Conyers - Now Is the Time to Impeach
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Friday, May 16, 2008
Dear Congressman Conyers,
This letter is to request a meeting with you to deliver the signatures Veterans For Peace collected on a petition for impeachment and briefly explain our reasons for the petition. We appreciate how valuable time is to both of us. Our presentation and remarks will be very succinct and to the point. We would like to meet with you on June 5 or June 10 if you will be in Washington either of those dates.
Our petition has just over 10,000 names on it. We conducted the petition primarily online, with one important difference from most online petition drives: ours required the name and address of each signer to prevent one person from submitting multiple email addresses and other means of “padding” the count.
We realize that this administration has committed numerous impeachable offenses such as spying on U.S. citizens, and condoning torture at Guantanamo and Iraq to name just two. Our petition, however, focuses on what veterans are understandably concerned about: violations of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Charter and resolutions, the Nuremberg Principles, and the Laws and Customs of War on Land, which limit the conduct of military forces towards each other and civilian populations. We will provide you with several pages of documented claims of war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace contained in our “Case for Impeachment.”
However, violating international laws and treaties is only part of the case against this administration. As you are no doubt aware, Article VI, par. 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the “supremacy clause,” makes treaties adopted by Congress part of the “law of the land,” legally binding on the executive branch. In addition, 18 USC 2441, otherwise known as the War Crimes Act of 1996, makes “…a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party…” punishable by fine, imprisonment or death.
Having taken an oath to defend the Constitution "from all enemies foreign and domestic," our members take this petition and the obligation to impeach George W. Bush most seriously. For legal, historic and moral reasons we must hold this administration accountable for waging a war of aggression against Iraq.
You have taken the same oath, Congressman Conyers, and we expect you will hold it just as sacred as we do and begin impeachment hearings at the soonest possible moment.
History shows that nearly every impeachment effort at the federal level has taken less time than what still remains in George Bush's term of office. Will history also show that the House Committee on the Judiciary did its duty to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic? Or will it show that your Committee enabled the growth of the imperial presidency and did nothing to absolve even a small portion of our complicity in truly monstrous war crimes?
We leave you with these words from Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, "...let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment."
Congressman
Conyers, you have stood on the side of justice in battles too numerous to
mention during your long career in the House.
Will you one day go into retirement with a shadow over your entire
record because you did not do everything possible to hold this criminal
administration accountable? We genuinely
hope not.
Most Sincerely,
Elliott Adams, President
Veterans For Peace