ational crime” by the Nuremberg Court, in Afghanistan and Iraq have created anger, fear and hatred among vast populations all blaming the United States. Thousands of young men have been motivated to violence by the invasions and illegal U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. military bases, embassies, businesses and tourists around the globe are threatened because of the Bush Administration's aggressions and threats against “evil empires” others call home, or their part of the world. Fear of what President Bush calls “terrorist acts” stalks our own land.

Today's news reveals that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation of their country. This is being reported by the medical journal the Lancet from a study performed by U.S. and Iraqi doctors under the auspices of Johns Hopkins University. This stands as one of the great crimes in the modern era. George W. Bush and others responsible must be impeached.

U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed the obvious. The U.S. assault and continuing presence in Iraq has fueled a new and massive potential for violence against the U.S. by people theretofore friendly to the U.S. Common sense and the slightest understanding of human nature informs us all that people react angrily to threats, assaults and foreign military occupations perceived as unjustified.

In a poll conducted in Iraq in early September by the University of Maryland, it was found that 75% of the Iraqi population believe the U.S. occupation causes more violence than would occur if the U.S. withdrew and now favor complete U.S. withdrawal within a year.

U.S. military capacity has been drastically impaired. Beyond the 2,740 military deaths and 20,000 serious injuries, more than 1,200 in August 2006 alone, the radically increasing military burden of Afghanistan and total additional war costs approaching a trillion dollars.

Bush’s belligerence has created new crises. Consider North Korea, where a million troops have been massed on the border with the South. Seoul is within range of rockets from the North. All of the Korean people, in both the North and the South want peace and yet they are faced with a new possible confrontation.

With his usual arrogance, President Bush refused for nearly six years to talk with North Korea one on one, while threatening it constantly as an evil empire. He forced North Korea to show test, first its rockets, and now a nuclear warhead, to deter U.S. aggression against its people.

North Korea has witnessed George Bush’s merciless aggressions against other nations and knows the U.S., at the very moment it threatens other nations not to develop nuclear weapons, is itself replacing older nuclear warheads and developing more advanced nuclear warheads and rocketry at a cost of additional hundreds of billions of dollars.

When the U.S. signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, more than three decades ago, it agreed to phase its nuclear arsenal out of existence to achieve a nuclear free world. George Bush has raced in the opposite direction.

The U.S. must lead the world in an open, orderly, total elimination of all nuclear arms. Only then can we hope for other nations to seek the same end. Add other continuing crises: Somalia where U.S. backed militia leaders have been driven out by Islamic forces; the continuing tragedy of Darfur; the use of National Guard units to police the border with Mexico; the greater toll in lives taken by Katrina because of the absence of Louisiana National Guard units sent to Iraq by President Bush; and you have the U.S. military stretched beyond its capacity to provide security for the U.S. because of President Bush’s War on Terrorism which most of a billion plus Muslims believe is a war on Islam.

Add his continuing threats against half a dozen countries, most notably at this moment his reaction to North Korea’s nuclear bomb test and his announced plan to “punish” Iran, and his foreign policy is clear.

We, the people of the United States do not need this, but we are paying a staggering price in honor, respect, security and quality of life that threatens our future.

President Bush has simultaneously sacrificed freedom in America as no other President in our history by his criminal acts. While proclaiming his very purpose to be freedom, he has usurped power. He has granted himself the right to seize Americans and any others, tell no one, hold people arbitrarily, interrogate them ad nauseum, and use torture; to wiretap at will without warrants any person anywhere, abolish and defile the writ of habeas corpus — the Great Writ of a free people — use secret prisons in foreign countries where prisoners held are helpless. With contempt, he rejects the Geneva Conventions, designed to protect prisoners of war and civilian populations, ours as well as others. He is responsible for the destruction of Fallujah, Ramadi, Baghdad, Samara and deaths of children, the elderly and defenseless populations.

These acts include the crimes of murder, assault, kidnapping, torture, wrongful imprisonment to name a few. Having drastically eroded both security and freedom, President Bush daily condemns political opponents for lacking the courage to sacrifice freedom to win his worldwide “war on terrorism.”

Using fear, he has sacrificed freedom on the altar of security, questioning the patriotism of anyone who challenges his excesses.

President Bush proclaims the sacrifice of freedom as the price of security, assaulting both in the process. The obvious reality is that a people must have both freedom and security, or they will have neither. The absence of freedom will compel people to struggle against the repression of security measures, and the absence of security will threaten the freedom of all. No one is free who must live in a bomb shelter or cannot walk the streets with safety.

If the American people are to be both free and secure, intend to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and secure the blessing of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, in the words of Justice Hugo Black, “we must not be afraid to be free.”

Demand that the House of Representatives impeach George W. Bush, his Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and other officials, complicit in the High Crimes and Misdemeanors that have been committed in our name. We must act now to impeach President Bush.

We have made amazing progress in the ImpeachBush.org/VotetoImpeach campaign. More than 730,000 people have signed on to this movement. We have run newspaper ads that have reached millions of people with the message of impeachment. These full page ads have appeared in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, USA Today and many other papers.

We will place a new ad in the New York Times in the coming weeks, and we will continue our mobilization efforts to get Congress to introduce articles of impeachment. We have been able to make great strides so far with the support of all those who believe in the impeachment movement. We need to raise $100,000 in the next month to place the new newspaper ad. Your contribution is urgently needed.

Sincerely,

Ramsey Clark

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Help place the next ad in the New York Times!

We will place a new ad in the New York Times in the coming weeks, and we will continue our mobilization efforts to get Congress to introduce articles of impeachment. We have been able to make great strides so far with the support of all those who believe in the impeachment movement. We need to raise $100,000 in the next month to place the new newspaper ad. Your contribution is

urgently needed.

-Ramsey Clark