her to impeach Bush, Jr. for his crime of having
lied and tricked our nation into an unjustifiable war against Iraq, as well as numerous
other serious crimes. Today, Bush doesn't even dare to set foot in many nations in
Europe. They'd arrest him and send him to The Hague and charge him as a war
criminal!

These are sociopaths. We are dealing with criminals. There are too many of them
holding high positions, both in government and in private industry. They've been
there far too long. And as long as they hold these positions, our country can't help
but go downhill. We'll become a Third World nation because these sociopaths have
the same mentality as the sociopathic leaders of Third World nations. It's only a
question of time.

We've got to vote them out of power. But how? Having the majority of voters
doesn't help at all. This is exactly where these sociopaths lie, cheat and use dirty
tricks to stay in power!

[MrSlayer]

1. You act like she isn't a part of it.

She feels fine about it because she is complicit.

When you talk about the lying, cheating sociopaths don't count less than there are.

[Cal33]

5. There's no question that there are Democratic politicians who are sociopaths. I think

they are fewer in number and less vicious in degree than the Republican
ones, though. As for Pelosi's having been complicit, I can't say either
"Yes" or "No," because I don't know.

With Bush it's a known. As for the present day Republican leaders, they
are also known -- the way they think, what they say, and their behavior
show them up.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

6. Exactly what I was thinking.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

24. Actually, it's an effort to preserve a false continuity...

The attitude in Washington is, other counties want to see stability so administrations may change but there is NEVER to be a complete 180 on basic policy.

Therefore, Bushco didn't LIE, it suffered from faulty intelligence.

IOW: It was stupid.

No harm, no foul, continue to believe in America and buy our war toys. We have a whole new line of them now that can survive an RPG fired at point blank range.

Oh yeah,...and our Stock Market still kicks the Nikkei's butt.

[Auggie]

2. Are you calling Nancy Pelosi a sociopath and criminal, and advocating her removal from office?

[Fantastic Anarchist]

7. Yes, I am.

[Cal33]

10. No, I'm not.

[longship]

3. Do we have to relive this thrown chair fight here?

DU has been over and over this. Why bring it up again?

There has been precisely two presidents in the history of the USA who were impeached. Impeachment was off the table because a great many people in the country would have seen a Bush II impeachment as pay back for Clinton's impeachment. In other words, as a political move of retribution. It would have hurt Democrats, just like it hurt House Republicans.

Nancy Pelosi saw that. It didn't matter that Bush II deserved it and Clinton didn't. It would have been a political nightmare to even attempt to impeach the second president in a row.

What would have you done?

What is right and what is politically advisable are two things which the Speaker of the House has to balance. It's her fucking job. I would probably have done the same thing.

Let it go, please.

Thanks.

I will R&K your post so that others can join the dialog.

[RudynJack]

8. And add the fact that

the Senate would never have convicted. It would be a high-risk only.

[longship]

9. Indeed! It would have hurt Democrats badly.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

13. Wow ...

... loyalists.

[just1voice]

27. +1, "Loyalists" support all crimes regardless of the severity

Torture is a war crime, a violation of the 1996 War Crimes Act. The WMD conspiracy to commit war is treason according to our own Constitution. Illegal wiretapping is a felony that Bush repeatedly committed.

Regardless of whether any Bush admin criminal would be convicted or not was, and still is, the duty of all our politicians whom took an oath to uphold our Constitution and laws to prosecute the criminals.

Loyalists don't care at all about any of it.

[RudynJack]

29. You...

misspelled "realist"

[Fantastic Anarchist]

12. High-risk only is now a deterent to justice?

[RudynJack]

30. There was

Never going to be justice if you define it as removal from office. It was just never going to happen. Quixotic crusades may feel good for the crusaders, but have no real-world effect.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

11. Lots of fallacies and assumptions in your post.

[Richardo]

16. No more than in yours, which has a heaping helping of naivete as well.

[Richardo]

15. ..aside from the impeachment, the Senate would never in a billion years have had 67 votes to convict

Bush would have been acquitted and, in the spin from the press, vindicated.

Impeachment would have been a total waste of time, money, effort, political capital - and worse yet, would have resulted in the exact opposite outcome as impeachment advocates wanted.

Pelosi did not get to be Speaker by being an idiot.

[longship]

21. I taught mathematics for years.

Business Math (HS and Univ), algebra (HS), geometry (HS), calculus (Univ).

