Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush [Paperback]

Bush stated the importance of going to war as what he and advisers termed a preemptive action, a necessity in the face of a clear and present danger from an aggressive enemy. In choosing to act on his own rather than allowing the UN weapons inspection team finish its work, and relying on a false claim that Iraq's Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, Bush threw open the distinct possibility of an impeachment action.

The U.S. is obligated to follow laws and processes to which it has committed itself, namely the UN Charter and the Geneva Accords, and to fail to do so means more than a violation of international law. Such an act is violative of the U.S. Constitution since a president is mandated to follow the laws to which the nation is committed. Bonifaz and fellow petitioners contend that this failure leaves Bush open to removal from office.

Richard Nixon resigned from office after being impeached and facing a Senate trial for removal. He was previously found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors by the House of Representatives. A good case can be made that Bush, by rushing to war and not allowing inspections to be completed, violated the law and distorted the facts by insisting that that which had not been proven, namely that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, compelled him to go to war in the interest of American safety.

The more the issue has been studied the more compelling the evidence has become that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was only a shell of the military threat it formerly posed. Did Bush and his close advisers not know this? If so, by what rationale could it commit American troops to war?

The point of the book is Bush's actions were bad, he acted like a King, the Constitution was set up to avoid the abuses of a King, therefore war in Iraq was unconstitutional. Out of 155 pages, there was some material that could be cut and pasted together to get a few pages worth of sound bites. Those would be really good sound bites, but there is a big difference between sound bites and substance. And this book was nothing in terms of the latter.

From the view of partisanship, I have no problem with Bush is bad, his actions were bad, therefore let's declare this unconstitutional. But, from the view of the Constitution, we need more than that. There are books that make a far better case for impeachment. Books like Worse Than Watergate are among them. This one only makes the case that a bad argument makes a bad book, regardless of how good the title is.

I never imagined that a book with that kind of title would result a negative endorsement from me. But, that's how poor this one was.

And, just to show how all there is a little bit of sound bites, the title represents another one. There is no mention at all about impeachment in this book.

The first book exposes the lies that President Bush and members of his Administration knowingly told during the build-up to the war on Iraq, including the lies that are keeping US troops in Iraq today.

The second book addresses Bush's unconstitutional act of taking the US military to war without a declaration of war by Congress. A number of US soldiers and US Congress Members sued the President in a failed attempt to prevent this war, and this book lays out the case.