Democrates call for inquiry into 'Dowing Street Memo'
Last Updated Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:04:17 EDTCBC NewsSenior Democrats are calling for a full investigation into a memo that appears to accuse U.S. President George W. Bush of misleading Americans into backing the war with Iraq.
Bush has always maintained that "the use of force has been and remains our last resort."
But the memo, called the Downing Street Memo, could be the first documentary proof that Bush deceived the American people.
During a forum organized by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee held to investigate the implications of the memo, Rep. John Conyers said the document "means that more than 1,600 brave Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis would have have lost their lives for a lie."
"Quite frankly, the 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," said Rep. Charles Rangel.
The memo is based on a briefing given to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top security advisers in July 2002, eight months before the war.
Labelled "top secret," the memo summarizes a report from Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence, who had just met senior Bush officials in Washington.
The memo says: "Military action was now seen as inevitable."
That "Terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]" would be used to justify the war.
But, the memo says, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Neither Bush nor Blair has challenged the authenticity of the Downing Street Memo. But earlier this month both said it is wrong.
"The facts were not being fixed in any shape or form," said Blair.
"Somebody said we had made up our mind to use military force to deal with Saddam [Hussein]," said Bush. "There is nothing further from the truth. My conversation with the prime minister was how we can do this peacefully."
A separate document says Blair pressured Bush to take his case to the United Nations to give a legal justification for the war.
Michael Smith, the reporter for the Sunday Times who obtained the leaked memos, said that was a brilliant case of misdirection.
"The whole business about going to the UN is not to avert war, but actually to get an excuse to carry out war. And I think that's the killer document for me."
At the hearing, Democrats called for a congressional investigation and some witnesses said Bush may have to be impeached.
"It is a high crime to engage in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the American people about the basis for taking the nation to war," said constitutional lawyer John Bonifaz.
The U.S. media have given scant coverage to the Downing Street Memo, so it may not have much of an impact in Washington.
On Thursday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed the allegation in the Downing Street Memo. He said the Democrats were "simply trying to rehash old debates that have already been addressed. And our focus is not on the past. It's on the future and working to make sure we succeed in Iraq."
But what is having an impact is the surging number of American soldiers killed or wounded in Iraq. New poll numbers now show that most Americans feel the war wasn't worth fighting.
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