By Josephine Hearn
Democrats are eyeing several parliamentary maneuvers to prod Congress into investigating the so-called Downing Street memo and other recently disclosed documents that they contend shows that the Bush administration manipulated prewar intelligence to build support for the war in Iraq.
Although any Democratic move will almost certainly fail in the face of vigorous Republican opposition, such maneuvers would constitute the first steps toward filing articles of impeachment, a bold step that some Democrats have left as an open question in recent weeks.
“If you read the record of the writing of the Constitution, ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ had a very particular meaning at the time of the drafting of the Constitution. It certainly didn’t mean lying about sex, but it might well mean lying to the Congress about a large public purpose such as Iraq,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said at a forum held by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) earlier this month, referring to the 1998 impeachment proceedings against then-President Bill Clinton.
Democrats and allied groups are mulling at least two options to spur an investigation.
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