Cindy Sheehan has announced she is going to run for Congress. That begs the question why? She had threatned to run unless House Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved to impeach President Bush. The Speaker with widom decided that was not in the best intrest of the Country and has decided not to pursue that course. What good would Cindy Sheehan really do for her Congressional District? Not much they would remove the most powerful person in the house and replace her with a women who is focused on only one issue. Now we can just watch to see if a congressional distict decides to self-destruct.
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Comments: 21
Every time someone uses "begs the question" to mean "raises the question" my high school geometry teacher spins in his grave.
Stages of dealing with grief:
http://fl.essortment.com/stagesgrief_rbdm.htm
8) Hope - the sharp, ever present pain of grief will lessen and hope for a continued, yet different life emerges. Plans are made for the future and the individual is able to move forward in life with good feelings knowing they will always remember and have memories of the loved one.
She is at the last step!
She took her ball and ran home or in her case ran for office.
What about Newt?
http://www.newt.org/backpage.asp?art=4745
:-)
PS
Regardless of what her son thought of the war, he wasn't a coward when he answered the call. Only she can answer the question of what her son would think of her now.
I voted for Bush, the first and second time, but if I knew then . . . .
I feel sorry for Sheehan but it seems to me she's been used from the first and chose to believe her press. I don't like Mr. Bush. That's pretty obvious from what I have written. I consider him incompetent. However, unlike the Republicans, Democrats don't currently see any reason to tie the country in knots trying to impeach him when they absolutely cannot succeed because they don't have the votes. The Republicans did this with Clinton and lost. Why should Democrats pursue a failed policy?
A better use of Sheehan's time, grief, and activism is to work with Pelosi to rally the anti-war forces to come up with a better way to get us out of Iraq while strengthening our ability to protect Americans and capture bin Laden and other terrorists. The way forward is to reallocate resources to accomplishing real goals rather than wasting money on 190,000 guns we can't locate, defense contractors wasteful overruns on budgets with no results, and worsening the most egregious foreign policy blunder in the history of government.
Nobody in congress has the right to choose when to impeach or not, based upon what THEY think is best. They all swear an oath of office that commands them to uphold and defend the constitution and the laws of the land. When a president violates both, he needs to be impeached. Any congress person who refuses to do so is violating his/her oath of office.
It is not illegal if congress gives their approval which they did
aggression against the people and the sovereign nation of Iraq is criminal under international law. Waging a war of aggression is a crime under customary international law. It is in point of fact the supreme international war crime:
The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which followed World War II, called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing...to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole:
"Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. In his report to the State Department, Justice Jackson wrote: "No political or economic situation can justify" the crime of aggression. He also said: "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
Bush's war on Iraq is a war of aggression. "Aggression is the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations, as set out in this definition," according to General Assembly Resolution 3314, passed in the wake of Vietnam.
The only two situations where the UN Charter permits the use of armed force against another state is in self-defense, or when authorized by the Security Council. Iraq had not invaded the U.S., or any other country, Iraq did not constitute an imminent threat to any country, and the Security Council never sanctioned Bush's war. Bush and the officials in his administration are committing the crime of aggression.
Virtually every Western democracy has ratified the treaty of the International Criminal Court, except the United States. Bush knows that the Court will eventually prosecute leaders for the crime of aggression. Mindful that he and his officials could become defendants, Bush renounced the Court, and extracted bilateral immunity agreements from more than 80 countries.
This year, however, Bush unsuccessfully sought to ram through the Security Council an immunity resolution that would exempt U.S. personnel from the Court's jurisdiction. But shortly after the photographs of U.S. torture of Iraqi prisoners emerged, the Council refused to put its imprimatur on preferential treatment for the United States.
Bush knows that the Court will also punish war crimes. Pursuant to policies promulgated by Bush and Rumsfeld, U.S. forces have engaged in widespread torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Bush admitted in his 2003 State of the Union address that he had sanctioned summary executions of suspected terrorists.
Torture, inhuman treatment, and willful killing are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, treaties ratified by the United States. Grave breaches of Geneva are considered war crimes under our federal War Crimes Act of 1996. American nationals who commit war crimes abroad can receive life in prison, or even the death penalty if the victim dies. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, a commander can be held liable if he knew or should have known his inferiors were committing war crimes and he failed to prevent or stop them.
The first U.S. attack on Fallujah, last April, killed 900-1000 people, mostly noncombatants. It was conducted in retaliation for the killing and mutilation of the bodies of four Blackwater Security Consulting mercenaries. Collective punishment against an occupied population for offenses committed by others also violates the Geneva Conventions.
Bush has sought to cover his crimes by putting an Iraqi face on his brutal war. The New York Times reported: "Thousands of Iraqi troops have moved into position with their American counterparts and are expected to take part ... American soldiers are to do most of the fighting on the way in, clearing the way for the Iraqi security forces to take control once the insurgents are defeated. With this method, Iraqi and American leaders hope for the best of both worlds: American muscle and an Iraqi face."
Following the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing . . . to initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Bush's aggressive war against the people of Iraq promises to kill many more American soldiers and untold numbers of Iraqis. Nuremberg prosecutor Justice Jackson labeled the crime of aggression "the greatest menace of our times." More than 50 years later, his words still ring true.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110904A.shtml
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court refers to the crime of aggression as one of the "most serious crimes of concern to the international community", and provides that the crime falls within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
- Robert H. Jackson, chief American prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials