WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Republican majority in the House of Representatives rejected a resolution calling for a "substantive" investigation into abuses before and during the Iraq war. The resolution was proposed by Democrats who have used increasingly aggressive tactics in Congress to draw attention to President George W. Bush's record on the war.
Republicans in the House defeated the measure by 220 votes to 191.
The Democratic resolution had called for an investigation into "the manipulation of pre-war intelligence", the role of Vice President Dick Cheney into Iraq's reconstruction, the leaking of the name of a CIA agent and abuses against prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
Democrats accused the Republican leadership in Congress of failing in their oversight of the Republican administration.
The resolution came on the day that Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, appeared in court in Washington to deny charges linked to an investigation into the naming of a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame.
Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, has alleged that she was named to take revenge on him because of his opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In the Senate, the Democrats exploited a rarely used rule on Tuesday to force a closed-door hearing to demand an investigation on the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.