House to Hold Hearings On Bush’s Conduct – But Not On Impeachment

Kucinich Announces That Foreign Official Wishes to Address Hearing Panel

WASHINGTON: An article of impeachment filed against President George W. Bush over the Iraq war will get a committee hearing but not on whether to remove Bush from office.The House of Representatives voted 238-180 on Tuesday to send to the Judiciary Committee the article of impeachment challenging Bush’s reasoning for taking the country to war. The same committee buried a previous article filed by Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who also offered the new article.

This time, the panel will open hearings, and House Democrats emphatically said the hearings will not be about Bush’s impeachment, a first step in the Constitution’s process of a removing a president from office. Instead, the panel will conduct an election-year review, possibly televised, of everything Democrats consider to be Bush’s abuses of power. Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio, is likely to testify as are several scholars and administration critics.

Chairman John Conyers Jr. said he will hold a broad hearing on the general topic of abuses of power by the Bush administration. “There’s never been one [hearing] that accumulated all the things that constitute an imperial presidency,” Conyers said, explaining that the anticipated hearing would review more than a year of committee inquiry into such matters as the firing of U.S. attorneys, the leak of the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame and the information provided to Congress in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Kucinich contends that President Bush ought to be impeached for allegedly lying to Congress in order to get approval to invade Iraq.

Kucinich said he would like to be joined at the witness table by a foreign official he would not name. “I’ve been contacted by representatives of a U.S. ally who are seeking an opportunity to appear before the Judiciary Committee,” he said in an interview. “Legislative leaders of a foreign capital” have a “new angle that I haven’t thought of before but is relevant,” he said. “This interest in whether we’ve been told the truth has extended to other countries.” Kucinich would not provide further detail.