Nixon’s White House Counsel uses “I” word

John Dean knows a little something about presidential scandals. As White House Counsel to Richard Nixon during Watergate, Dean has seen a presidency-in-crisis first hand.

With that in mind, the ‘net world has been abuzz the last few days over Dean’s use of the “I” word — impeachment — in an online column last week.

Dean, like most of the world, has been wondering about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that prompted a war. His column, which is definitely worth reading, explores what the White House claimed about Saddam Hussein’s arsenal and what we’ve found in the war’s aftermath.

Dean believes Bush “has got a very serious problem.” He explains that “Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it.”

Dean appears to argue, with some enthusiasm, that Bush’s remarks in anticipation of the Iraqi invasion may prove to be an impeachable offense.

“In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison,” Dean wrote. “If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.”

He added, “To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be ‘a high crime’ under the Constitution’s impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony ‘to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.'”

This was enough to make most liberals’ mouth water over the weekend as Dean’s essay started making the rounds.

It reminded me a bit of a funny bumper sticker I saw a while ago, which read, “Impeach Bush…and we’ll call it even.”

As fun as Bush’s impeachment proceedings would be, I’m afraid this probably isn’t going to happen. With Republican majorities in the House and Senate, it would take insurmountable proof that the White House absolutely knew that Iraq didn’t have WMD, manipulated the intelligence community, and then knowingly deceived the world before the GOP would even consider moving forward with drawing articles.

I’m not saying that Bush didn’t do these things; he very well may have. I’m arguing that it’s probably impossible to find the insurmountable proof.

Nevertheless, hope springs eternal. This controversy certainly isn’t going away anytime soon. The Bush administration, without a doubt, exaggerated the threat Iraq posed to the world, hyped a WMD program that obviously doesn’t exist in the way the administration claimed, was wrong about several key details, and misled everyone about connections between Al Queda and Hussein. And that’s just based on what we know for sure.

Will these truths be enough for impeachment? I doubt it. Will Dems be able to use this to hammer Bush between now and the 2004 election? I sure hope so.