President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney Must Resign

On July 3rd, the day before we celebrated the 231st anniversary of the declaration of our nation's independence, Keith Olbermann delivered a powerful and persuasive Special Comment calling for both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to resign. Immediately.

Simply put, there is no rational explanation for allowing either of these two men to remain in power. They have taken control of the most powerful political office on the face of the Earth, and shamelessly and unapologetically usurped it for their own purposes. These are not men of honor. They are not men who live up to the public oaths they take. If either of these two men thinks that they were even close to preserving, protecting and defending the constitution "to the best of [their] ability", then clearly they were deceiving themselves. And the American people.

The president has used signing statements to ignore the will of the Congress, by saying that he would sign the bill into law, but he wouldn't obey it himself. This alone is an egregious violation of Art. 2 Sec 3. ("...he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,..."). How can he argue that he is doing that? "Faithfully" executing the law? Obviously a president can use a signing statement to describe how he intends to carry out the law. But he can't use it to say that he won't carry out the law! That's what the veto is for.

Through a doctrine of preventive war he launched an illegal attack against Iraq. That nation was no threat to our national security, and it had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11, despite what Bush and Cheney had people believing through carefully crafted speeches and political talk show appearances. And, as history and sworn testimony have revealed, it was all based on lies. Not misunderstandings of the intelligence, but lies of all kinds. From being told that the war would pay for itself "and relatively quickly", to the insurgents "are in their last throes" (on more than one occasion.) Is it even possible that a rational mind would accept that these are facts, but that the men responsible for the war and its aftermath should suffer no penalty?

If these men had even the tiniest shred of decency and honor left within them, they would recognize the wrongs they have committed and spare the nation the time, trouble and torment of another impeachment (however rightly deserved, but clearly more so than any other in history), and walk away now. Resign at once.