I favor impeachment. I have done so publicly for two years. I recently wrote what I think is a workable approach to getting impeachment hearings under way despite the recalcitrance of most Democrats in Congress – Forget the Leadership. Convince the Judiciary Committee.

But I am increasingly appalled by the self-righteous declamations here and elsewhere in wwwLand that anybody who doesn’t see impeachment as the holy grail of current politics is an idiot, a turncoat, a sell-out, a willing or unsuspecting servant of the Dark Side. I am up to my eyebrows with the "with us or against us" tenor of so many of the Diaries on this subject. Many people who think that shouting – particularly shouting insults and smears – at Congresspeople (or fellow progressives) seem incapable of extrapolating from their own reactions when someone insults or smears them.

I’m not arguing against expressions of anger. Anger has its place. Sometimes, too, you have to sit down in the middle of the street and say, we’re not moving until the powers-that-be change direction. But, as I see it, a few of the most avid impeachment advocates are sabotaging their own case with assertions of nefarious doings by people with longstanding and impeccable progressive credentials. The fact that this actually amounts to sabotage is concealed by the popularity a rant always rouses from the amen corner.

My first stirrings toward believing that impeachment should be pursued go all the way back to late summer 2003 when it became apparent that someone on high had outed a covert CIA agent for political gain. And I leaned further in that direction when I read Ron Suskind’s book The Price of Loyalty, in which former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill gave us some of the inside skinny on the Administration’s "deliberations" about invading Iraq in the immediate aftermath of September 11.

I became even more convinced after May 2005, when we again had confirmed for us by Times (of London’s) publication of the Downing Street Memo that the Bush Administration had been utterly determined to invade Iraq no matter what the evidence showed. The operative paragraph:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

That memo, by the way, was written exactly five years ago tomorrow, July 23, 2002, a time when some of us hoped we still could stop the rush for war.

By October 2005, with torture and rendition and secret prisons and Gitmo and a thousand elements of the Administration handiwork, the stench from the White House and its environs spurred me to write Enough already with calling Iraq a mistake:

Every one of them is wrong. Invading Iraq was no mistake. It was bloody treason. And the traitors still rule us instead of breaking rocks at Leavenworth. They knowingly, willingly, unhesitatingly pronounced what they knew to be lies and marginalized, denigrated and smeared contrary-minded people, manipulated real evidence, concocted fake evidence, tricked an American population traumatized, fearful and furious about terrorism and sent young men and women off to a war at the tip of a bayonet named "9/11." A mistake is when you hammer your thumb instead of the nail. A mistake is when you choose c) instead of d) on the SAT. A mistake is when you put too much garlic in the minestrone. Invading Iraq was no damned mistake. And calling it a mistake is more than a mere slip of the tongue. It sets a precedent. Pretty soon, everybody will be saying invading Iraq was a mistake. And in 20 years, your grandkids will be studying out of textbooks that call it a mistake. Instead of calling it what it really was. Sedition. Over and over again for three years we've had our faces rubbed in the evidence. Yet, every day, someone calls this perfidious, murderous scheme a mistake. As if invading Iraq were a foreign policy mishap. Oopsy. Stop it already. People do not commit treachery by mistake. As we full well know, even before George W. Bush was scooted into office 5-to-4, the men he came to front for were already at work plotting their rationale for sinking deeper military and economic roots in the Middle East, petropolitics and neo-imperialist sophistry greedily intertwined. When they stepped into office, as Richard Clarke explained to us, terrorism gave them no worries. They blew off Clarke and they blew off Hart-Rudman with scarcely a fare-thee-well. Then, when they weren't figuring out how to lower taxes on their pals and unravel the tattered social safety net, they focused - as Paul O'Neill informed us - on finding the right excuse to persuade the American people to go to war with Saddam Hussein as a prelude to going to war with some of his neighbors. In less than nine months, that excuse dropped into their laps in the form of Osama bin Laden's kamikaze crews. From that terrible day forward, Richard Cheney and his sidekick Donald Rumsfeld and their like-minded coterie of rogues engineered the invasion. They didn't slip the U.S. into Iraq by mistake. Like the shrewd opportunists they have shown themselves to be in the business world, they saw the chance to carry out their invasion plan and they moved every obstacle - most especially the truth - out of their way to make it happen.

