BREAKING NEWS: TOP CHENEY AIDE INDICTED

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Sojourners calls for an independent investigation of President Bush’s administration to determine if and how intelligence was knowingly manipulated leading up to the war in Iraq.

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In the week we mourned the death of the 2,000th U.S. soldier in Iraq, I. Lewis Libby, vice presidential chief of staff, was indicted today on five felony charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to the FBI in the grand jury investigation into the leak of the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had been critical of pre-war intelligence on Iraq. According to news reports, the investigation of White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove will continue.

This case goes well beyond petty intrigue and personal revenge. As people of faith, it is time to raise our voices and demand the truth about actions that – if proven in court – were threads of misinformation and manipulation that pushed our nation into war with Iraq and punished those who discovered credible evidence against it. With the prophet Isaiah we cry out: “No one calls for justice, nor does any plead for truth” (Isaiah 59:4).

+ Click here to ask Congress for an independent investigation to determine if and how the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify war in Iraq:

http://go.sojo.net/campaign/demand_truth/wd33usn4z5tmb5m?

The indictment of Libby raises the possibility that top White House officials deliberately attacked someone who questioned the validity of the intelligence the White House used to claim there were “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq – intelligence that has now been discredited. More importantly, this indictment provokes further questions about whether going to war was simply an honest mistake based on bad intelligence. Are the alleged actions of Libby isolated incidents of revenge, or are they the tip of the iceberg in a conspiracy to mislead the American people into war?

We demand a truly independent commission that will investigate whether the Bush administration deliberately misled our nation into going to war. Although creating an independent commission will not bring back the 2,000 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of this war, it will nevertheless be a step toward restoring honesty and integrity to the nation’s highest office.

+ Click here to ask Congress for an independent investigation to determine if and how the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify war in Iraq:

http://go.sojo.net/campaign/demand_truth/wd33usn4z5tmb5m?

President Bush’s administration claimed in the run-up to the war that the primary justification for going to war was the threat of weapons of mass destruction. In March 2005, a commission appointed by President Bush reported that “the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.”[1] The commission went on to report that these were simply intelligence failures, but found no evidence of any deliberate attempt by intelligence officials to mislead the administration about the war. In short, they concluded that these were honest – yet highly serious mistakes. We need an independent commission that differs from previous investigations in that members not only focus on errors within the intelligence community but at potential errors within the administration.

We want the truth about why we went to war with Iraq. Help us find it:

This is not a matter of partisan politics, nor of political revenge. It is a matter of uncovering the truth about why we went to war. Sojourners has worked for peace with justice for more than 30 years. We have been consistent and vocal opponents of the war in Iraq, and we take it seriously when voices of dissent become targets of intimidation for political gain. We have a long and consistent history of demanding integrity from our national leaders – from Nixon, to Reagan, to Clinton, and now the Bush administration.

As people of faith, we believe that the authority for governance balances on a commitment to truth when leading a nation into war and putting at risk our lives and those of our “enemies.” We will not stand by while our nation’s elected officials “trust in empty words and speak lies; conceive evil and bring forth iniquity” (Isaiah 59:4b).

We need your help to get 25,000 people to sign this petition by Wednesday. After you sign the petition, follow the instructions to forward this message to 10 or more of your friends, family, fellow churchgoers – anyone who believes in our call as people of faith to be prophetic voices of truth and peacemaking.

+ Click here to sign a petition asking Congress for an independent investigation of President Bush’s administration to determine if and how intelligence was knowingly manipulated leading up to the war in Iraq:

http://go.sojo.net/campaign/demand_truth/wd33usn4z5tmb5m?

Blessings,

The staff at Sojourners

[1] From the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, March 31, 2005. http://www.wmd.gov/report/transmittal_letter.html

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