Taken together the four topics in the grab-bag title of this piece, if played by Democrats with reasonable (and uncharacteristic) skill, could lead to serious Republican setbacks in 2006. A multiple-front approach -- from Iraq to values -- could be triggered by the smoking gun that would at last receive substantial media coverage if only Democrats were to force the issue with singular resolve. I write, of course, of the Downing Street memo.
This first-hand account of Bush’s illegal war-machinations is devastatingly blunt. Because of its ample circulation within the politically aware crowd -- you -- I’ll briefly quote only that which is bluntest and emphasize that which is most relevant for our purpose: “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record…. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran…. The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action.”
The Downing Street memo is now followed by evidence that “the RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war…. The systematic targeting of Iraqi air defences appears to contradict Foreign Office legal guidance appended to the leaked briefing paper which said that the allied aircraft were only ‘entitled to use force in self-defence where such a use of force is a necessary and proportionate response to actual or imminent attack from Iraqi ground systems.’”
If these reports aren’t enough to spur the House Judiciary Committee to seek full House authority for an impeachment inquiry, nothing is. And that is precisely what will happen: Nothing. Despite even the incredibly low standard set for impeachment during the Clinton administration, nothing, no matter how blatantly illegal and immoral, will prompt this right-wing House to investigate its right-wing president. Nothing.
And that makes the House as culpable as the White House, in that it’s perpetrating a cover-up and committing, literally, obstruction of justice. Because of the lives needlessly lost in the illegality of Iraq, it’s worse than Watergate. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee could relentlessly focus its resources on this one theme -- just as Republicans successfully unified their message in ’94 -- hitting, as well, the “immoral” angle to recapture those salvageable groups of the moral-values electorate.
But the impeachment process is House territory, leaving as an open question an aggressive campaign route for Senate Democrats to travel. Oddly enough -- and I admit this is a real stretch, but desperate times and all that -- the Iraq scandal could be brought to bear on the business of Supreme Court nominations.
Senate Democratic incumbents and hopefuls could argue (in states not solidly red) that any president who acts with such utter contempt and disregard for international and domestic laws has forfeited his constitutional right to name this country’s highest legal arbiters. He simply hasn’t the legal or moral standing. Supreme Court nominees’ judicial temperaments could be removed as a political factor. It would make no difference what their legal philosophies are. What matters -- what counts -- is that the president has neutralized his office’s power to nominate until a proper legal inquiry into reliably reported illegal acts has been conducted. (Despite my earlier disclaimer that this argument is a stretch, can’t you easily imagine Republicans pulling a stunt like this if the situation were reversed?)
But since the House has relinquished its constitutional obligation to investigate the president’s immoral and evidently illegal actions, so the argument would go, Senate Democrats are forced to filibuster all judicial nominations from this point forward. The nuclear option would of course be deployed, but, the argument continues, since Senate Republicans choose to condone the president’s illegal, immoral acts -- and they certainly have the raw power to do so -- then they themselves are as guilty of obstructing justice as their House counterparts. Just two bullying chambers protecting the head bully.
And all of this hammering -- illegal, immoral, illegal, immoral, illegal … -- sets up the Republican wanna-be successor to Bush, who could unhappily wind up spending all his time explaining why his party never investigated Bush’s criminal conduct.
But Democrats must take it to the media. They must initiate. They must pound.
While it’s more than reasonable to assume the Republican Congress will do nothing to investigate this president and thus leave itself open to blistering Democratic fire in 2006 and beyond, such a strategy perhaps unreasonably assumes some semblance of a unified message on the Democrats’ part. Any unified message, for that matter. And there’s the rub.