Update on Battleboro Vermont Impeachment efforts

Southern Vermont

Brattleboro to vote on arresting Bush, Cheney January 26, 2008 By Susan Smallheer Herald Staff

LINKS AND MEDIA Links: Story about petition-drive to charge Bush, Cheney with war crimes generates flame war BRATTLEBORO — Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont. The Brattleboro Select Board voted 3-2 Friday to put the controversial item on the Town Meeting Day warning. According to Town Clerk Annette Cappy, organizers of the Bush-Cheney issue gathered enough signatures, and it was up to the Select Board whether Brattleboro voters would consider the issue in March. Cappy said residents will get to vote on the matter by paper balloting March 4. Kurt Daims, 54, of Brattleboro, the organizer of the petition drive, said Friday the debate to get the issue on the ballot was a good one. Opposition to the vote focused on whether the town had any power to endorse the matter. "It is an advisory thing," said Daims, a retired prototype machinist and stay-at-home dad of three daughters.

Commenting has been avid since this response was posted:

What did the American Bar association say about the laws that have been broken:
"The [Bush] administration’s logic is flawed. ... The Article 2(4) prohibition on the threat or use of force has been described by the International Court of Justice as a peremptory norm of international law from which states cannot derogate. To date, the Security Council has authorized force only in response to actual invasion ... not to potential threats of the kind the United States claims are posed by Iraq."
http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/winter03/lawregulatingresorttoforce.html

What do former administration officials say:
Lawrence Wilkerson, a former senior US state department official from 2002 to 2005, said Mr Cheney "could be guilty of a war crime over the abuse of prisoners"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1653936,00.html

What does a former prosecutor of Nazi war criminals at Nuremburg say:
Ferencz believes that the United States acting under orders from Bush: "is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/38604/

This is to be found on Common Dreams today:

Dear Common Dreams
I have a true desire to create a full page NYTIMES ad, in which we demonstrate American solidarity for congress to take up the matters of felonious behavior by the Bush administration.

I have been working with Kurt and others for the Brattleboro Resolution for the Indictment of Bush and Cheney and we would like to extend the opportunity for more people around the country to stand with Brattleboro.
Our vision for the ad is to have at the top half of the page a photo of a fancy table with platters steaming on it. Two candlesticks with lit long-tapered candles and a red rose. Behind the table are two waiters- you don’t see faces, they have white gloves on, they are each holding a platter with the lid opened so you can see what’s on them..

The platters on the table will have IMPEACHMENT, INDICTMENT, SUBPOENA, the ones in the hands of the waiters will have WARRANT and ARREST - Steam billows from each.
The headline of the AD will read: Americans have impeachment on the table. And More.

Below will be room for a longer message, where I want to firmly establish who are serving us in congress, and name them, and suggest that everyone else may just as well pull a seat up at this table with this administration if they can’t apply the rule of law to the executive branch. and more…..

My plan is to only ask one dollar per person for this very expensive ad and describe that fact therein, making it a voice of many ad. The ad costs 167,156.- Ideally we could get it in before the March resolution is voted. I am going to collect for 3 months and make the largest ad i can with however much we generate.

We have an account at Brattleboro Savings and Loan Bank called The NYTIMES BUSH INDICTMENT FUND… Tomorrow i will get a PO box, and that will be named The Bush Indictment Box..

Think about how many people you know would give a buck to tell this to Congress publicly and tell the world as well. Check back here and find the po box number and send on what you have…Until then you can send directly to the bank itself

PO Box 1010 , Brattleboro VT 05301

with a check made out to :
NYTIMES BUSH INDICTMENT FUND.

Thanks very much

we have an email address too
nytimesbushindictmentfund@gmail

thanks so much