An equation must be always balanced to give you a solution that makes sense. So it is with politics. If you attempt to impeach a president, the equation will balance itself politically. The GOP, and their House of Representatives found that out during Bill Clinton's second term.

Nancy Pelosi knew there was no hope to both impeach and convict Dubya. If she had pursued it, the Democrats would have paid a huge penalty, all for nothing, because the Senate would have never convicted. And the Democratic Party might be still be paying for it. We might have had President McCain and Vice President Palin.

That's why impeachment was off the table. And Nancy knew that.

[Cal33]

19. It's known that sociopaths don't have feelings like pride, honor, shame, disgrace...etc...

But they do respect strength and can be made to behave because of fear of
punishment. They became this way because their moral development has been
arrested at the stage of that of a small child. They can't help but be the way
they are. This shows up as having a "defective conscience" with the resulting
odd sense of values and immoral behavior. It is a part of their personality,
and personality disorders are difficult, if not impossible, to change.

So, they respond to the lure of money and power, and they can be made to
behave through the fear of punishment. They just don't respond to anything
else. They cannot be treated like average people with good results, because
they are not average people. This has to sink in! The more they are treated
like gentlemen, the more they'll laugh at and take advantage of you. Just look
at how they behave towards Pres. Obama! I don't think he realizes that his not
confronting them only encourages even more freakish behavior on their part.
As an example, didn't we all notice how subdued Romney became during the
2nd Presidential Debate when Obama became more confrontational, as compared
to his cockiness and lying to Obama's face during the first debate when Obama
did not confront him?

By the same token, if Bush had been impeached, showing that Democrats were
willing to be tough on crime, there is a good chance that the war in Iraq would
have ended much sooner, and the future housing scams and crimes by the
nation's biggest bankers might never have taken place at all. And our present
state of financial chaos might have been avoided altogether, because corporate
leaders would have thought twice about the risk of punishment involved. And
the behavior of Republican leaders in both houses of Congress might have been
more respectful today.

Sociopaths are not normal people. This fact must always be taken into account.

[Richardo]

22. Impeachment is an arraignment, not a punishment.

Bush would have been acquitted, the Dems framed as vindictive children getting back for Clinton, Bush-Cheney free to continue exactly as before, except emboldened.

Not a great scenario.

[Cal33]

23. I doubt it that things would have been "exactly as before." Just look at all the

criminal dirt committed by Bush/Cheney that would have been made public
by the impeachment -- day by day, week by week, month by month. All
the dirt the Republican Administration had kept hidden from the public
would have been brought to light, aired in the open again, again and again.

To this day the majority of the Republican masses don't know or don't
believe any of it if they had heard of it. I'd say most of those who
vote Republican today don't even realize that the real Republican Party
had been hijacked and taken over by the corporatists, Neocons, Teabaggers,
etc... Most of them are decent people. Their leaders are the sociopaths.

Can you imagine the shock of the Republican masses when they begin to
see, perhaps for the first time in their lives, what their leaders had been
really up to. The Republican mass media would not have been able to
keep the American public from witnessing the impeachment itself first-hand.

Being found guilty or not guilty is secondary. The primary thing is that
the American public would have been exposed to and would have
gotten the truth for a change - and I repeat, perhaps for the very first time
in their lives. The whole ugly truth! And they would have been shocked!

It's quite possible that the Republican Party would have changed leadership.
And things might have been very different from what they are today-- for
the better.

[Richardo]

28. Conviction or acquittal is not secondary.

You overestimate the objectivity of the Republican base and underestimate the drumbeat messaging of Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Brit Hume, Tony Snow, G Gordon Liddy, Dr. Laura, Michael Medved, George Will, Ollie North, Robert Novak, Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingrahamn, Peggy Noonan, William Safire, Andrew Sullivan, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, Bernard Goldberg, The Washington Times, Bill Krystsol, David Frum, Brent Bozell, Charles Krauthammer, David Horowitz, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, Fred Barnes, William Bennett, Lawrence Kudlow, Steve Forbes, Dennis Miller, Matt Drudge, Byron York, Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, Clear Channel, the National Review, The Heritage Foundation, The Hoover Institution, The Weekly Standard, The American Enterprise Institue, The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), The Cato Institute, The Club For Growth, The Federalist Society, NewsMax, TownHall, The NY Post and the NRA.

