NOTABLE QUOTES

"In two-and-a-half years Bush has succeeded in creating two new Talibans in Iraq."
Ghassan Attiyah, an Iraqi commentator.


"...There has been nothing in our time like the Bush Administration's obsession with secrecy. It's an old story: the greater the secrecy, the deeper the corruption."
Bill Moyers

"We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War."
Jonathan Alter, Newsweek, 12/19/05

"Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a
court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
George W. Bush, April 2004, At a Town Hall meeting in Buffalo

"It is true that [Hussein] systematically concealed those [WMD] programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. He was given an ultimatum - and he made his choice for war."
George W. Bush

"But it is not true that Hussein blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. In fact, he acquiesced to a U.N. ultimatum and let them back into Iraq in November 2002. Chief inspector Hans Blix said his team was finally given free rein to examine suspected WMD sites, but Bush forced the inspectors to leave so the invasion could proceed."
And...
"Bush continues to discuss al-Qaeda as if it is a powerful international force on par with Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, when many analysts see it as a fringe organization that was driven out of most Islamic countries, almost to the ends of the earth - or in this case to the mountains of Afghanistan."

"Without doubt, al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists exploited a letdown in U.S. security in 2001 to conduct an extraordinary attack on New York and Washington, but a realistic assessment of its actual clout is important in calibrating a response."

"If al-Qaeda is actually a marginal organization that can be isolated even more by the West adopting a respectful approach to the Muslim world, then Bush's approach of invading Arab countries - and curtailing American liberties - makes no sense, unless Bush's real motives are something else: say, controlling Middle East resources and transforming the United States into a modern one-party state with him or his allies in permanent control."
Robert Parry, The New Madness Of King George, 12/19/05, rense.com

"H.Res.635, asks that the Congress establish a select committee to investigate whether members of the administration made moves to invade Iraq before receiving congressional authorization, manipulated pre-war intelligence, encouraged the use of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, and used their positions to retaliate against critics of the war."
"The select committee would be asked to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment of Bush and Cheney."

"The second resolution, H.Res.636, asks that the Congress to censure the president "for failing to respond to requests for information concerning allegations that he and others in his Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq, misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for the war, countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in Iraq, and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of his Administration, for failing to adequately account for specific misstatements he made regarding the war, and for failing to comply with Executive Order 12958." (Executive Order 12958, issued in 1995 by former President Bill Clinton, seeks to promote openness in government by prescribing a uniform system for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national security information.)"

"A third resolution, H.Res.637, would censure Cheney for a similar set of complaints."
"The people of this country are waking up to the severity of the lies, crimes, and abuses of power committed by this president and his administration," says Jon Bonifaz, a co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, an alliance of more than100 grassroots groups that has detailed Bush administration wrongdoing and encouraged a Congressional response. Bonifaz, an attorney and the author of the book, Warrior King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush (Nation Books), argues that, "Now is the time to return to the rule of law and to hold those who have defied the Constitution accountable for their actions."

"Bonifaz is right. But it is unlikely that the effort to censure Bush and Cheney, let alone impeach them, will get far without significant organizing around the country. After all, the House is controlled by allies of the president who have displayed no inclination to hold him to account. Indeed, only a few Democrats, such as Conyers, have taken seriously the Constitutional issues raised by the administration's misdeeds."
"Members of Congress in both parties will need to feel a lot of heat if these improtant measures are going to get much traction in this Congress."
John Nichols, Raising the Issue of Impeachment, The Nation [THE ONLINE BEAT], 12/20/05