[Mb-civic] Zogby Poll: 42% of Americans for impeachment if Bush didn't tell truth

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/blog/2005/07/06/BL2005070601211_pf.html
washingtonpost.com 

The Impeachment Question
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, July 6, 2005; 1:24 PM
More than four in 10 Americans, according to a recent Zogby poll, say 
that if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going 
to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable 
through impeachment.
But you wouldn't know it from following the news. Only three 
mainstream outlets that I can find made even cursory mention of the 
poll last week when it came out.
You also wouldn't know it judging from the political discourse in 
Washington, but that makes a little more sense. After all, impeachment 
is for all practical purposes a political act, not a legal one. So with a 
Republican-controlled Congress that doesn't even like to perform basic 
White House oversight, it's basically a moot point.
Nevertheless, could there be anything that 42 percent of Americans 
agree on that the media care about so little?
The poll results certainly illustrate the intense polarization of the 
American electorate -- not exactly news.
But they also suggest an appetite for more investigation into Bush's 
reasons for war and specifically -- in light of the assertions in the 
Downing Street memos -- whether his public rationales were in fact at 
all like his private rationales.
One topic for further inquiry, for instance, could be whether in private 
conversations Bush expressed the same kind of reticence about war 
that he advertised publicly. Some evidence -- stories like this one in 
Time, which quotes Bush saying in March 2002: '[Expletive] Saddam. 
we're taking him out.' -- suggests otherwise.
Was Bush motivated more by personal animosity toward Saddam 
Hussein than by a post-Sept. 11 desire to protect America from a 
grave threat? Did he exaggerate that threat? At what point was war 
inevitable?
Those are not settled questions. And evidently quite a few Americans 
would like to see some accountability if Bush deceived them.
The Poll
The impeachment question was part of a Zogby International poll 
conducted early last week, and released on Thursday.
It found that Bush's job approval ratings had slipped a point from the 
previous week, to 43 percent.
But the jaw-dropper was that 42 percent said they would favor 
impeachment proceedings if it is found that the president misled the 
nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq.
Zogby noted: "While half (50%) of respondents do not hold this view, 
supporters of impeachment outweigh opponents in some parts of the 
country.
"Among those living in the Western states, a 52% majority favors 
Congress using the impeachment mechanism while just 41% are 
opposed; in Eastern states, 49% are in favor and 45% opposed. In the 
South, meanwhile, impeachment is opposed by three-in-five voters 
(60%) and supported by just one-in-three (34%); in the Central/Great 
Lakes region, 52% are opposed and 38% in favor."
Pollingreport.com offers the results broken down by party. Among 
Democrats, 59 percent answered the impeachment question 
affirmatively -- as well as 25 percent of Republicans.
Shailagh Murray of The Washington Post made the poll results the 
third item in the paper's Sunday politics column: "Even the pollster 
couldn't believe his eyes. 'It was much higher than I expected,' John 
Zogby said of the 42 percent. . . .
"By comparison, in October 1998, as the House moved to impeach 
President Bill Clinton over the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, a Zogby 
poll found that 39 percent of voters supported the House action, while 
56 percent opposed it. . . .
"Zogby said the hypothetical question 'reveals just how badly divided 
this country is over the war,' but also that people may be more 
comfortable with the idea of throwing a president out of office. . . .
"Unlikely that the Republican-led House will begin proceedings anytime 
soon. But the Web sites are up and running. Impeachcentral.com is 
running a petition drive. Impeachbush.org is planning a march on 
Washington in September. Thefourreasons.org site argues that the 
Iraq invasion was unconstitutional. Afterdowningstreet.org asserts that 
Bush secretly decided to go to war and to mislead Congress in mid-
2002."
In a Washington Times political roundup, John McCaslin also 
mentioned the poll in an item headlined: "Crying wolf?"
He wrote: "If you believe the latest Zogby poll, 42 percent of Americans 
would favor impeachment proceedings if President Bush is found to 
have misled the nation about his reasons for going to war in Iraq."
Pollster Zogby himself made it onto Countdown with Keith Olbermann 
on Thursday night. Olbermann was most taken with the fact that 25 
percent of Republicans were willing to consider impeachment.
He asked Zogby: "When do you do the impeachment question again? 
When are you going bring that up again in a poll?
"ZOGBY: We'll test it periodically. Probably a month from now. Again, 
no one is really talking about it, but it is a good barometric reading."

--------------


-- 
You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, 
option D (up to 3 emails/day).  To be removed, or to switch options 
(option A - 1x/week, option B - 3/wk, option C - up to 1x/day, option D - 
up to 3x/day) please reply and let us know!  If someone forwarded you 
this email and you want to be on our list, send an email to 
ean at sbcglobal.net and tell us which option you'd like.


"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050711/f7fba4d3/attachment-0001.htm