Dave Lindorff: Co-Dependent Congress Must Wake Up: The President Needs a Straitjacket and a Padded Cell

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Dave Lindorff

It's time to simply admit the obvious: The president of the United States is crazy as a loon, and the Congress and the media are functioning as co-dependents as he runs the country off a cliff.

Bush says in his latest press conference that he is "certain" that Iran is providing "technically sophisticated" roadside bomb weapons to Iraqi insurgent forces to help them kill Americans.

He probably is "certain." But nobody else of consequence in the government is, and the evidence to support his claim is simply not there.

Shaped charges are not sophisticated. They can be made in a garage. A Navy engineer invented the technology in 1888. It was widely used in World Wars I and II and Vietnam, and was even provided by the British to the IRA in a botched sting operation that led to being disseminated around the world to every conceivable resistance and terror organization. Instructions on how to make these weapons are available on the Web. A high school student could do it in shop if the teacher wasn't looking.

On top of that, the people who are primarily responsible for killing Americans in Iraq are Sunnis, who are certainly not the beneficiaries of Iranian government assistance, since Sunnis are killing Shias, who are the ones Iran is close to.

None of this matters to Bush.

Why? Because he's crazy. Reality and Bush are wholly different worlds, people.

When you have a person who is off his nut in a position of authority, whether it is in your house, your office, driving a car, or running your country, you need to do something to prevent them from causing harm. It won't do to say, "It's too much trouble to confront him," or "He'll get angry if I challenge him."

This seems to be the attitude in Congress and the media. The Democrats, who could put the president in a richly deserved straitjacket, are afraid to take that step. The media are afraid the president and his crazy backers would howl if they pointed out how nutty he has become.

So they all let him rant on, as though he were making sense.

The problem is that this president is also the commander-in-chief. He has ordered three heavily armed (and nuclear-equipped) carrier battle groups to the Persian Gulf and is talking about "dealing" with Iran. We all know what that means. He wants to attack Iran and expand his disastrous war in the Middle East to put us at war with another 70 million people.

Experts are saying we can expect this to happen in mid March or April! They say this even though there are no facts that could justify such a criminal act.

But facts don't matter to this megalomaniac.

Co-dependency is a condition where people associated with a sick person enable that person to ruin not only their own lives, but also the lives of others, because of an inability to confront the sick person. It happens in families, and it is happening today to the American nation.

Co-dependency destroys families, and it has the potential now to destroy the lives of thousands of Americans, tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians, and perhaps America itself.

There is only one proper response to having a lunatic in the White House, and that is to get him out of there, and to prevent him from doing harm to himself and others. What ought to happen is Bush's medical team should have him declared incompetent. Since that is unlikely to happen, we're left with two other alternatives. One would be for the military leadership of the nation to recognize Bush's orders (should he order an attack on Iran) to be contrary to International Law and to disobey him. That seems unlikely, though it is to be profoundly hoped for.

The other is for Congress to recognize its co-dependent behavior and take action, filing impeachment bills and getting the process of impeachment hearings underway.

Since the president has clearly broken the law in the case of the National Security Agency spying he ordered, and since he has clearly abused his power and violated his oath of office with his signing statements, there is really no need for prolonged hearings. An impeachment panel could quickly vote out articles of impeachment on these two issues and send them to the full House for a vote. If they did this, I suspect they would find at least some honorable and patriotic Republicans voting with them. At that point, the issue could go to the Senate for trial. Meanwhile, the impeachment panel could continue with hearings into Bush's other crimes and misadventures: the lying about the Iraq War; the torture authorization; the violation of habeas corpus; the cover-up of the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame; the lies to and obstruction of the 9-11 Commission; the abandonment of New Orleans to its fate during and after Hurricane Katrina; the war profiteering in Iraq; etc., etc.

The first step, however, is to acknowledge that the president has lost his mind and has become a dangerous psychopath.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Dave Lindorff is co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of "The Case for
Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from
Office," (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net and at
www.counterpunch.org.

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