This Could Get Interesting…Finally

Raw Story reports that a coalition of citizen groups, calling themselves After Downing Street and including Veterans for Peace, Progressive Democrats of America, 911Citizens Watch, Democracy Rising, Code Pink, Global Exchange, Democrats.com, Velvet Revolution, and Gold Star Families for Peace, among others, are seeking a formal inquiry into the possibility that Bush committed impeachable offenses in making the case for the Iraq War.

The formal Resolution of Inquiry request, written by Boston constitutional attorney John C. Bonifaz, cites the Downing Street Memo and issues surrounding the planning and execution of the Iraq war. A resolution of inquiry would force relevant House committees to vote on the record as to whether to support an investigation.

The Downing Street Memo, official minutes of a 2002 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair, members of British intelligence MI-6 and various members of the Bush administration, notes that MI-6 director Richard Dearlove said, “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Bonifaz says the minutes were the impetus for his request.

“The recent release of the Downing Street Memo provides new and compelling evidence that the President of the United States has been actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people,” Bonifaz wrote in a memo to the ranking House Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI), outlining the case (read his memo here).

[…]

“The president, among other alleged crimes, may have also violated federal criminal law if the evidence from the Downing Street memo is proven to be true, including the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996,” Bonifaz wrote.

[…]

“Within 48 hours after the attack on Iraq, the president wrote a letter to Congress indicating that Iraq posed a serious and imminent threat to national security and if he knew that was not true at the time he submitted that letter it is a clear violation of the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996,” Bonifaz said.

Under this Act, amending 18 U.S.C. § 1001, it is a crime knowingly and willfully (1) to falsify, conceal or cover up a material fact by trick, scheme or device; (2) to make any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) to make or use any false writing or document knowing it to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; with respect to matters within the jurisdiction of the legislative, executive, or judicial branch.

[…]

Bonifaz and others ask that citizens of all party affiliations and backgrounds help support his request by writing to their Congressional leaders. They are also seeking other groups to sign on.

Anyone feel compelled to set up the Lefty Blogger Alliance, or the Blogging with Liberal Objectives Group, or some other name that isn’t taken (who can keep track?) so that we can throw our weight, such as it is, behind this thing?