WASHINGTON, June 17 (UPI) -- Anti-Iraq war members of Congress convened a hearing on the "Downing Street memo" and gave the White House some 500,000 signatures asking about the document.
The Downing Street memo, dated July 23, 2002, purports that the head of British intelligence said "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq. The United States, which said President Bush decided to invade in February 2003, led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Several anti-Bush groups have been calling for an investigation based on the document.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., presided at a hearing Thursday in which witnesses claimed Bush misled the U.S. public into supporting the war, The New York Times reported. Conyers and other members of Congress then went to the White House with bundles of petitions they said continued 560,000 signatures asking questions about the memo.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Conyers was "an individual who voted against the war in the first place and is simply trying to rehash old debates that have already been addressed," the Times reported.
