Veterans For Peace delivers 23,000 impeachment petitions to House Judiciary Chair Conyers

  By Mike Ferner

Yesterday, a 17-member delegation of Veterans For
Peace presented some 23,000 petitions to Congressman
John Conyers (D-MI), demanding the impeachment of
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.  Conyers, chair of
the House Committee on the Judiciary, is the Member of
Congress with the authority to call for impeachment
hearings. 

Also Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted
to send the 35 Articles of Impeachment, submitted
Monday evening by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to the
Judiciary Committee for consideration and hearings.

At their meeting with Conyers, several of the VFP
members, each carrying a bundle of petitions, placed
them on a table in front of the 21-term Michigan
Democrat, and stated why they were in favor of
impeachment. 

Elliott Adams, VFP president, told Conyers, who is a
Korean War veteran, emphasized “it’s not just about
impeaching a President, it’s about defending
democracy.  It is about whether we will continue to
have a government of the people and for the people.”

He warned against letting constitutional government
slip into the dark waters of a unitary presidency,
“...another name for a totalitarian state.” 

After listening to the veterans, Conyers said he was
not prepared to comment on the impeachment articles
Kucinich introduced, but would examine them
carefully.  He invited VFP members to meet with him again
immediately after the Fourth of July recess to hear
what he intended to do.

Later that afternoon, Congressman Kucinich met with
the VFP delegation In a corridor off the floor of
the House of Representatives.  Kucinich said that if
the Judiciary Çommittee did not schedule hearings by the
time the Independence Day break was over, he would
“be back with 68 articles the next time, and more after
that until they are heard.”

Debbie Tolson, a Washington, D.C. area resident who
attended the meeting with Conyers said, “The next
time we meet with him we want to hear when he intends to
move these articles of impeachment in his committee.
I’m not planning on being as polite as we were
today.”

VFP’s Impeachment Committee attempted unsuccessfully
to get a meeting with Rep. Conyers for over two
months.  They finally determined they would take the
petitions to Washington on June 11, and sit in at
the Chairman’s office until they met with him or were
arrested.  The morning of the group’s news
conference announcing their intentions, Conyers’ appointment
scheduler called one of the VFP committee members
and scheduled a meeting for that afternoon.

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Mike Ferner is the author of “Inside the Red Zone: A
Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq.”  See
highlights of the VFP news conference on June 11 here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyQhZ8pSVZM