This section contains statements and speeches by Ms. Streisand.
If Not Now... When? ...Barbra Streisand
Posted on October 26, 2005
If there was ever a time in history to impeach a President of the United States, it would be now. In my opinion, it is two years too late. We should have done this before the election to spare the country the misjudgment, the incompetence and the malfeasance of this administration. Let us remember that UN weapons inspectors asked for more time to search Iraq for WMDs. Two months into their search, the Director General of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, stated that he found no evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons program since its elimination in the 1990s. And Saddam Hussein had begun to comply with the administration's demands. Why would you invade a country if there was still a chance for peace? Shouldn't war be an absolute last resort? We went to war because we were misled. And we should be angry because of the 2,000 American soldiers and the 200 armed coalition forces that have died. We should be livid because of the 15,000 American soldiers that have been horribly maimed and wounded. We should be disgusted because of the 30,000 innocent Iraqi civilians that have been killed and the 20,000 that are wounded after administration officials claimed that the US was going to liberate the Iraqi people.
When does it stop? It stops with the indictment and impeachment of this corrupt, power-hungry, greedy group of incompetent leaders. How many more have to die before this happens?
Impeachment will be difficult. People must understand the power of Congress. When one party controls both the House and the Senate, they control the agenda. They control what hearings are held, what legislation gets voted on, whether subpoenas are issued and which investigations can take place. And they control whether impeachment proceedings can be brought.
We were clearly deceived by this administration and now we find ourselves fighting a war under false pretenses. There was no connection between Iraq and 9/11, despite Dick Cheney's many assertions. There were no WMD's and the CIA had intelligence which corroborated that evidence. There was no nuclear threat contrary to Condoleezza Rice's "smoking gun becoming a mushroom cloud" scare tactic. And there was no yellow cake purchased from Niger by Iraq as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, along with our European allies, confirmed. All of these misconceptions and falsehoods were relentlessly stated. But this administration disregarded the facts because they wanted to wage this war, as we learned in the Downing Street memo.
This President will go down as the worst president in American history. His administration ignored and neglected the threats before 9/11. His team was not prepared to act and react before, during or after Hurricane Katrina. His policies have contributed to the hastening of global warming, an ever growing national debt, a rise in poverty and an increasing disparity between the rich and the poor. We are watching the middle-class disappear under Bush's leadership. He has taken our economy from the largest surplus in U.S. history to the largest deficit in U.S. history. And he has appointed several people to important positions that are unqualified and loyal to a dangerous fault.
With the recent controversy surrounding the potential indictments and charges of perjury against senior members of the Bush administration, some have made comparisons to the perjury charge that was brought against President Clinton. Perjury under any circumstance is wrong. However, in President Clinton’s situation, the matter was concerning an issue that only adversely affected himself and his family. But the potential charges filed against Bush’s closest advisors have put everybody’s families and the national security of the United States at risk.
Thank god the media and the American public are finally waking up and asking the tougher questions now. I keep hearing Harry Truman's famous statement ringing in my brain, "I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you find out who's hitting you?"
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