A coalition of liberal groups this week launched a nationwide campaign to educate Americans on impeachment and encourage them to support impeaching President Bush."Since 9/11 it has been clear that the principle enemy of democracy has been in the White House," said Bill Goodman, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in the group's documentary "How to Impeach a President."
The group claimed that Bush should be impeached because of the warrant-less wiretapping program, alleged torture of Muslim detainees in U.S. custody, and because he "committed fraud on Congress."
In order to promote the video and its goal of impeaching Bush, CCR has teamed with AfterDowningStreet.org, CODE PINK and Iraqi Americans for Peaceful Alternatives to organize "teach-ins" in at least 27 cities around the country.
CCR is a civil rights advocacy group that promotes reparations for descendants of slaves and urges the government to lift the travel and commerce embargos against Cuba, among other causes listed on its website.
David Swanson, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, told Cybercast News Service that the teach-ins are aimed at "impeaching the president and number two in selling books and they're using the video and the events and the organizing to help sell books."
Melville House published CCR's "Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush," an outline of CCR's case against the president that sells for $9.95.
Swanson said most of the people who attend the teach-ins are "99 percent in favor of impeachment so the goal is not exactly to persuade or to win over but it is to make those people aware that they're not some fringe minority, that in fact they're part of a majority and that there is a growing movement."
He said he was optimistic that the efforts to promote impeachment would be successful. "[T]he evidence is there more than it's ever been in U.S. history. It's a question of whether we can make it happen," Swanson said.
Brian Walsh, a senior legal research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said he would not give the impeachment efforts much credit "because I think to a large extent what they're doing is couching their policy complaints against this administration in legal and constitutional terminology."
Walsh said CCR's claims against Bush are "based on misrepresentations and many of the 'facts' are based on one-sided and unsubstantiated allegations."
He categorized the impeachment movement as "the war against the war," which he said was led by "people who are frustrated that they weren't able to defeat Bush in 2004 when we basically had a referendum on the war in Iraq and he won convincingly against a candidate who tried to cast great doubt on whether we should have been in Iraq in the first place."