42 percent say if bush lied about iraq-war he should be held accountable

The Impeachment Question
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, July 6, 2005; 1:24 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/07/06
/BL2005070601211.html

More than four in 10 Americans, according to a recent Zogby poll, say that if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment.

But you wouldn't know it from following the news. Only three mainstream outlets that I can find made even cursory mention of the poll last week when it came out.

You also wouldn't know it judging from the political discourse in Washington, but that makes a little more sense. After all, impeachment is for all practical purposes a political act, not a legal one. So with a Republican-controlled Congress that doesn't even like to perform basic White House oversight, it's basically a moot point.

Nevertheless, could there be anything that 42 percent of Americans agree on that the media care about so little?

The poll results certainly illustrate the intense polarization of the American electorate -- not exactly news.

But they also suggest an appetite for more investigation into Bush's reasons for war and specifically -- in light of the assertions in the Downing Street memos -- whether his public rationales were in fact at all like his private rationales. (cont.)