Letters to the Editor

REASON FOR WAR STILL UNPROVEN

Editor,

I doubt that Kevin Warner (“Bush critics are ‘Marxists’; WMDs found in Iraq”) would know a Marxist if one bit him on the leg.

But he certainly has been swilling the garbage spewed by “Rash Limberger.” Yellow cake (uranium, not plutonium, to mention just one factual error in his letter) is a raw material that must be extensively processed with equipment Iraq did not have.

While arguments can go back and forth about prewar intelligence from Sept. 2002 to Feb. 13, 2003, it is clear from reports from UNMOVIC and IAEA from Feb. 14 until the time inspectors were ordered out of Iraq in mid-March that much of the reasoning for going to war could no longer be supported by facts on the ground. These include:

1) The aluminum tubes alleged to be components of a centrifuge to process uranium were for the manufacture of artillery rockets.

2) The Niger document was proved to be a forgery.

3) Iraq was unable to reconstitute it long range ballistic missile program, partially as a result of the bombing in 1998 as part of Desert Fox.

4) The unmanned aerial vehicles were prototypes and weren’t being manufactured.

5) The handful of modified jet trainers equipped with sprayers that might be used for chemical or biological warfare could only be useful in-country.

6) U.S. and Australian Special Forces who searched prior to the invasion found no trace of the remaining SCUDs Iraq was thought to have.

7) Intelligence provided by the US of the location of nearly 100 high value WMD sites proved worthless.

8) Iraq was finally cooperating with the inspectors who now could use surveillance aircraft, visit any site and interview scientists and others privately. Also Iraq was actively destroying its short range rockets.

9) Allied intelligence did not support links between Al-Qaida and Iraq.

The primary justifications for going to war could no longer be supported after Feb. 14, 2003, but Bush went ahead.

Further:

• The mandate for UNMOVIC and IAEA inspectors called for inspectors to remain indefinitely to see that Iraq did not resume research or develop WMD.

• Allied intelligence did not agree that U.S. troops would be met as liberators, but warned of a prolonged insurgency.

Jack Star



THANKS FOR 'DECENCY' COLUMN

Editor:

I prepared a letter just after I read your column (“Have They No Sense of Decency”) thanking you for your honest appraisal. However, I rationalized that you would receive so many letters like mine that I would just be “chiming in.”

Now I see that you’ve published two letters in opposition to the column. I will not grace Kevin Warner’s diatribe with an answer to each of the charges; suffice to say that it included all of the same tired clichés found every day on Faux News.

Apparently, Warner has not noticed the latest “talking points” that come from George Walker Bush himself, who stated clearly at least in the case of Rep. Murtha, that those who disagree with this Administration regarding the war are NOT un-patriotic, anti-American or aiding and abetting the enemy.

While none in this Administration has gone so far as to say that dissent is nothing if not a courageous and patriotic act, most who know anything at all about the birth of our own Constitution recognize that document as living proof that “real” Americans have always dissented, and that public discourse is a vital tool to safeguard our democratic republic.

Thank you for the column. The majority of silent Americans (according to recent polls, no less than 60 percent do NOT approve of how the President is handling his job), also thank you!

One last point: NO weapons of mass destruction, not even a shred of evidence that there were WMD, were found in Iraq. The President admitted today (December 14, 2005) that “the intelligence was wrong.”

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the so-called yellowcake story knows that particular bit of hype was proved to be a lie – beyond a shadow of a doubt – to the U.S. intelligence community, prior to our entry into Iraq.

I guarantee that any reader who takes even a little time to research will find that the Niger-yellowcake story was a lie. And, that in an effort to cover up that lie, a high-ranking official in this Administration outed a CIA operative and subsequently resigned. “Scooter” Libby (an assistant to Vice President Richard Cheney) may now be facing prison time, and others may yet be indicted.

J. Livingstone

LETTER MISLABELED FOUNDERS

Editor,

I understand you want to print editorials reflecting a range of opinions. But as journalists it is your ethical responsibility to present the facts when you print a letter that is so inaccurate (“State, Church aren’t separate,” by “Hancock”).

As good Americans, we should not allow our history to be usurped and

rewritten. Even in my high school history class, we learned that many founding fathers were Deists who acknowledged that there was a creator who made us and then left us to develop on our own.

The myth of Washington’s Christianity comes from the book Life of

Washington by Mason Weems (a minister). This book includes the cherry tree

story and has no historical basis. Washington’s diaries show he rarely

attended church and his Freemason connection points to deism.

The most religious of the founding fathers was John Adams. He was a

Unitarian, a group that would be considered liberal and on the fringe by

today’s fundamentalist Christians. As a Unitarian, Adams did not believe in

eternal damnation and said so in a letter to Jefferson.

I could go on refuting the claims made in the letter about Thomas

Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. The point is that this writer is historically inaccurate and “plain wrong.”

‘A Descendent of Puritans’



Editor’s Note: I share your frustration with factual errors in the letters section, but over the years I’ve discovered it’s best to let readers correct each other, as you have done here.