JB

From the BBC News (via Atrios, via Tom Runnacles):

The British will take heart from the more cautious voices coming out of Washington. Lawrence Eagleburger was Secretary of State for Bush's father, the first President Bush, and he and other leading veterans of the first Bush administration warned last summer about the dangers of attacking Iraq. In fact they were thought to be acting as proxies for their old boss, who was said to be privately unconvinced of his son's policies. Now that the military campaign seems to be drawing to a close, we ask Mr Eagleburger if it is true that winning the peace will be much harder.

In an impassioned interview, Mr Eagleburger also tells us that if George W. Bush were to take military action against Iran and Syria, he should be impeached.

Lawrence Eagleburger, who was US Secretary of State under George Bush Snr, told the BBC: "If George Bush [Jnr] decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran after that he would last in office for about 15 minutes. ... In fact if President Bush were to try that now even I would think that he ought to be impeached. You can't get away with that sort of thing in this democracy."

I was curious whether Eagleburger was impeachment happy, so I found the following story, also from the BBC on November 19, 1998:

Lawrence Eagleburger, a former Secretary of State in the George Bush administration, said he believed [President Clinton] would survive - but in a much weakened state.

He told BBC Radio 4: "I don't much like him as president but I don't want to see him impeached."

Well, at least the man has his priorities straight. Lying about sex under oath is one thing, bringing untold chaos and destruction on the world is another.

BTW, in case you're wondering, no, we haven't attacked Syria or Iran. Yet.

So this is all academic, but then I am an academic and these sorts of things interest me.

You might well be wondering at this point, does Eagleburger have his constitutional law right? Can a president be impeached for taking the country to war repeatedly? Well, I'll discuss that one in a future post. Stay tuned.