Probono

Forum focuses on 'Downing St. memo'

Democrats urge inquiry into whether Bush misled nation on war



WASHINGTON (AP) -- Amid new questions about President Bush's drive to topple Saddam Hussein, several House Democrats urged lawmakers on Thursday to conduct an official inquiry to determine whether the president intentionally misled Congress.

Rep. John Conyers of Michigan and a half-dozen other members of Congress were stopped at the White House gate when they hand-delivered petitions signed by 560,000 Americans who want Bush to provide a detailed response to the so-called Downing Street memo.

At a public forum where the word "impeachment" loomed large earlier in the day, Exhibit A was the Downing Street memo, a prewar document leaked from inside the British government to The Sunday Times of London a month and a half ago.

Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, organized the event.

Recounting a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair's national security team, the memo says the Bush administration believed that war was inevitable and was determined to use intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the ouster of Saddam.

"The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," one of the participants was quoted as saying at the meeting, which took place just after British officials returned from Washington.

The president "may have deliberately deceived the United States to get us into a war," Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, said. "Was the president of the United States a fool or a knave?"

The Democratic congressmen were relegated to a tiny room in the bottom of the Capitol, and the Republicans who run the House scheduled 11 major votes to coincide with the afternoon event.

"We have not been told the truth," Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Baghdad a year ago, told the Democrats. "If this administration doesn't have anything to hide, they should be down here testifying."

The White House refuses to respond to a May 5 letter from 122 congressional Democrats about whether there was a coordinated effort to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy, as the Downing Street memo says.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan says Conyers "is simply trying to rehash old debates."

When Conyers couldn't get inside the White House gates Thursday, an anti-war demonstrator shouted, "Send Bush out!" Eventually, White House aides retrieved the petitions at the gate and took them into the West Wing.

"Quite frankly, evidence that appears to be building up points to whether or not the president has deliberately misled Congress to make the most important decision a president has to make, going to war," Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said earlier at the event on Capitol Hill.

Misleading Congress is an impeachable offense, a point that Rangel underscored by saying he's already been through two impeachments. He referred to the impeachment of President Clinton stemming from an affair with a White House intern and of President Nixon for Watergate, even though Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment.

Conyers pointed to statements by Bush in the run-up to invasion that war would be a last resort. "The veracity of those statements has -- to put it mildly -- come into question," he said.

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson said, "We are having this discussion today because we failed to have it three years ago when we went to war."

"It used to be said that democracies were difficult to mobilize for war precisely because of the debate required," Wilson said, going on to say the lack of debate in this case allowed the war to happen.

Wilson wrote a 2003 newspaper opinion piece criticizing the Bush administration's claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. After the piece appeared, someone in the Bush administration leaked the identity of Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, exposing her cover.

Wilson has said he believes the leak was retaliation for his critical comments. The Justice Department is investigating.

John Bonifaz, a lawyer and co-founder of a new group called AfterDowningStreet.org, said the lack of interest by congressional Republicans in the Downing Street memo is like Congress during Nixon's presidency saying "we don't want" the Watergate tapes.


Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

wallst

dude, this hasn't gone away? STFU troll.

go hide under your rainbow.

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Earl Miller Cash
20th Congress

TaDoW

Bring Tha Noise!

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-TaDoW

I've Upped My Standards, Up Yours!

Probono

We have a government that lies to us and you want it to go away. You are in the wrong industry, try a job under propaganda. These are the same SOB's that want us out of business with more lies.

darnit

Good you included this in the post

Matt 26z

The Democrats are watering at the mouth to impeach Bush.

SuckOnThis

As well they should be. If Clinton did a tenth of what this pres has done he would have been hung.

AlienQ - BANNED FOR LIFE

Democrats are not watering to much at the mouth to impeach Bush.

The fucken reasons to impeach him on the first term in starting Iraq War has been on the table since day one.

Thats why Republicans call Democrats pussies.

They are pussies for not taking the opportunity to stop Bush in the first place.

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directfiesta

Did Bush use a cigar ...
Did he hump a plump intern
Did he lie, I mean about sex ...

So what is the problem ... why impeach???

Bill killed millions of sperms ( lives ...) by cumming on the dress of Monika...

George only killed 1700 US citizens and a mere 50,000 iraqi civilians.
How can that compare ....

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I know that Asspimple is stoopid ... As he says, it is a FACT !

But I can't figure out how he can breathe or type , at the same time ....

Snake Doctor

If ever a president deserved to be impeached it's this one.....you'd think these offenses are much worse than lying about a blowjob, which apparently is an impeachable offense.

I guess this is one of the perks of having your own party in control of congress

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