Conyers: Impeachment If Bush Invades Iran
by Sam Stein | The Huffington Post
Speaking on Tuesday, Rep. John Conyers said that serious legal challenges to the Bush administration would not be off the table both before the president left office and after.
The Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said he would pursue articles of impeachment for the president should he pursue war in Iran without Congress’ approval.
“If Bush goes into Iran, he should be impeached,” said Conyers. “And we’ve sent him a letter to that affect.”
Conyer’s office had not sent a copy of the letter to the Huffington Post at the time of this article’s publication.
The line was greeted with heavy applause by attendees at the Take Back America conference, where Conyers spoke. Later in the event, he offered even more read meat for the throng of progressive activists.
Taking questions from an attendee, Conyers offered a strong suggestion that he intends to consider legal action against Bush and Company once they leave office.
“We can win this thing and go get these guys after [they leave office],” he said.
Asked to specify on what grounds he would retroactively go after the Bush administration, Conyers asked, “Have you got a couple hours? I haven’t.”
As for why he wouldn’t pursue articles of impeachment (if he favored them so strongly) before the president’s time in the White House came to conclusion, Conyers said he worried that it would become to heavy a political issue during the election season.
“I am afraid they would raise it in the campaign, and that they will use it against us, and that we would end up getting McCain,” he said. “I would regret that for the rest of my life,” he said. “That’s the only reason. That’s a chance, I don’t know for sure, but that’s what I fear might happen.”
Conyers’s view has been, to be sure, echoed previously by other prominent Democratic figures. Sen. Joseph Biden, for example, said during a presidential debate that he personally told Bush he should be impeached if he takes the country to war with Iran. Biden also, in a Newsweek interview this past summer, suggested that Congress should be “acquiring and accumulating all the data that is appropriate for possibly bringing criminal charges against members of this administration at a later date.”
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