Not Another Dime, Not Another Doorstep.

09/15/2007

"The fact of the matter is that we still don't have the votes in the Congress," the Hurley Democrat said in a telephone interview this week. "Certainly not in the Senate, and probably not in the House."

A simple majority, or 218 votes, is needed in the House of Representatives to approve articles of impeachment against a president. A two-thirds majority then is needed in the Senate to remove the chief executive from office. No president has ever been removed, though two - Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 - were impeached by the House. Hinchey said a block of "moderate" Democrats appears willing to simply let Republican Bush serve out the remaining 16 months of his term rather than attempt to oust the president over such contentious issues as the reasons for going to war in Iraq and unauthorized eavesdropping on Americans.

But the realization that impeachment is unlikely hasn't quieted Hinchey when it comes to criticizing the Bush administration. "This is the most impeachable president, and others in the administration as well, the most impeachable members of any presidential administration, probably in the history of the country," the eight-term congressman said. "The president of the United States intentionally and purposely misled the Congress ... most notably in his (State of the Union) speech of January 2003, when he said the British had learned that Iraq had imported enriched uranium from Africa, when he was told by his own Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence operations with the State Department that there was no evidence that was the case; that the basis upon which that position had been suggested by others were documents that were forged."

Hinchey essentially gave up his impeachment effort in July, when he signed on to two resolutions calling for the House to censure Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials. A House censure is simply a formal reprimand that carries no punishment. Hinchey has drawn criticism among local opponents of the Iraq war for not pursuing impeachment - one group went so far as to stage a sit-in at his Kingston office recently - but the congressman says there simply are not enough people in the House who agree Bush's actions warrant the president's removal.

So Hinchey makes his case by speaking his mind on the House floor, he said. "I press it by introducing censure resolutions which stipulate very clearly why this administration needs to be held accountable," the congressman said. "In those censure resolutions are specific items which are impeachable. So I continue to press this in every way I can, and at the same time try to do things that are achievable, like get a specific date for withdrawal out of Iraq."

Bush repeatedly has resisted calls to set a deadline for ending the U.S. military presence in Iraq, though he said on Thursday that it might be possible to bring home nearly 30,000 troops by the summer of 2008. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates went a step further on Friday, saying he hoped the current U.S. force in Iraq of 168,000 troops could be reduced to 100,000 by the end of next year.

Woodstock resident Jay Wenk, an outspoken critic of Bush and the war, said political considerations need to be put aside when considering impeachment. "I believe him (Hinchey) when he says the votes aren't there in the House or the Senate, but the gesture would be important, and I don't know how that gesture would cost him anything," said Wenk, a World War II veteran, member of the group Veterans for Peace and former Woodstock councilman. "I wish that he would make the gesture of asking the (House) Judiciary Committee to go ahead and look into impeachment resolutions, even if he knows it doesn't have a chance of getting the votes," Wenk said.

U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand could not be reached for comment on Friday, but Rachel McEneny, a spokeswoman for the Greenport Democrat, said the congresswoman was not among the 150 people who Hinchey identified as supporting articles of impeachment. But the fact that 2008 is an election year, in which Gillibrand will be up for re-election for the first time, is not what's driving the congresswoman's thinking, McEneny said. Rather, "she has to be convinced" that impeachment is warranted, the spokeswoman said. In a previous written statement, Gillibrand questioned Bush's competency in handling such matters as "the decision to go into Iraq, the use of domestic wiretaps without the benefit of warrants and the use of no-bid contracts in both Iraq and (Hurricane) Katrina reconstruction." At the time, Gillibrand called for congressional hearings to "restore the needed accountability our Constitution requires."