U.S. Role in Iraq Gets Deeper and Costlier

Re “Blast Kills 22 at U.S. Base,” Dec. 22: After the massacre at Mosul, the time has come to evaluate our situation in Iraq seriously. How many more Americans killed will be necessary to convince the American people that Iraq is a lost cause?

We are not fighting “insurgents”; we are fighting Iraqis who want us out of there.

We invaded an innocent country with a terrible tyrant, government and political party, but the cure was not to attack and kill as many or more than Saddam Hussein had. How would we like to be invaded by a foreign power without having provoked such an attack?

I doubt President Bush will ever see the light and admit we were wrong in invading Iraq just to get rid of a horrible ruler. To many that seems to be enough of a justification for the invasion.

But eventually, as more and more American soldiers are killed, and after a blood-bath “election” that will shake our souls, we will wish that we never had gotten dragged into a quagmire that pulls us down.

Ake Sandler

Los Angeles

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Re “U.S. Contractor Pulls Out of Reconstruction Effort in Iraq,” Dec. 22: As Contrack, the major U.S. reconstruction contractor, pulls out of its lucrative contract in Iraq, its president explains: “We felt we were not serving the government, and that the dollars were not being spent smartly.”

Amid all the deceit, self-deluding hyperbole and hypocrisy that we receive daily from this administration, this simple statement of epiphany becomes ironically reassuring.

June Maguire

Mission Viejo

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Re “Bush Foresees a Deeper U.S. Role in Iraq,” Dec. 21: Rarely have I seen a statement as candid as the one from James Dobbins, Bush’s former envoy to Afghanistan, with respect to the U.S. role in Iraq: “It’s prudent to clear up the misunderstanding that previous statements may have created that this election in January is a watershed event after which everything will change for the better.”

What I get out of this statement is that now that the U.S. election is over, the president is wise to be honest with the American people about the situation in Iraq.

Though I applaud Dobbins’ candor and agree wholeheartedly with his general sentiment, I for one would have appreciated hearing the truth before the election rather than after.

Joe Power

Ventura