"All politics are local," Bend City Councilor Linda Johnson said Tuesday, after putting Item 3a on the council's Wednesday night agenda. And it's no little item, but a resolution that blasts President Bush and Vice President Cheney and calls for their impeachment for intentionally misleading the nation into a bloody, protracted war.


If three colleagues join Johnson in voting yes - and there's no guarantee of that - Bend will become one of dozens of cities across the country that have weighed in on the nation's biggest controversy, on the side of those opposed to the war and the administration's role in it.

Calvin Mann has led a cadre of fellow anti-war activists to the microphone at the visitor's section of recent council meetings, asking the council to take a stand and also to host a town hall on the topic. Mayor Bruce Abernethy suggested that Mann seek support from individual councilors, if he wanted to proceed.



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Johnson told KTVZ.COM Wednesday she will back the resolution that she's offered up. But she said she's also "divided" on the idea of it being germane to city business, though she believes the war has cost everyone in more than bloodshed - for cities like Bend, a share of cold, hard federal dollars that instead are going to the war. ...

"As locally elected officials, we are struggling to provide basic services at a time when the Iraq War's costs are mounting," the preamble to the two-page resolution begins...(full text at http://www.ci.bend.or.us/city_hall/meeting_minutes/docs/Resolution_Impeach_Bush.pdf )


"But I also feel as council members, we are members of society," she said. "And if there's something that has impact - the war in Iraq is depleting government resources, so we're not getting federal funding for health care, for planning, homeland security, because those resources are going to Iraq - then I think there is a legitimate case where the city could say we are (affected)."

"I support sending a message we are not happy, and the country is suffering, both economically and on the moral stage," the city councilor said.

The resolution claims Bush and Cheney "did conspire with others to intentionally mislead the nation about the threat from Iraq in order to justify a war of aggression against that country, in violation of" federal law and the U.N. Charter.

It also says the president admits to ordering electronically surveillance of U.S. citizens without court warrants, and that he and Cheney "conspired to condone the torture of prisoners."

It also goes a bit off-topic in claiming the two men "ordered the deliberate suppression and falsification of scientific information and findings on climate change."