No accountability?

Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment is not on the agenda. Conyers has now apparently agreed with this (although I doubt this reflects his true feelings on the subject). What I want to know is, does this mean no accountability? Consider the situation: Bush/Cheney and the neocons attacked a sovereign nation that was no threat to us (don't believe their bullshit about believing Sadam had WMD's - they knew perfectly well he was not a threat to us, as did virtually all the rest of the world). Powell himself has said two months before the attack that Iraq was not a threat. The inspectors were right there on the ground at the time and said there was no threat, in spite of Bush's absolute lie about Iraq having rejected the inspectors. Attacking preemptively a nation that is not a threat to you is the most basic of war crimes (consult the Nuremberg trials). Authorizing torture is a war crime. Hiding prisoners from the Red Cross is a war crime. Dropping phosphorous bombs on civilians is a war crime. The indiscriminate killing of civilians is a war crime. Completely destroying Falluja was a war crime. War profiteering is a war crime. Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice and the rest of the criminal gang are guilty of all of these things.

Consider impeachment. They lied to the Congress and the American people in order to bring about this immoral, illegal, unnecessary "war." They engaged in illegal wiretapping. They usurped Presidential powers that do not exist and attempted to establish a one party ruling system in our supposedly democratic society, by overriding established laws and writing "signing statements" that simply said they would not abide by existing laws. All of these things are almost certainly impeachable, and there is no doubt they, in fact, did them.

So are they to not be held accountable? Are we just supposed to say, oh well, boys will be boys, stuff happens, back off and relax? I can understand why democrats might not wish to immediately engage in impeachment proceedings that would look like revenge (how absurd would it be to consider it an act of revenge to try to bring war criminals to justice?), and would also keep them from accomplishing anything positive in the near future. But come on, consider reality, are we are supposed to just forgive all our military deaths and dismemberments, the deaths and misery of thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqis? The destruction of the nation of Iraq? Just pretend it all didn't happen? Do we want the rest of the world to think we actually condone such criminal disgusting acts? This is like saying, in some of our smaller communities, yes, we know he was a disgusting rapist and murderer, but it will cost too much to try him again. This happens. Are we going to let it happen on an international scale?

So let us go slowly, issue some supoenas, gather some facts, proceed cautiously, by all means try to be objective and fair, but let us not lose fact of the basic issue of accountability. And let us not shirk from punishing those who are found to be accountable. No bygones be bygones here. It is far too important, and the world will be watching.