Dennis Kucinich
The congressman discusses his articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush and what the public still doesn’t know about the Iraq war.
By Aaron Ludensky
August 4, 2008
Rep. Dennis Kucinich announces articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday, April 24, 2007. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke)Dennis Kucinich, who has represented Ohio’s tenth district since 1997, has proudly situated himself at the left end of the Democratic Party. He ran for president in 2004 and 2008 on an anti-war platform, with a signature proposal to balance the existing Department of Defense with a new “Department of Peace.” Kucinich co-sponsored the United States National Health Insurance Act in 2003, which aimed to create single-payer universal healthcare. He voted against the PATRIOT Act and against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He continues to vote against funding the war. Late last year, Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment against George W. Bush; he charged the President with illegally invading Iraq in the absence of an official declaration of war, not providing troops with adequate equipment, and deceiving the public with false evidence to support the invasion.
Campus Progress sat down with Kucinich to discuss the articles of impeachment, U.S. involvement in Iraq, and what the public still doesn’t know about the war.
Campus Progress: Why did you introduce the articles of impeachment?
Dennis Kucinich: America was led into an aggressive war based on lies. Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, had nothing to do with al-Qaida or 9/11, wasn’t trying to get uranium from Niger, and [had] no intention or capability of attacking the United States. There was no legitimate cause for war against Iraq, and the administration knew that, even though they led the American people to believe otherwise. We’ve had over 4,000 soldiers lose their lives, over a million of Iraqis have perished, [and] the war is going to cost $3 trillion. There has to be accountability.
CP: If that’s true, why don’t you have more support behind you?
DK: Whether or not another person supports it, even if I’m the only one, it is my obligation to stand up for the Constitution and stand up for what’s right. The question is: Is there any offense that is impeachable or can the president rule with impunity without being accountable to anyone? If that’s the fact, then he is not a president; he is a dictator. If we are going to continue to say the word democracy we cannot let this president get away with taking us into a war based on lies and everything that has followed from it: the destruction of civil liberties, inflation of the military budget, [and] destruction of the domestic agenda. All that goes together. Everything that’s happened in the last seven years revolves around the Bush administration’s taking us into Iraq.
CP: Back in 2003, you were one of the few members of Congress who didn’t support the war. Why did Congress not exercise its authority to prevent the Bush administration from entering into war?
DK: All the information was on public record if you took the time to read it. But unfortunately, people don’t always take the time to read. I took the time to read and I knew that there was no case for Iraq having anything to do with 9/11 and that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. There was no evidence.
CP: You’re saying that all the information was already on the books. Does that mean we could have predicted the current situation in Iraq?
DK: Everything was predictable. It was predictable that if we went in there it was not going to be a short involvement. It was predictable that it was going to cost trillions of dollars. Lawrence Lindsey had told the president that it was going to cost much more than [Bush said] and he lost his job for that. It was predictable that there would be a massive loss of civilian lives with the approach that was being taken. And it was predictable that, given the Vice President’s meetings with oil companies at the beginning of the war, that there was going to be a connection to oil.
CP: Where do you think public opinion stands on impeachment?
DK: I don’t think people really know what this administration has done. I don’t think that the public understands. That’s why we have to have Judiciary Committee hearings. If you take a poll of something that the people have no idea about you’re not going to get accurate results. But if people learn that Iraq didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction and that the Bush administration knew that when they told Congress that they did, do you realize how public opinion would shift very quickly? If the people were given the facts, they would know the right thing to do. When people know the truth, everything changes. That’s why it’s so important that that the Judiciary Committee schedules a formal impeachment hearing.
CP: As we edge closer to November, how do you think the articles of impeachment could affect the tone of campaigning and might they affect the next administration?
DK: It’s quite likely that the issues that I’ve raised will become stronger after this election, after this president and his administration leave office. But they will not be able to escape the consequences of their violations of U.S. and international law. So I can’t tell you that impeachment will have an effect at all on this election. But we have to watch and see if the [next] president will try to pardon people. We have to see what happens between the time of the election and the time of the new president taking office. That’s going to be a very important period. I think the impact of the work that’s being done now will become stronger as time goes on. That doesn’t depend on the election that depends on the demand for truth.
CP: Are there alternatives to impeachment that still might achieve accountability you’re looking for?
DK: The Constitution doesn’t provide for it. The Constitution says that if the executive violates his oath of office, if he commits a crime, that he should be subject to impeachment. That’s what the Constitution says. It doesn’t say that he gets suspended; it doesn’t say that he gets his pay docked; it doesn’t say that his vacations cancelled; it doesn’t say that he loses his pension. What it says is that he should be subject to impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors and if the House votes favorably, then he then goes to the Senate for a trial. That’s what the Constitution sets forth. It’s possible that the House could vote for impeachment and the Senate not hold a trial before the election. Somebody can be impeached after they leave office so that they’d never be able to hold another position of public trust. There is an issue here, though, that goes way beyond this moment. It’s something that can only be measured within the construct of the constitution keeping [us] safe, but we’re not safe as long as long as we don’t know the truth.
