Facing Consequences of the Attack on Iraq

In Robert Scheer’s concise and eloquent column, “The Lies That Bind Us to Iraq” (Commentary, Feb. 3), he reminds us that two wrongs don’t make a right. To throw good money and lives after the billions of dollars and thousands of lives (yes, the Iraqis have lives, too) already wasted in Iraq is simply to compound one error with another. Yet now, as in the past, we hear that we must “finish the job,” “not back down to pressure,” “build democracy,” etc. It would take real courage to admit we were wrong, pull out and cut our losses, but real courage in politicians of either party is as hard to find as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

Roger Jaep

Camarillo

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Scheer continues to make an excellent case against the war. But in the same way that most Americans mistakenly believe Hussein had a connection to the events of 9/11, most Democrats are sadly deluding themselves if they think their “antiwar” candidate actually would end the war anytime soon.

A little digging reveals that John Kerry, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and John Edwards all are on record as strongly opposing the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. If any of them gets elected on a “war, what is it good for?” platform, America simply will be trading one “mis-leader” for another.

James Dawson

Tarzana

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Re “Six Killed in Blast at Munitions Dump,” Feb. 2: Is it not strange, in a land identified as a front line in the “war on terror” -- scoured at enormous expense for any sign of weapons of mass destruction -- and where our soldiers and locals are wounded and die daily as a result of bombs improvised from military ordinance, that looters can enter a munitions dump and accidentally blow themselves up?

Tony O’Doherty

Thousand Oaks