R.D. Olsen, Fargo, Letter: Evidence reveals Bush’s high crimes

The on-again, off-again plan to impeach President Bush seems to be off again. Except for Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, there seems little willingness to push this messy issue in an election year. Yet, the evidence against Bush would seem to indicate that the somewhat quaint 18th-century phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” aptly describes what Bush has done.

He has violated the U.S. Constitution in the areas of separation of powers, illegal search and imprisonment, torture of detainees and domestic spying on American citizens.

Most damning of all, he has lied to the American public and to the U.S. Congress in fabricating evidence to justify his mindless war in Iraq; an international crime and the worst foreign policy blunder in American history.

Taken a step further, and a credible case can be made that Bush could be tried as a war criminal by the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague. No matter how the Republican apologists for this astonishingly incompetent, unlettered man “spin” the evidence, the basic fact remains: The United States attacked and invaded a country that did not attack the United States.

There is no evidence that the al-Qaida terrorists were active in Iraq before the United States invaded it and no evidence that Iraq was involved in any way with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.

Thankfully, the Bush administration will be history in six months. But there is still time to bring Bush to justice and to accept the blame for this disgraceful international tragedy.

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives has a constitutional obligation to set the impeachment process in motion. The international community should take up the question of Bush the war criminal.