Aaron Ludensky is an Editorial Intern at Campus Progress and a senior at University of Maryland-Baltimore County.
Social Bookmarking
--------
Comments
!
Even if no impeachment hearings are ever held during the current Congress, a determined Rep Dennis Kucinich has now established for his constituents and the posterity of the American people an official record of misconduct by the Bush administration. Bravo Rep Kucinich, America’s most courageous congressman. Bravo!
— Lance Ciepiela - Aug 4, 04:05 PM - #He’s not at the left end of the Democratic Party, he’s dead center on almost all his positions there. He’s at the left end of Congress, sure, but Congress is ridiculously out of touch.
— Zaid - Aug 6, 12:28 AM - #I agree with Lance and Zaid:
— Marsh - Aug 7, 12:50 AM - #Rep. Dennis Kucinich deserves our thanks for telling us the truth.
I don’t think it’s a criticism of Kucinich to say he’s at the left end of the Democratic Party or the Democrats in Congress — isn’t it just true? That’s not to say that he’s at the left end of America, or that his views are nuts. The Democratic party, meaning the elected officials, convention delegates, etc. — just isn’t that left.
— David - Aug 7, 10:40 AM - #I dont believe it—not this country is “mostly conservative”. I think that that is a ploy of the right to convince us to nominate more mainstream candidates.
— KDelphi - Aug 7, 05:06 PM - #Nancy Pelosi should be held accountable for taking impeachment off of the table. No president ever deserved impeachment more, and it is our moral duty to follow through. Pelosi should be removed as Speaker of the House for not doing her duty. Thank you Dennis Kucinich for standing up for what is right and just.
— Michael Barrach - Aug 7, 05:23 PM - #beleive one third of what you hear & read—some people will do anything for attention —so many hind sight experts—he was absolutely non existent during the time of 911
— j reyno - Aug 7, 06:17 PM - #I like Kucinich enough that I donated to both of his presidential campaigns and his recent Congressional re-election primary. So, it’s frustrating when he doesn’t answer the question “...why don’t you have more support behind you?”.
Instead of offering an explanation of the level of support, he argues that it doesn’t matter how few support the truth. In answer to the question of why Congress didn’t act, his implication is that the rest of Congress are too lazy to read the available record – or worse, spineless co-conspirators-by-default.
Yet now, it’s difficult to believe that any member of Congress still isn’t aware that there were no WMDs or who hasn’t heard the criticisms of the Iraqi Oil Law imposed as a ‘benchmark’ for allowing Iraqi sovereignty. Most of the rest of Congress has been ignoring Kucinich as an unrealistic idealist, disconnected from the political reality that it’s career suicide to act on a truth that an insufficiently large majority of Americans believe.
Kucinich is right when he says, “ I don’t think people really know what this administration has done.” Something like 70% of Americans get all of their news from TV. Except for a wimpily even-handed PBS, practically all TV networks are owned by half a dozen corporations that push the Bush imperial agenda in exchange for media market ownership deregulation. Consequently, years after it was well established that there were no WMDs found in Iraq, something like 40% of Americans still believe that WMDs were found.
It’s not just the administration that was lying, it was the mainstream media as well. Politicians can fight one, but not both.
Where Kucinich comes off as an unrealistic idealist is in saying that, “If the people were given the facts, they would know the right thing to do.” Being given the facts, particularly by a partisan Congressional committee (that will be represented as such by a media also threatened by an official assertion of the truth contrary to what they reported) will not necessarily persuade ‘the people’ that it’s the truth.
Too many people believed the lies they were told by the mainstream media because they wanted to believe them. They took comfort in believing that ‘we’ are the victims of irrational terrorism instead of the perpetrators of coldly calculated imperialism. It’s very disturbing to consider the possibility that ‘we’ might not always be the ‘good guys’ who can do no wrong in foreign policy. People want to believe that the president is motivated by the ideals of spreading democracy, instead of being a figurehead for a global corporate organized crime syndicate using ‘muscle’ for profit. Particularly, it’s too frightening for most people to accept that, in our ‘democracy’ we have no control whatsoever over what our government does in our name.
