"The fact that this administration has been criminally incompetent is now the stuff of water-cooler orthodoxy. The fact that it has been plain criminal is not. But it should be. Under George Bush the US has tortured, disenfranchised, lied, spied and, on more than one occasion, flouted its own constitution. Those who would not go along were fired or demoted. Those rulings it could not garner support for it simply classified or hid. Those inquiries it could not prevent it thwarted. When Major General Antonio Taguba tried to pursue his investigation of Abu Ghraib up the chain of command he was stopped. "I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority," he told the New Yorker.

"Its violation of international law is ultimately a matter for the international community. But its violation of American laws is a matter for the American public. However, it is now clear that the political consequences of these transgressions will range from negligible to non-existent. The Bush administration should be led away in handcuffs - either indicted or impeached. Instead it is about to leave the scene of the crime in broad daylight while those tasked to police this democracy - notably politicians and the press - blind themselves with confetti.

"For he could not do it alone. The US is not an elected dictatorship. The president is supposed to stand at the helm of a system of checks and balances. The reason there was no balance was because there were no checks. The real problem with the Bush years is not so much that he did what he did, but that he managed to gain the consent of America's political class in enabling him to do it. His political estrangement is not because he tried, only because he failed.

"This has more or less been conceded by none other than the leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, who voted against the war in Iraq. When asked recently by the Nation why she took impeachment off the table before the 2006 elections, Pelosi answered: "What about these other people who voted for that war with no evidence ... Are they going to be voting with us to impeach the president? Where are these Democrats going to be? Are they going to be voting for us to impeach a president who took us to war on information that they had also?" In other words, for the Democrats to impeach the president they would first have to implicate themselves.

"This is not to say the Democrats were equally culpable. But they were differently responsible, and cowed by accusations of lack of patriotism most of them abdicated that responsibility."

One of the key sentences in Younge's article is this: "Trying to look ahead without acknowledging how you got to where you are is a surefire way to end up wandering around in circles. And the last place the Democrats want to be is where they were."

That is also essentially what Robert Parry is also arguing.  Because US representatives and senators failed to take the impeachment of Nixon for his crimes to its concluseion the American people ended up with the criminal Reagan administration, and because Congress failed to impeach Reagan and Bush I, we ended up with the criminal Bush II regime which has been even worse, the worst administration ever.

Inasmuch as Nancy Pelosi and her crew have shown an arrogance and lack of leadership on impeachment and a grave failure to acknowledge how this country got into these terrible disasters, the American people have been denied their right to hold the Bush administration accountable for its crimes which have had terrible consequences for people in the US.   Pelosi and gang are continuing a vicious circle that is the foundation for another Republican criminal Nixon, Reagan or Bush II presidency in the future.