Excellent post Christy, following two other fine posts today. What a roller coaster — and all downhill.
I AM NOT ADEPT AT POSTING TO QUOTE AN ITEM HERE, OR ANYWHERE. HERE IS MY TRY AT IT: BUT IMAGINE IF PELOSI ON HER WINNING THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE POSITION HAD POINTED OUT THAT SHE WAS THE NEXT IN LINE FOR THE PRESIDENCY, AND WANTED TO IMPEACH HIM. SHE IS A BRILLIANT WOMAN, IMPATIENT TO LEAD.
This may be an opportunity to revisit the first post about impeachment. I have a problem with where we left that, because I think events (and equally important, public and press perceptions) are moving so fast that they have overtaken even the conventional-blogger wisdom (sorry about that equation) about the politics of impeachment.

It’s not just Iraq that is in catastrophic mess. It’s also the US Government under the Bush/Cheney regime. The country is in danger. The math is staring the trad media in the face:

1 Everyone realizes Iraq and US ME policy are a tragic, reckless mistake — everyone that is, except Bush/Cheney and their neocon backers. We have a steadily and rapidly worsening catastrophe that is creating dangerous conditions for everyone in the region and for US security interests for decades. Everyone else realizes that a dramatic change is necessary and that without this change, irreparable harm will be done to US interests, not just to Iraq (which is bad enough).

2 The Bush/Cheney regime is refusing to budge on any essential element of its policies and continues to deny and lie about reality. Everyone now knows this. The trad media is now saying this indirectly and directly, but they will soon also be saying it explicitly and often. The almost uniform response of the trad media corporations to the need to call Iraq a “civil war” is a clear sign that the trad press are now ready for the next step.

3 Given 1 and 2, therefore, the only way to change policy is to change the regime. That is what the country is facing, and even the trad med will begin to hint at this, to ask “experts” about it, not by saying it directly but perhaps by asking the Demos whether they intend to pursue impeachment. Since the Dems are content to say “no, we’re just going to do oversight/investigations, as a responsible Congress should” that means that the country must think through how to remove the current regime from office, given the fact the Dems are refusing to put their fingerprints on the regime’s neck. This is where we are, IMO.

So the larger problem is not simply what to do about Iraq — apparently, nobody knows beyond the choices of stay there vs get out. The larger problem is what to do about the fact that Bush and Cheney are still in power and are continuing to inflict irreparable harm on the country and on every foreign country in which we are militarily or strategically engaged, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Lebanon (via Israel)to Israel to the growing Iraqi refugee crises in Jordan, Syria and Iran.

It is easy to say that Iraq has now become Iraq’s problem, but even if that is true, the removal of Bush/Cheney is now an exclusively American problem. And we should all be focused on how that comes about. And because events are moving so quickly, and circumstances deteriorating so quickly, I don’t think that wating for the normal terms to end is acceptable any more.

In my view, there is no meaningful distinction between going directly to impeachment investigations/hearing and going indirectly to oversight investigations with the expectation that we will “uncover” new evidence that the public will conclude warrants impeachment proceedings. In fact, I think the latter scenario, which assumes there is something else out there that will finally make the public turn against this regime, makes little sense.

The only thing that matters is whether the public and the trad press come to the conclusion that this regime needs to be replaced, and soon. But we don’t need investigations/oversight hearings to get there; all we have to do is watch CNN. Everything the public needs to know about the necessity of removing this lawless, internationally dangerous regime is revealed every night on our tv screens.

I could be completely wrong, but I think we are now at the stage when serious people need to be managing how this will all be staged. And it may occur in ways that never trigger formal impeachment proceedings.

As Hugh said in the comments yesterday, to pretend that the militias, the factions, the insurgents, the Iraqi government and the sectarian and civil violence are not intertwined and one and the same is to ignore the reality that is Iraq at the moment.