You can present people with the facts (and even juicy quotes, like “of course the real reason we invaded Iraq is that it floats on a sea of oil” – Paul Wolfowitz) and too many people won’t be emotionally able to accept it as the truth. It is profoundly threatening to realize that one has been deceived – and thoroughly deceived for many years – about something of extreme importance (war and peace, life and death – and taxes). The implication is that your bullshit detectors were inadequate, that you’re maybe not quite intellectually adequate to the tasks of citizenship, that maybe you’re, well, stupid, that, at the very least, you’re guilty of supporting immorality. When, after believing for six years that black is white, you’re presented with evidence that black really is black, that means that your model of reality is dangerously different from reality – to an extent that it’s not just politics, but maybe everything you think you know – the cognitive dissonance is unbearable. It’s human nature to reject it no matter how many facts are presented in support of it.
I’ve been wishing for impeachment for this whole millennium so far. I don’t have high expectations for Kucinich’s success in persuing it. However, I still believe that it is essential for Congress to bring and try the case, and to convict (regardless of whether there are any concrete consequences for the perpetrators) the guilty if there is ever to be any hope of preventing the same crimes against humanity from being committed by subsequent administrations.
A relevant quote from the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn: “A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.”
— G.P. Franck-Weiby - Aug 7, 07:48 PM - #Mr. Kucinich’ should be tried for treason.
— Suebee - Aug 7, 09:40 PM - #NO, Bush and Chaney arenot totally innocent, but they have kept the Muslims from attacking here again,
YES I know how many events have been stopped.
With the likes of Kucinich’, you will soon be under Sharia Law (Muslim law)
I think Senator Kucinich should be given a medal for going after this corrupt administration, and President Bush specifically. This is something that should have been done several years ago. I hope he is successful and that Pelosi has the courage to support him. Please, don’t let Bush get away with murder!
— Sandra Haire - Aug 7, 09:58 PM - #Thanks Dennis for your continued efforts to protect the Constitution and our rights. We need more true patriots such as yourself.
— Bruce Freeman - Aug 8, 11:14 AM - #“There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don’t want any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive. You retorted: “Well, you don’t love our country.”... No, I don’t love my country, if pointing out what is unjust in what we love amounts to not loving, if insisting that what we love should measure up to the finest image we have of her amounts to not loving… if at times we seemed to prefer justice to our country, this is because we simply wanted to love our country in justice, as we wanted to love her in truth and in hope. This is what separated us from you; we made demands. You were satisfied to serve the power of your nation and we dreamed of giving ours her truth….” ~A. Camus — from Letters to A German Friend
Thank you Dennis. Again and again for saying the TRUTH. He WAS around during 9/11 – He DID speak out – the majority of American Idiots weren’t listening because we are ENGULFED with FEAR!! There is nothing to fear but fear itself! But Kucinich did say one thing incorrect – we do NOT live under a dictator – we live in a FASCIST STATE! And it grows worse everyday – with every trip to Wal-Mart, to Meijer, to all your big box corporations. I realize we cannot live without corps anymore (not comfortably anyway), but should our politicians let them have a say in our laws? Our justice system? Our votes?! He!! No we should not. But they do. Every time you shop in their stores, every time you decide that our freedom is less precious than your gadgets and doohickeys. Guess who loses? YOU DO! The U.S. does moron WalMarters! That crap isn’t made here. None of it. No part of the production is anymore. Oh the stores are here – and they keep wages down, the environment pitiful and you complacent and dumb.
This isn’t just about a moron that has devastated this country, this is about OUR COUNTRY that is going to sh!t because of our lack of morals people!! Wake up. Stop and smell the roses – because if Dennis isn’t heard and instead ignored by media – then it will be the last rose you smell.
— Jennifer - Aug 13, 02:18 PM - #Thank goodness for Kuchinich – I have never spent more time or money to help move America forward and out of this mess – Congress’ passing the CMS Reform in March was the last straw – they essentially blocked the 1999 Supreme Court mandate, The Olmstead Act, in one vote. We worked hard to have them vote to delay it in July – but this Administration, and adding extreme, nebulous, religious factions is destroying America.
Thank goodness you are watching through the campuses … and Kudos to Kuchinich – I’m writing in my vote.
— Carol - Aug 18, 02:07 AM - #Isn’t it interesting?!? That the left is associated with anti-war, pro-peace, people’s rights, unionization for workers (helping them to attain a strong voice to management), health care for all, and all that? If that’s what it means to be left, WHERE DO I SIGN?
— Raff Ruff - Aug 27, 11:51 AM - #It is to be regretted that this has virtually no chance of success.
Privately, I consider Kuccinich to more on the center than on the left … this is because I feel that it is Congress that is out of touch with reality.
But I agree that Kuccinich should be praised. It must have taken tremendous courage to do what he has done, even though we won’t see any impeachments come out of this I fear.
— Chris - Sep 11, 02:25 AM - #