Bush Appeals for Unity After Madrid Bombing

Re “Bush Urges Unity on Terror,” March 20: How unseemly and degrading to have your president begging for help from the very folks he rejected so cavalierly when he just had to go to war with Iraq. In our world, begging is the last resort of a person who has made some very bad decisions in life. In George W. Bush’s world, it’s basically an admission that he has started a war on false pretenses, waged it with unwarranted assumptions and run up an incredible amount of debt while financing it, and is now sitting on the sidewalk asking for a bailout from folks who patiently told him he was doing the wrong thing in the first place.

A shameful time to be an American, what with the “Little Cowboy Who Couldn’t” making the decisions.

Donnie Dale

Altadena

Would that we had leadership who could have seized the moment and made history. The event in Spain -- the equivalent of our 9/11, which unified the American public -- could have been the rallying cry to unify the world against not Iraq or Islam but the fringe lunacy everywhere.

Instead, our leadership raised a cry to not leave us in our vendetta against Iraq that has only led to more terrorism around the world. Shame on our narrow-minded leaders and shame on us, who are merely followers.

Sy Katz

Marina del Rey

Let me offer an alternative view to those who believe the current government has “lied” in order to “mislead” the American public to support the Iraq invasion. Is it not possible the Bush administration acted logically based on Iraq’s history of weapons and the intelligence it had gathered? The administration enforced U.N. policy (after Saddam Hussein repeatedly refused to comply) and is now committed to creating a government that represents Iraqi citizens.

The majority of the people in Iraq are grateful Hussein is no longer in power, and they do not want the U.S. to leave until there is more stability.

Those who continue to claim the war is about Iraq’s oil supply are being misled by anti-Bush propaganda. The administration has a proactive foreign policy that can be interpreted as arrogant, but the baseless accusations regarding our government damage the worldwide credibility of the U.S. as a whole.

Andrew H. Radden

Venice