What's In an I-Word?

[Jackpine Radical]

Investigate-Impeach-Indict-Incarcerate? Maybe those are all luxuries. Maybe the only I-word that can save us is Incapacitate.

For me, the issue of Impeach Now or Impeach Later was always purely one of strategy. What is going to be most effective, what is going to leave liberals in the best position to turn the wheel to the left and keep it there after we've pitched the reactionary jetsam overboard?

I always interpreted the "off the table" comment as a purely political maneuver, an acknowledgement that we need to get the public behind us before we do anything drastic. Investigations need to precede impeachment--you know the line of logic. Bring all the nasty, deceitful and treacherous Republican maneuverings out into the open. let the public see them for what they are, and start passing out the torches and pitchforks when the public demands them.

I think that situation has changed very drastically in the last couple of weeks. The Administration seems to have suddenly become aware of the perils they face with a Democratic Congress, and may be contemplating desperate moves in response. The escalation is one of those moves, and the possibility of war with Iraq or Syria becomes frighteningly more real when viewed from this perspective, when one contemplates the fact that they may not care whether they can win an expanded war in the Middle east, that their only concern is to divert public and Congressional attention away from exposure of their misdeeds.

The question of Investigate or Impeach may be of decreasing relevance. Investigation and impeachment are slow processes. The only "I-word" that may matter is "Incapacitate." We gotta get the football away from those guys. We gotta make sure they can't pitch us into the Abyss.