[Sosfbay-discuss] GOP Senator Hagel Warns Hagel Warns of Impeachment (if Bush ignore congress on war)

[JamBoi]

http://www.nysun.com/article/51130?page_no=1

Hagel Warns of Impeachment of President
Republican Threatens To Work With Democrats on Anti-War Bill

By ELI LAKE
Staff Reporter of the Sun
March 26, 2007

WASHINGTON — Senator Hagel, a Republican of Nebraska who is predicting
that President Bush will face calls for impeachment if he ignores
Congress on the war, will introduce binding legislation this week to
begin the withdrawal of soldiers from Iraq.

Speaking on ABC's "This Week," Mr. Hagel said he would introduce a
binding resolution this week "focused on redeployment, training and
equipment." Mr. Hagel's co-sponsor for the new Iraq resolution is
Senator Webb, a Democrat of Virginia who has introduced legislation in
the Senate to prevent the president from taking any military action
against Iran and who won his election to his first term in the Senate
last November by running on an anti-war platform. Mr. Webb, who served
in the Reagan administration as the secretary of the Navy, has emerged
as a favorite of the Democratic online group, MoveOn.org.

Mr. Hagel's pending resolution on Iraq puts him at odds with his party,
which has won back many of the Republicans who in December began
raising doubts about the war. On Friday, the House Democrats received
only two Republican votes for a supplemental budget bill that would
mandate a withdrawal of forces from Iraq by 2008. Eight days before,
Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon was the only Republican who voted for
the binding resolution sponsored by Senator Reid, the majority leader,
mandating a timetable for withdrawal. Mr. Hagel voted with his party
against that resolution.

However, Mr. Hagel yesterday indicated his days of voicing skepticism
about the war but voting with the president had ended. "I will not
accept the status quo, I will not continue to support with my vote the
current policy," he said.

He went further in an interview with the April issue of Esquire
magazine. "He's not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true. You
can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his
impeachment. I don't know. It depends on how this goes," he said in
that interview.

When asked yesterday on ABC what he meant by his comments to the
magazine about impeachment, the senator said, "Any president who says,
‘I don't care,' or ‘I will not respond to what the people of this
country are saying about Iraq or anything else,' or ‘I don't care what
the Congress does, I am going to proceed' — if a president really
believes that, then there are —what I was pointing out, there are ways
to deal with that."

Yesterday a senior Senate staffer close to the Senate Republican leader
said he did not expect Mr. Hagel would vote for a timetable for
withdrawal, despite his comments.

"He was with us last time," this source wrote in an e-mail. "He doesn't
like arbitrary withdrawals, and he doesn't want to prevent the funding
bill from getting through. The Reid language is a poison pill."

A former communications director for the Republican National Committee,
Clifford May, yesterday said he was disappointed in Mr. Hagel. "That's
really disappointing and really rather sad to hear a U.S. senator
threaten the president with impeachment for attempting to do his job as
commander in chief," said Mr. May, now president of the Foundation for
the Defense of Democracies. " Senator Hagel voted to confirm General
Petraeus as the commander in Iraq. He should not have done so if he was
planning to undermine General Petraeus' mission."

Mr. Hagel yesterday said he was particularly angry about the
president's reaction to the House passage of the Iraq supplemental
budget, which the president said in his radio address this weekend he
would veto if it crossed his desk. That bill gives the White House $24
billion more than it asked for to fund the troop surge in Baghdad and
Anbar, but it also mandates a timeline and a cut off of war funding
after August 31, 2008.

The president on Saturday in his national radio address warned that if
Congress does not appropriate the funds for the military by April 15 in
a clean bill, then the military's mission in Afghanistan and Iraq could
face disruptions.

"By choosing to make a political statement and passing a bill they know
will never become law, the Democrats in Congress have only delayed the
delivery of the vital funds and resources our troops need," Mr. Bush
said. "The clock is running."

___________________

JamBoi
The Green Parties' #1 Blogger
See http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=JamBoi

The Celts invading the Italian Penninsula's reply when questioned by the nervous Romans around 400BC
"To the brave belong all things"

Jammy The Sacred Cow Slayer

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)
http://dailyJam.blogspot.com


 
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