Since then, a passel of additional information has come our way, including, of course, the outrageously belated report by The New York Times that U.S. intelligence agencies had been spying on American citizens in violation of the very easy-to-comply-with law set up three decades ago in the wake of revelations of illegal government spying in that era. The list of malfeasance, depravity, villainy, outlawry, corruption, injustice and barbarity goes on far longer than I have space for here, and, besides, we’ve every one of us heard the perverted litany so many, many times before.

Amid all these abominations, the lies and the killings as well as the violations and circumventions of the Constitution, the Administration deployed fear to engender hatred and yet more fear. It spurred Americans to worry that foreign extremists would rip away their way of life while diligently and often secretly using that hatred, fear and worry to steal the very liberty we were told was under attack by the jihadis who they had let escape at Tora Bora.

So, by the time the Democrats had their majority last January, a majority that uncountable thousands of activist progressives spent money and time and energy to achieve, nobody had to convince me to support impeachment. And I looked forward to investigations and hearings that would bring us closer to the day when impeachment hearings would be underway.

Having read what others had to say on the subject, it was my view that either the Bush Administration would surrender relevant documents in this series of ongoing investigations, and that these documents would make certain what has long been suspected and that would lead to impeachment hearings. Or that the Administration would stonewall, refuse to accept subpoenas, thus force Congress step by step to crank up the pressure. Either the Administration would crack under that pressue and investigations would officially reveal impeachable offenses, or the refusal to comply would itself force members of Congress to seek impeachment. Either way, bingo.

It would be an understatement to say not everyone agreed then or agrees now. Well-informed people I greatly respect, some of whom I agree with on 90% of everything else political, think impeachment is either a will'o the wisp or a gross mistake that will be deeply regretted if it occurs and who think progressives are wasting their energy to pursue it. I challenge them on their point of view. I argue with them. But I don’t lightly cast aside what they say, nor insult nor otherwise disrespect them. If I did, why should they take me seriously on this or any other subject about which progressives have differences of opinion?

Practically speaking, we who seek impeachment have (at best) but a few months to persuade those in Congress (who likely can be persuaded) that investigations explicitly called impeachment hearings should begin.

Some people have complained that they have written or phoned congressional offices to express their views favoring impeachment and gotten no response or a canned response – a form letter or a blah-blah-de-blah reply from an aide – regarding their concerns. Or that they’ve gotten a flat no. OK. Surrender? Despair? Or onto the next step? I vote for the latter.

The perfect time to catch your Representative (and Senators) face to face is now, when they'll be making more visits home than any time of the year except the winter holidays. They'll be speaking publicly at numerous venues, and you (and others) can be in attendance repeatedly, relentlessly questioning them and urging them to take action. You can urge them to send John Conyers a letter saying they think now’s the time. If your Representative is one of the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, your persuasive efforts will be far more pivotal than those of us who live in other districts, because if your Rep calls for impeachment hearings it means more than a similar call by 90% of the other Democrats.

This kind of politicing requires a lot more commitment than writing a letter, or writing a screed, or showing up at a protest march, and not everyone, of course, can afford to travel to district offices or other venues to do this. But those who can afford the time and who feel strongly enough – certainly passion does not seem in short supply – should do what they can as many times as they can to come face-to-face with their Rep and Senators. Letters and e-mails are easy to ignore. Constituents in person far less so. Particularly polite, well-informed, insistent constituents with a well-honed, message that is carefully crafted ahead of time to knock down any objections.

I plan to work on my Congressman in this regard, and on Iraq withdrawal, every time I get the opportunity.

Let me make myself clear once more. I enjoy a good rant against the powers-that-be as much as the next person. But at this late date, ranting won’t move impeachment one millimeter closer to reality.