We should focus on making Bush a lame duck (limiting his power) rather than impeachment (high risk, low probable return).

But the revenge would be so sweet!

Also, it really depends what exactly he did. If it becomes a "slam dunk" to remove him and Cheney from office, to borrow an unfortunate turn of phrase from George Tenet, then I think an attempt at impeachment might actually be worthwhile or perhaps even an imperative of justice.

Agreed, but it's an extremely polarizing move that'd take time to gain traction in the court of public opinion. There's two long years left, but the life cycle of impeachment would run even longer.

I'd rather focus my political offense on building up a ground swell for something positive to come around after Bush is out of office. Defensively I'd just try to keep his policy from leveling any more of the great cities left on the planet.

See, I think that if really bad shit came out in the course of the investigations that are now really only just beginning: the Scooter Libby trial and senate inquiries into wiretapping, why we really got into Iraq, etc, then the Congressional leaders would be foolish not to try to take down the White House, because they would appear weak in the face of a grave threat to the constitution. It may be a polarizing move, but if you look at the president's approval ratings lately... 34%? And this is presupposing a new development demonstrating serious wrongdoing by the administration... I think that polarization would come out in their favor.

There's little doubt they've engaged in some serious wrongdoing. The way they're purging judges related to potentially damaging investigations says a lot about the administrations concerns of being caught.

I'm just saying impeachment is hardly the most productive thing we could be focusing on. As progressives, we need to win some smaller battles first to make sure we're on solid footing. There's just something quixotic about gunning for the big stinky cheese.

One advantage of impeachment is that I suspect it would send a stronger message to the international community, "yes, we recognize that guy should not have been in office. Sorry about that."

The biggest problem is that Bush still has power over the military. He's going to use and abuse that power to put the Dems in the uncomfortable position of either 1.) cutting funding to stop the war and "not supporting our troops, putting them in harm's way, etc." or 2.) being completely powerless to change the direction of this losing war.

Ironically, 2008 repubs will spend their campaigns blaming the dems for being ineffectual in Iraq for two years.

Also: President Cheney.

Um...are there any other options?

Won't they figure it out?

Cheney shot his friend in his face, what would he do if he were to become president! :(

For a single reason: Impeachment is only effective in the beggining of a government, while damage is still not so visible.

If he is guilty of an impeachable offense, he should be impeached. That is the law.

If he deliberately lied to get us into this war, or knew the intelligence was bad, he should be impeached. But for that we'd need a real investigation, which also requires a Congress with some balls. But given the current ball-lessness, both of these scenarios are unlikely.