KEEPING IN TOUCH

Here's a letter from Senator Feinstein to me about my request that impeachment of the president be considered, and following that is my letter back to her:

June 9, 2005

Thank you for your letter about removing the President from office because of intelligence failures prior to the invasion of Iraq. I appreciate you taking the time to write and I welcome the opportunity to respond. I regret that we disagree on this issue since I do not support the impeachment of the President on these
grounds.
First, the Constitution details that the President may be
removed from office if he is impeached and convicted of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, which, leaves the basis for impeachment open to some interpretation. The actual process for impeaching a president involves the House of
Representatives acting as the prosecutor and bringing relevant charges against the President. The Senate then acts as the jury and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court acts as the judge, together responsible for trying the President.
Second, the Senate vote on the resolution to authorize the
use of force in Iraq was difficult and consequential based on hours of intelligence briefings from Administration and intelligence officials, as well as the classified and unclassified versions of an important National Intelligence Estimate that comprehensively assessed Iraqi's WMD program. It was based on trust that this
intelligence was the best our Nation's intelligence services could offer, untainted by bias, and fairly presented. In this case it was not.
The bottom line is that Iraq did not possess nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in 2003 when the war began. Saddam Hussein did not have an active nuclear, chemical or biological weapons program. Considering the statements that were
being made by the Administration, and the intelligence that was presented to Congress which said otherwise, this is quite disturbing and points once again to failures in the analysis, collection and use of intelligence. In order to address these intelligence failures, Congress passed the Intelligence Reform bill, which I voted for. This law will make consequential changes to the structure and organization of the 15 agencies which make up our intelligence capabilities.
Please know that as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I will be sure to continue to monitor this issue closely.
Again, thank you for taking the time to write. If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841, or visit my website at http://feinstein.senate.gov/.

Sincerely yours,

Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

MY RESPONSE:

Dear Senator Feinstein:
Thank you for responding to me about impeachment of President Bush. However, I find your attempt to lecture and/or educate me about the impeachment process both annoying and condescending. For my Master's thesis at Boston University I wrote about the Hiss case, during the Watergate business, in which elements of his prosecution paralleled the shenanigans that Nixon's Justice Dept was using to obstruct justice and protect him from exposure. I know about impeachment, and the reasons for and why--did Clinton's obfuscation before the grand jury constitute Treason...etc etc? I think not, and so do you.

When a President of the United States knowingly lies to his electorate about reasons to go to war, and conducts the manner of decision-making to go to war surreptitiously, and under false pretenses, that to me constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors at least. This all goes above and beyond politics. Congress was misled into voting for the Iraq War resolution by a knowing executive branch. The need to examine all of this in congressional hearings and/or a grand jury is very clear to me. You and your Democrat colleagues could bring this about. But you are too busy, too lazy, or too entangled, to tackle this important task.

Nixon was going to be impeached for obstruction of justice, despite his wanton disregard for congressional approval and widening the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Clinton was impeached for improprieties in the White House, and acquitted appropriately. How about you starting a new era of accountability, where a Commander in Chief has to be honest with those whose blood, money, and honor he wants to spend on a phony war to gain a threshold on the oil market, not to mention the racist nature of "Crusading" once again against the Muslim infidels.

I don't know who or if anyone will read this, but spare me your prosaic didactic responses to a real concern of mine. I have a 16 year old son who I do not want to ever see military duty in a misbegotten war for nothing.

Yours Truly,

David Goldenberg