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This Week You Need To Know
The House of Representatives' four-day debate on President Bush's war in Iraq, which concluded with a decisive 246 to 182 vote of disapproval for the "surge" escalation now under way, marks the beginning of the reassertion of the Congress's Constitutional authority. If the American people utilize this occasion to escalate their own pressure on the Congress to act according to the truth, this process will surely end in the early impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, and then of the President as well.
Nothing like the Feb. 13-16 debate has been seen in Washington since at least 1970, when the Congress voted to overturn the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that was used to justify the Vietnam War. The resolution, which had been co-sponsored by Republican Walter Jones (N.C.) and the Democratic leadership, was comprised of two parts, one of which expressed support for the U.S. troops, and the other, which disapproved of Bush's plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. While the resolution's opponents made a big deal out of the fact that it was "non-binding," the reality is that the vote puts the President on notice that he does not have support for his escalation, and that more actions will certainly follow.
The fact that political reality is closing in on the Cheney-Bush war party was underscored in the extraordinary Saturday vote called in the Senate Feb. 17, the day after the House vote...
...full article, PDF
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