Let the Iraqis Get Rid of Hussein

Re “ ‘No Third Way’ for U.S. Iraqis,” Dec 26: Of course there is a third way -- by advocating that we stop the war drive, end the sanctions immediately and let the Iraqi people live to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

During the ‘80s up until the Gulf War, the overwhelming support by the U.S. and the West for Hussein made it impossible for any democratic civic institutions to prosper. A lot of evidence has surfaced lately indicating that the U.S. had full knowledge of Hussein’s atrocities back then, but the Reagan and Bush administrations tried to block attempts by Congress to investigate and reacted by providing more military and agricultural aid to keep the regime afloat. The sanctions have replaced U.S. support for Hussein by strengthening the Iraqi regime.

Ayham Dahi

Long Beach

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It is almost beyond understanding that the myth is going to prevail that Hussein is so great an enemy that we must purge the world of him by going to war. Yet those of us who do not believe the myth or endorse all the government accommodations to support such a myth (for instance, obliterating civil rights), and those of us who write our representatives or join peace marches, are seen as enemies of the state. Not wanting to be seen as such, we shrink and thereby become accomplices and supporters of our government’s trumped-up myth. It is the history of war.

June Bailey

Palm Desert