Without a conviction, every bit of the 'truth' exposed during the hearings would have been dismissed, forgotten, minimized, down the memory hole, all pathetic lies. Without a conviction, the whole exercise would have been framed as a costly, wasteful, futile, vengeful political theater. The Dems would have been roasted alive 24/7 until the 2008 election.

Barack Obama would not even be a political footnote, he'd be a 'never was'.

[Cal33]

34. Since there has been no impeachment, Bush, Jr got away 100% scott free. If there had been an

impeachment (which would have lasted daily for months) everyone in
America would have gotten to know the real Bush/Cheney - regardless
of how the right-wing news media would have lied about the situation.
Decent Republicans would then have realized how they had been lied
to, and how they had fallen for those lies. Some of them might have
demanded a change in the Republican Party, and others would have
left it in disgust. The Republican Party would never have been the
same again.

And there is at least some chance of Bush's being found guilty. But
with no impeachment at all, Bush did get away with it 100% scott free.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

25. "DU has been over and over this. Why bring it up again?"

Sport.

[just1voice]

26. War crimes and treason never just go away, the world doesn't "let it go, please"

Because of the severity of the crimes, Americans will never "let it go" either. Get a conscience and someday you'll understand.

[Martin Eden]

32. "What is right and what is politically advisable"

I think that in the long run, doing what is right IS politically advisable.

Voters in this country -- as stupid as they often seem -- have a sense of right and wrong, though it may take a few years after the fact for it to sink in. But if the Democratic Party consistently does what is right and fights the good fight, there will be less cynicism (much of it deserved, and much of it coming from the left) for a Party if it is not guided primarily by short term political calculation.

Having said that, we do have to pick our battles wisely and be prepared to win. The problem with Democratic politicians in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq is that they were much too complicit. I was never so disappointed with Democrats as when several of our most prominent leaders -- including Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and John Kerry -- voted for the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002 that gave GW Bush authority to invade Iraq.

I was also very disappointed with Nancy Pelosi for taking impeachment "off the table." Crimes of such magnitude with such horrible and tragic consequences simply must not be allowed to go unpunished. When We The People (our government) fails to do this, those crimes are on all of us. The reputation and moral standing of the United States was degraded over Iraq, has not fully recovered, and possibly never will. Even worse perhaps is that the failure to hold war criminals accountable establishes a precedent that paves the way for more war crimes.

Yes, I know, the war crimes committed in Iraq were far from the first committed by our government in our name. But that really is the point here; when is it ever going to stop if we consistently allow it to happen?

[forestpath]

4. I don't think Nancy Pelosi really cares about anything but her stock portfolio.

[840high]

14. I so agree with you.

[progressoid]

17. Problem is, Democrats often supported his activities.

If he is a criminal, then the finger must also be pointed at his enablers.

[Enrique]

20. our current Secretary of State voted for that war

as well as our next Secretary of State. As well as our Vice President.

(and by the way, Pelosi voted against it)

[Cosmocat]

18. I hate it as much as anyone, BUT

what they got done in the first two years of Barrack Obama's Presidency, specifically AHCA, would not have gotten done.

The republican's would have been EVEN WORSE, and the media would have joined in on punishing not only democrats in general, but the Presidential candidate.

I seriously doubt that even four years ago, the inauguration we saw, would have been for Barrack Obama.

Look, I get it. I HATE that these slimebag fucks get away with their shit, and I big on people being held responsible.

But, what little we have been able to punch through over the last four years, likely would not have happened.

[MotherPetrie]

31. The Obama administration just got a CIA whistleblower thrown in jail for three years

For revealing the name of a CIA torturer. But the torturer himself? The architects of that torture -- i.e. Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld? -- President Obama says lets look forward, not back! Forward for high level criminals, back for low level people revealing their crimes.

High level people look out for high level people.

The entire system is rotten to the core.

[LukeFL]

33. Do you have a list of those

Nations? Last time I heard he traveled was to the Cayman Islands.

[Cal33]

35. Off the top of my head I can name France, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg. When Bush

Last edited Sat Jan 26, 2013, 01:42 PM - Edit history (1)

was scheduled to make a speech in Switzerland, many Swiss citizens staged a protest against him, and
Bush had to withdraw. Many Canadians protested against his visiting their country.

Even in our own Massachusetts, a few small towns have it officially that he would be arrested if he should
set foot there. I have no idea if they even have any prisons, outside of their local jails.

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/03/war-criminals-bush-and-cheney-can-no.html