ImpeachPAC believes George Bush and Dick Cheney should be impeached immediately for one simple reason: because they lied about Iraq.

Yesterday we corresponded with one Democratic challenger who said he would support impeachment "if it is proven that he lied about the reasons for entering the war."

Here is my reply:

As the President of ImpeachPAC (and Democrats.com), I'd like to "drill down" on the question of "proving" that Bush lied. My point here is not to be argumentative, but to understand what facts we have that you don't have.

1. Everyone who does not watch FOX knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the two principal claims that Bush used to justify his illegal invasion of Iraq were false:

a. There were no WMD's in Iraq after 1991
b. There were never any ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda

2. We also know beyond a shadow of a doubt the only reason these false claims became the basis of the policy of the Bush administration, based on the Downing Street Minutes [1]:

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

3. We also know the mechanism through which these false claims were promoted throughout the Executive Branch, Congress, and the Media: the White House Iraq Group, a literal "war" room staffed by the President's closest aides: Andrew Card, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, James Wilkinson, Mary Matalin, Nick Calio, Stephen Hadley, Condi Rice, and Scooter Libby. Their efforts were augmented by the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which was staffed by neocon operatives to subvert the legitimate work of the CIA.

4. Thanks to Joe Wilson, we can trace one of the dozens of lies - the Niger uranium lie - all the way from its origin (a neocon forgery fed through Italian intelligence), through its debunking by 3 US investigations (Wilson, our Ambassador to Niger, and our NATO general), through its "red flagging" by the CIA to keep it out of Bush's speeches, to its last-minute insertion into the State of the Union over CIA objections by a key WHIG member, Stephen Hadley (now National Security Advisor).

5. As Harry Reid and the Democrats dramatized on November 2, Congress has been waiting 18 months for the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee to release "Part 2" of its investigation into the Iraq War lies: the role of the White House in manipulating pre-war intelligence. While there have been dozens of exposes in the media, there has been no testimony under oath by George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the White House Iraq Group because Republicans have flatly refused to put them under oath.

6. As the evidence of the pre-war lies has accumulated, a growing number of Democrats who voted for the war have now declared they were lied to by the Bush administration, and would never have voted for the war if they had been given unmanipulated data. This includes Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee; Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee; and John Kerry. They are among the leaders demanding "Part 2" to put top Administration officials under oath.

If points 1 through 6 are not sufficient proof that Bush lied to Congress and the American people to "sell" his illegal war in Iraq, what would it take to convince you that he did?