Will George fess up to the high crimes and walk away...

Or will he, Cheney, and the others be led off in chains and orange jumpsuits for the lie, and for orchestrating the 9/11 crimes of mass murder (the purpose of which was to justify their oil-based empire)?  The facts are now breaking through.

Gentle reader, where will you stand when the truth stands starkly revealed?

US Representative John Conyers on Thursday, June 16, launched an unofficial preliminary inquiry into the perfidy—deliberate breach of faith; calculated violation of trust; treachery—of the president in taking the country to war.  The meeting was held in a cramped Capitol hideaway conference room.  (Republicans tried to further sabotage the gathering by holding key House votes during the afternoon.)

Roughly three-dozen people, including two-dozen Democratic members of Congress, attended this meeting.  Several citizen-activists testified, including University of Illinois Professor Dr. Francis Boyle, eminent legal scholar, member of Amnesty International, expert on international law, tireless human-rights worker, and advocate of impeachment.  The event was carried on CSpan, and may be found under On Capitol Hill: The Downing Street Memo.

Following the meeting, Conyers and half a dozen other lawmakers walked to the Oval Office to hand deliver petitions containing 560,000 signatures.  These petitions demand a detailed explanation for facts presented in the Downing Street Memo, in which a British government official asserts, in late 2002, Bush-Cheney-Rumsfield will go to war and, as justification, will fabricate evidence of weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi links to Al Qaeda/9-11.

Several organizations of substance and quality want to bring the president and others in his cabal to justice.  Please find a succinct summary of the case for impeachment at The Four Reasons.  Also find the best information of American-government complicity and leadership in commission of the crime of 9/11 on http://www.911truth.org/.  For our own part, Reason to Freedom has presented an integrated argument for impeachment and 911 prosecutions.

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.  The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

— Marcus Aurelius

In attempts to redress the wrongs of Iraq-9/11, two chief argumentative obstacles exist:

• The classic logical fallacy tu quoque—Latin for "you're another," tu quoque is an ad hominem fallacy.  Basically it states whatever is alleged cannot be true because the person making the claim is flawed in some way.  Rush Limbaugh, for example, is a master of ad hominem; indeed, he's turned it into a sophisticated media-propaganda tool.
• The blankout—a term commonly used by Ayn Rand and her adherents; this is simply the refusal to raise the level of one's consciousness to consider a proposition.  Typically, Blankout Guy is a victim of mass hysteria engendered by pathological mysticism.  His consciousness operates in what is known as the perceptual-emotional (see-feel) mode without any intervening process of conceptual thought.

With the Impeachment-911 project, opponents typically cite the "leftism" of those proposing the case.  For example, John Conyers—by the way, the most common ad hominem target is Michael Moore and his devastatingly accurate documentary Fahrenheit 9/11—is arguably a leftist who believes in a collectivist matriarchal state where the government takes care of everyone.  Even if that's true, so what?

As rational libertarians, we know collectivism, left or right, is a flawed political philosophy.  But any proposition uttered by a collectivist—any proposition uttered by anyone—must be judged true or false on its own merits.

If the sky is blue, it doesn't matter who says so.

The blankout is harder to accept, because it is closely aligned with willful refusal of modern major media systems to discover and convey the truth.  I once referred a young coworker to the superior arguments of Center for an Informed America regarding the logical and technical impossibilities of the 9/11 "official story."  My coworker replied, "I'll take the Washington Post's conclusions over some guy named Dave."

(Actually, his response is an ad hominem blankout.)

Blankout is a dismissal of the truth, an arbitrary refusal to consider rational argument.  Like James Taggart's, "Don't bother me, don't bother me, don't bother me."(1)  In other words, "I'm too lazy to weigh the facts and your arguments, so I'll blithely accept what our leaders, and their propaganda ministry tell me.  And even if what you say is true, it doesn't matter."  It's no accident young Blankout Guy readily becomes young Nazi Guy.

The antidote to ad hominem and blankout is a culture of reason.  Obviously, we aren't there yet (or 9/11 and Iraq would not have happened).  But we will be.  That's the mission of our site and the purpose of the underlying reason-liberty movement (RLM) now securing a solid foothold on the planet.

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Next day I'm in the coffee shop, I bring up the concept of impeachment to my waitress friend, Nadia, aka Eastern European Girl.  She's recently from Romania, former fiefdom of Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu (Geshundheit!) and surely has some data points on imperial perfidy.

"Nadia, you were, what, 10 years old when The Wall came down, Communism was falling, and Ceausescu was deposed—killed with his wife, wasn't it, late 1989.  You think we have any prospects for getting rid of Bush?"

Ask a 25-year-old American girl such a question, and prepare for snippets from a Lindsay Lohan or Hilary Duff teen movie, "Well, like, I remember the burning bush in the Bible, and all, so God was probably behind it, you know, so, geez, hard to see how I guess.  At least, that's what my friend Julie would say... I think.  Does this have anything to do with suntanning?"

But Nadia is quick and bright, tall and nice to look at, and speaks better English than my high-school English teacher.

She tells me, "I was too young to know what was going on, but I have uncle who was having mostly trouble for talking back.  He got bad jobs for that, was passed by.  We were afraid for him to be telling authorities so straightforward what he thinks."

I come back, "It sounds like you could get by in Romania if you didn't spout off and didn't point out the many sins of who's in charge.  I assume a lot of people were aware of crimes of the dictator and his boys, but didn't have a way to change it until the protests."

"Yes," Nadia replies, "but it is different here.  Here you have freedom to speak, to read, to meet with others for causes.  Lot of ordinary people not connected to government have money.  This is not like Romania.  So if official lies or does crime, you can fix.  In Romania, ordinary persons cannot fix government.  It is still a little like that back there, but better than with the Communists."

"So what are you telling me, Nadia, you think Bush should go?"

I can tell she has work to do, but she cares enough about our conversations to finish this one.  I'm a big tipper.

"I have been reading papers, and have some American history, in university, too.  In early 70s your president Nixon committed many violations of law, and lies to cover up his crime.  He was most powerful man in the world then.  He had police, too, violated many people who opposed him.  But American people rise against the lie, and he goes.

"Ceausescu is also very powerful, have sadistic police machine.  But he could not stand in wave of people's desire for freedom.  And for truth in government.  Freedom and truth are together, more powerful than any dictator, any bad ruler.

"Bush has lied about war, it is obvious.  It is for oil.  He kills and maims with his soldiers many innocent people in other countries who are no threat to Americans.  Young soldiers also die and are mangled... for no reason.  When America thinks it is government of world, and it goes to occupy all these countries, then it abuses people in those countries by bombing, prison, torture... well, most ordinary people, then they hate America.

"Yes, if you ask me, Bush and his people should go.  He is not America.  America is freedom and truth, not stupid bully and slaughterer of women and children.  And yes, even with all his power, he can fall, like Ceausescu, Saddam, or any other hateful leader.  Here you have very good chance to see him fall."

"Girl," I say, "In the immortal words of Clint Eastwood, you just made my day."

Let's hope for a shred of courage among my countrymen to rise to her sentiments.