GO Vermont!!

Five Vermont towns – Newfane, Brookfield, Dummerston, Marlboro and Putney – have passed resolutions calling for Rep. Bernie Sanders (Ind.), their sole representative in the House, to file articles of impeachment against the President, according to an Associated Press report.

In five Vermont communities, a centuries-old tradition of residents gathering in town halls to conduct local business became a vehicle to send a message to Washington: Impeach the president.

An impeachment article, approved by a paper ballot 121-29 in Newfane Tuesday, calls on Vermont’s lone member of the U.S. House, independent Rep. Bernie Sanders, to file articles of impeachment against President Bush, alleging he misled the nation into the Iraq war and engaged in illegal domestic spying.

“It absolutely affects us locally,” said Newfane select board member Dan DeWalt, who drafted the impeachment article. “It’s our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, who are dying” in the war in Iraq.

(snip)

Sanders issued a statement after the Newfane vote saying that although the Bush administration “has been a disaster for our country, and a number of actions that he has taken may very well not have been legal,” given the reality that the Republicans control the House and the Senate, “it would be impractical to talk about impeachment.”

Jim Barnett, chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, said Sanders should reject the resolution: “We should not be impeaching presidents just because we disagree with them.”

We shouldn’t impeach them over blowjobs either, but that’s been done – thanks to a Republican Congress. So why do they have a problem impeaching one who admitted he broke the law several times and intends to continue doing so. Tell me, Mr. Barnett, what’s wrong with impeaching one who has ignored and/or gutted the Constitution?

*crickets chirping*

Oh. That only applies to Democratic Presidents. Hmmm. Glad we cleared that up.

This Is What Civil War Looks Like

From the Associated Press:

Gunmen in camouflage uniforms stormed the offices of a private Iraqi security company and kidnapped as many as 50 employees, police said Wednesday, as U.S. and Iraqi patrols discovered 24 bodies in various parts of the capital.

(snip)

An American military patrol found 18 of the bodies — all males — in an abandoned minibus Tuesday night on a road between two notorious mostly Sunni west Baghdad neighborhoods.

The bodies were brought to Yarmouk Hospital and lined up on stretchers for identification. Most had bruising indicating they were strangled and two were shot, said Dr. Muhanad Jawad, who initially thought they had been hanged. Police believed at least two of the men were foreign Arabs.

Police found the bodies of six more men — four of them strangled and two shot — discarded in other parts of the city.

(snip)

One bomb hidden under a parked car detonated as police from the interior minister’s protection force were driving through central Baghdad, killing two officers and injuring another, police said. Four bystanders were injured in the blast. The minister was not in the convoy at the time.

Another roadside bomb hit a police patrol in north Baghdad, killing two officers and injuring four others, police said.

A third one missed an American convoy on the northern outskirts of Baghdad and killed two Iraqi boys who were selling gasoline by the roadside, police said. He estimated their age at 10 or 11.

A car bomb targeting another U.S. convoy in north Baghdad injured five civilian bystanders, police said. There was no immediate word of American casualties.

An Iraqi patrol saw four gunmen pull a man from the trunk of a car and shoot him to death in west Baghdad, police reported. They said the patrol tried to intercede, but the gunmen fired at them and fled.

More gunmen pulled over a school bus carrying about 25 high school girls and shot the driver in front of his terrified passengers. The wounded driver was rushed to hospital, police said.

Tell me again….why did we invade Iraq?

Oh right, I remember! WMDs and mushroom clouds. No, that’s not it. Umm, to get rid of Saddam? No, I forgot we aren’t using that one anymore. Was it to bring democracy? Um, no…that didn’t work quite so well. To bring peace and stability to Iraq and the Middle East? Fine job we’re doing so far…

Hmmm…guess I ought to call Unka Karl and Gen. Pace to get the latest “It’s not a civil war.” talking points.

Sounds Familiar…

This sounds a lot like what they were saying about Iraq three years ago. From MSNBC News Services:

Meanwhile, the United States and its European allies said Wednesday that Iran’s intransigence over its nuclear program has left the world no choice but to ask for the Security Council to take action against the Islamic regime.

(snip)

On Tuesday, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice both warned of dire consequences if Iran continued its nuclear fuel enrichment, while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed that Iranian Revolutionary Guard elements had infiltrated Iraq to cause trouble.

At what point do you think Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld will start telling us that we have to act before the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud?

Iran, for its part, isn’t backing down. In fact, they’ve issued a challenge:

Iran said on Wednesday the United States could feel “harm and pain” if the U.N. Security Council took up the issue of Tehran’s nuclear research.

“The United States may have the power to cause harm and pain but it is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if the United States wishes to choose that path, let the ball roll,” it said in a statement obtained by Reuters on the sidelines of a U.N. nuclear watchdog board meeting in Vienna.

(snip)

Tehran also said Wednesday it would have to review its oil export policy if world pressure mounted over its disputed atomic work.

Asked whether Iran would use an “oil weapon” as the world’s fourth largest crude oil exporter, Javad Vaeedi, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told Reuters: “We will not (do so now), but if the situation changes, we will have to review our oil policies.”

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, had said on Sunday that Tehran was not keen to use oil as a weapon in its escalating row with the West “but if conditions change it could affect our decision.”

He did not specify what he meant by a change in conditions.

Iran is the fourth biggest oil exporter in the world and the second largest in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. There is broad international concern that isolating Iran could drive up already high oil prices.

Which makes me worry – suppose Iran does cut its oil production, leading to an incredible increase in gasoline prices for Americans (because, like the Prez said, we’re addicted to oil). Will Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld consider that an act of war, thus necessitating an American invasion of Iraq?

One which, by the way, we couldn’t hope to win – especially with so many of our troops currently mired in Iraq. BushCo would need a draft to create an army large enough – and that dog won’t hunt.