The Repugs have to look good to their base, the Christianist Right, for whom reality is not a factor. Face it, they firmly believe in the Great Surveillance Camera in the Sky and all the stories in the bible, so why should you expect them to be influenced by reality?

Tell me more :-}

dead last,

People have been citing Lakoff a lot recently and his: Don’t think about white elephants argument. So what are you thinking about right now? The more Bush and the media reject using the description of civil war and defend not calling a civil war a civil war the more all of us are going to hear civil war civil war civil war civil war.

My proposal is to push the argument back on the press to defend their statements. I think if everyone calls it a civil war, then that is what it is and Bush can talk till he is blue in the face say it isn’t, and he and the BushCo media fellow travelers will be further marginalized. And that is the first step toward the real goal: marginalize Bush so we can return the ship of State back to the people. And then try to live up to the ideology of the Founding Mothers and Fathers.

This may be an opportunity to revisit the first post about impeachment. I have a problem with where we left that, because I think events (and equally important, public and press perceptions) are moving so fast that they have overtaken even the conventional-blogger wisdom (sorry about that equation) about the politics of impeachment.

It’s not just Iraq that is in catastrophic mess. It’s also the US Government under the Bush/Cheney regime. The country is in danger. The math is staring the trad media in the face:

1 Everyone realizes Iraq and US ME policy are a tragic, reckless mistake — everyone that is, except Bush/Cheney and their neocon backers. We have a steadily and rapidly worsening catastrophe that is creating dangerous conditions for everyone in the region and for US security interests for decades. Everyone else realizes that a dramatic change is necessary and that without this change, irreparable harm will be done to US interests, not just to Iraq (which is bad enough).

2 The Bush/Cheney regime is refusing to budge on any essential element of its policies and continues to deny and lie about reality. Everyone now knows this. The trad media is now saying this indirectly and directly, but they will soon also be saying it explicitly and often. The almost uniform response of the trad media corporations to the need to call Iraq a “civil war” is a clear sign that the trad press are now ready for the next step.

3 Given 1 and 2, therefore, the only way to change policy is to change the regime. That is what the country is facing, and even the trad med will begin to hint at this, to ask “experts” about it, not by saying it directly but perhaps by asking the Demos whether they intend to pursue impeachment. Since the Dems are content to say “no, we’re just going to do oversight/investigations, as a responsible Congress should” that means that the country must think through how to remove the current regime from office, given the fact the Dems are refusing to put their fingerprints on the regime’s neck. This is where we are, IMO.

So the larger problem is not simply what to do about Iraq — apparently, nobody knows beyond the choices of stay there vs get out. The larger problem is what to do about the fact that Bush and Cheney are still in power and are continuing to inflict irreparable harm on the country and on every foreign country in which we are militarily or strategically engaged, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Lebanon (via Israel)to Israel to the growing Iraqi refugee crises in Jordan, Syria and Iran.

It is easy to say that Iraq has now become Iraq’s problem, but even if that is true, the removal of Bush/Cheney is now an exclusively American problem. And we should all be focused on how that comes about. And because events are moving so quickly, and circumstances deteriorating so quickly, I don’t think that wating for the normal terms to end is acceptable any more.

In my view, there is no meaningful distinction between going directly to impeachment investigations/hearing and going indirectly to oversight investigations with the expectation that we will “uncover” new evidence that the public will conclude warrants impeachment proceedings. In fact, I think the latter scenario, which assumes there is something else out there that will finally make the public turn against this regime, makes little sense.

The only thing that matters is whether the public and the trad press come to the conclusion that this regime needs to be replaced, and soon. But we don’t need investigations/oversight hearings to get there; all we have to do is watch CNN. Everything the public needs to know about the necessity of removing this lawless, internationally dangerous regime is revealed every night on our tv screens.

I could be completely wrong, but I think we are now at the stage when serious people need to be managing how this will all be staged. And it may occur in ways that never trigger formal impeachment proceedings.

- I can’t imagine that plays too well with troops or their families.

Not one.

-GSD