The Beat, Jennifer Lynne Ziemann and Michael O’ McCarthy —
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J- You originally started with impeachment of Cheney and that has expanded to impeachment of Bush and Cheney. How do you see that playing out? Do you think there will be hearings?
I think there will be hearings, because the American people are demanding them. The idea of Democratic leaders saying that impeachment is off the table is not where the American people are… The minute that Congress, the House of Representatives, says under no circumstances will there be an impeachment, you not only forgo accountability in the part of the Executive but you license further abuses. It is a very dangerous thing for our leadership to have said that.
J- Do you believe there will be a war crimes trial?
It is a separate issue. Let’s take it a step at a time in terms of the various remedies. One is impeachment, when someone is removed from office, there can be no greater punishment if you happen to be a high elected official, president or vice president and you’re removed from office. That may settle it. On the other hand if the president or vice president for whatever reason will not be removed from office, I believe they should be subject to criminal prosecution. If we can’t get criminal prosecution in this country, there are international laws that they violated. But there is a basis for prosecution under the laws of the United States.
J-What do you feel about the statement “The US does not torture”?
Well, its an obvious lie and the US does not wage aggressive war, and the US does not exploit the natural resources of other countries, and the history of the US is a story of a righteous nation that wars with the forces of evil. There are a lot of mythologies that percolate kind of like methane bubbles up from certain landfills. The mythologies lend themselves to critical inspection, critical thinking. Any critical thinking applied to the issue of torture easily discards the notion that our government has not been involved in torture – of course it has. I do not know if the President saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib. I don’t know if the President saw the pictures out of Guatanamo, but unless he is talking of America in abstraction, government people acting upon the orders of government officials have in fact tortured. Period.
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