(I sent this to comments@whitehouse.gov. I just couldn’t stand it anymore.)\
Dear President Bush,\
You, sir, are a failure as a president. You have disappointed me over and over again the past six years, and it’s only fitting that your most disgraceful act as the president of our country comes on the anniversary of the act I consider the most ridiculous thing any public figure has ever said in public.\
Four years ago, while talking about insurgents in Iraq, you told them to “bring ’em on.” Since then, over 3,500 America soldiers have died, over 30,000 soldiers have been wounded, and untold thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have died (who, like all your other problems, your administration have just ignored by not bothering to count their deaths). You and your administration have constantly failed to admit your mistakes, correct your course or do more than make excuses and beg for more time. You’ve said over and over again that you listen to your commanders on the ground, yet it comes to light more every day that anyone who disagrees with you is shuffled off to retirement and someone more agreeable to your illusion is put in place.\
That act was a disgrace – the act of a bully who doesn’t fight himself, but puffs himself up with tough talk. But you’re worse than a bully, because it’s not you who’s in the line of fire, it’s the thousands of American troops over there who take the punishment for your mistakes and empty threats – mistakes you can’t admit and refuse to correct.\
You talk tough about the rule of law. Your party supports mandatory minimum sentences for citizens for even the most petty of crimes. Your party is supposedly the party of “law and order”. Yet today, you commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby – who was convicted of a crime. He was sentenced in accordance with the law, within in the sentencing guidelines. Yet, for some reason, you don’t support the rule of law for him, and nowhere near mandatory minimums. You, sir, are a hypocrite. You are a liar, and should be impeached. Why? In the aftermath of Watergate, the judiciary committee released the following:
In the \[Constitutional\] convention George Mason argued that the President might use his pardoning power to “pardon crimes which were advised by himself” or, before indictment or conviction, “to stop inquiry and prevent detection.” James Madison responded:
\[I\]f the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds \[to\] believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty…
Madison went on to \[say\] contrary to his position in the Philadelphia convention, that the President could be suspended when suspected, and his powers would devolve on the Vice President, who could likewise be suspended until impeached and convicted, if he were also suspected.
Scooter Libby was acting on either yours or the Vice President’s orders. Either you, or Mr. Cheney, need to resign or be impeached (take your pick, if lying about an extramarital affair constitutes a high crime or misdemeanor, what do your multitudinous bad acts constitute?). If the series of articles in the Washington Post published last week is the truth, this was all Mr. Cheney’s doing, and you’re just a patsy. How frightening is that? The President of the United States of America is a patsy to a shadow government running out of the Vice President’s office?\
You deserve no less than to be run out of office, even if that means making Dick Cheney president. You should pay some price, under the laws you continually flout and except yourself from, for all the pain, misery and disgrace you’ve brought to your country, its citizens and the world.\
I know that you don’t care what I think. You’ve proven over and over again that reality and the truth have no effect on you. I don’t expect this to have any impact on anything, other than me using my First Amendment rights and putting a stake in the ground that I find your actions unacceptable and a disgraceful use of your authority as president.
Great editorial Kevin! Yout hit the nail on the head with the “law and order” comment. Hypocrisy, misdirection, outright lies and a philosophy of bait-and-switch policy making are all hallmarks of the Bush/Cheney administration. Even if Congress had the backbone to impeach both Bush and Cheney, we will be living with their legacy through the Roberts Supreme Court for the forseeable future.
Thanks for putting this ‘stake in the ground.’
Such great writing on a timely subject. Well said on all counts. The person who currently should be President is Nancy Pelosi via double impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
Well put. Sounds like you’re channeling Mr. Olbermann.
Yes!
I keep thinking this adminstration is going to stop one day and say “just kidding!”. This one is just over the top. I so hope Bush has just jumped the shark.
And, where is Pelosi? Is the I-word back on the table _now_?
This has been a fact-free presidency since the beginning…and proud of it. Sadly, I don’t see that changing. 567 more days, then some poor soul gets to pick up the pieces. Nice letter.
Fantastically written! And sadly, as you said, this will have no effect at all.
The only consolation that I have is that, given how little political pull Bush has with anyone these days, it seems unlikely that he can do much more damage.
The greatest fear that I have is that he and Cheney will come up with some way to surprise me.
That said, I must admit that the Libby thing strikes me as small potatoes compared to the other horrible stuff done by this administration. For me, the top of that list of shame would be torture – I still find it hard to comprehend that we are engaged in such hateful activities.
Well written Kevin… One question my republican uncle asked.. should we have impeached Ford for pardoning Nixon?
Maybe Ford was really the man in power back then and Nixon was just his puppet. 😉
I wasn’t paying attention back then (either pre-birth or shortly thereafter), but I think the situation was markedly different. Bush has commuted the sentence of a man who could implicate him and Cheney in a crime, and kept his 5th amendment rights in place, which means there’s nothing the prosecutors can offer Libby that Bush hasn’t already provided. I don’t think there’s any evidence that Ford was in the same position.
I also think this is just the last bad act in a string of them – the one that’s so clearly wrong, so indefensible, that we’re just done. I’ve clearly been “done” with the President for a while, but this latest outrage is only the latest in a disgraceful series of bad acts and criminal endeavors by this administration.
Dear Mr. President,
For less money than we have already spent on the Iraq war, we could have become 100 percent independent of any imported or domestic oil and coal, by investing in Solar PV. The numbers are clear; just do the math.
Is this site and song a joke? We are are in an infinitely better position today than we were 8 years ago. Some of you are too sheltered from reality to realize it. Move out of your mother’s basement, stop playing around on the internet and get a job. What was that? Get a job working at least 40 hours a week. Better yet… After you start making some money at your job, save it for your retirement instead of buying 20’s for your car.
Thank you for your insightful comment. Did you look at anything else on the site before you spewed that out? Did you think that there might be a real person behind those words?
For the “record”, I have a job where I work more than 40 hours a week, own my home, have a family, do not live with my mother or any other parent, speak at conferences, am a published author, respected authority in my industry and overall, a pretty decent guy according to my friends and family.
So we disagree. Fine. I would challenge you to list the ways in which anyone’s life, except the extremely wealthy, is truly better than it was 8 years ago. The middle class is shrinking, fewer people have health coverage, the dollar is in the toilet, the deficit is up, we’re less secure because our military is stretched thin and the rest of the civilized world alternates between outrage and pity at our ridiculous antics on the world stage, and better yet… terrorist attacks have risen every year since Bush has been in office. That doesn’t feel like better to me.
But, to call someone’s opinion a “joke” and to insult them (with silly things that can easily be refuted with facts, like the fact that I own my own home) is immature at best, and libelous at worst. And it wasn’t a song, it was a letter I sent to the White House.