Important memo...
> Data: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 00:52:56 EDT
> Hi my Friends,
>
> Re: Downing St. Memo
>
> Knowing how well informed you are this is probably
> repeat info but I thought
> I would pass it along carried by my blossoming sense
> that perhaps there may be
> some justice (though so long after the fact....) In
> an AOL poll the majority
> stated they thought the government stretched the
> truth (versus that the
> government received incorrect info). Here's to more
> and more eyes getting opened
> as we awaken from our slumber...
>
> Love,
> Annamarta
>
>
> Updated: 10:02 PM EDT
> Democrats Hold Hearing on 'Downing Street Memo'
> By PETE YOST, AP
>
>
> Getty Images
> Rep. John Conyers says the memo calls into question
> some pre-war statements
> by President Bush.
>
> Watch Broadband Video:
> The Downing Street Memo
>
> Watch Multiband Video:
> Not a 'Smoking Gun'
>
> More Coverage:
> · A Peephole Into the War Room
> · Rising Doubts About Iraq
>
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>
> WASHINGTON (June 16) - 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.
> At a public forum where the word ''impeachment''
> loomed large, Exhibit A was
> the so-called Downing Street memo, a prewar document
> leaked from inside the
> British government to The Sunday Times of London a
> month and a half ago. Rep.
> John Conyers of Michigan, 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, D-N.Y., 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.''
> Conyers and a half-dozen other members of Congress
> were stopped at the White
> House gate later Thursday when they hand-delivered
> petitions signed by 560,000
> Americans who want Bush to provide a detailed
> response to the Downing Street
> memo. When Conyers couldn't get in, 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 for 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.
> AP-NY-06-16-05 21:04 EDT
>
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