Citing the indictment of senior White House official I. Lewis Libby, a Christian social-justice group has launched a letter-writing campaign raising questions about the United States’ rationale for the Iraq war.
Libby was indicted on five felony charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to the FBI in a grand jury investigation.
Sojourners, both a group and a magazine run by progressive evangelical activist Jim Wallis, is asking constituents via e-mail to send letters to Congress calling for an independent investigation “to determine if and how the Bush administration manipulated” intelligence to justify war in Iraq.
“Are the alleged actions of Libby isolated incidents of revenge,” the e-mail asks, “or are they the tip of the iceberg in a conspiracy to mislead the American people into war?”
Sojourners asserts that a March 2005 report, which found the intelligence community’s pre-war information faulty but not deceptive, was written by a commission appointed by Bush and is potentially biased.
The National Council of Churches, a left-leaning alliance of Protestant churches, said it supports Sojourners’ efforts to spur an independent investigation. (RNS)
