Scott C. Smith is a Beaverton, Oregon freelance writer and regular contributor to Counterbias. Scott also writes for his blog, What’s In Scott’s Head, at Scott C. Smith dot net. Scott’s columns have also appeared at the liberal web sites Democratic Underground and The Smirking Chimp.

According to Uniform Code of Military Justice every soldier must obey LAWFUL orders of their superiors including Commander-in-Chief. The internal conflict within soldier that Downing Street memo could raise is if President George W. Bush did in fact lie us into war violating constitution and international law. If that did in fact occur our soldiers would be under no obligation to follow his illegal orders. Imagine 150,000 armed troops realizing that not only do they not have to follow illegal orders of this Commander-in-Chief but that over 1700 of their brothers and sisters have died for a lie.

Is memo in and of itself reason for impeachment? Absolutely not but it does leave us asking some very serious questions that MUST be resolved. Depending upon answers to these questions President of United States may be impeached. That point is well off. First, questions must be asked of principals in hearings by Congress. Questions to Sir Richard Dearlove, Jack Straw and Matthew Rycroft who are responsible for content of memo. Questions like do you dispute minutes contained within memo? Who did you meet with in U.S.? When did you meet? What was discussed? Were you told that this President wanted to go to war with Iraq? Was an ultimatum issued to Iraq so that war could be legally justified? Was any other nation brought into discussions about Iraq prior to U.N. resolution? Who ordered escalation of bombing of Iraq prior to start of war and U.N. resolution, to point of dropping twice as many bombs as previous year in a matter of months? How was this legally justified? Was intelligence being presented to American people, United Nations and Congress knowingly false or inflated to justify war? Is it known whether or not this administration was intent upon war despite reality of situation?

These questions must be asked of highest members of our government. Failure to ask them goes way beyond partisan control and goes directly heart of our democracy. If Republicans cannot rise above what's good for their party for greater good of United States of America this experiment known as democracy is frankly headed towards failure.