The devil's in the details

"Congressional investigators digging into the [corruption scandals of the Bush administration and Republican majority in Congress] cannot ignore the possibility of impeachment proceedings against Vice President Cheney, who figures prominently in almost every one of the scandals engulfing the administration. It was Cheney who ran the government's response to the 9/11 attacks without constitutional authority, at one point ordering shoot-downs of commercial planes and what would turn out to be a medevac helicopter; who led the secret meetings of administration officials and oilmen to set energy policy; who allowed Ahmed Chalabi to play the U.S. government like a violin; who very well may be the origin of the whisper campaign that culminated in the Plame leak; and, of course, it was Cheney's former employer (and source of continuing deferred compensation paychecks) that benefited enormously from no-bid contracts in Iraq. Judicial Watch, the conservative legal outfit in Washington, has unearthed an email dated March 5, 2003, sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official whose name had been blacked out, that said of a pending deal under which Halliburton would rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, 'We anticipate no issue since the action has been coordinated w VP's office.' There's plenty more where that came from; whether any of Cheney's actions constitute 'high crimes and misdemeanors' is for Congress, and the nation, to debate. "
-- James Ridgeway, Mother Jones, from "Five Scandals that Could Put Republicans in Jail."