Steering a Surer Course Toward the Future in Iraq

Re “Speeches Aren’t Enough,” editorial, May 25: As a Los Angeles resident currently living in Baghdad, let me tell you the following: In Iraq, the U.S. should focus more on building roads, infrastructure and setting up private businesses through international joint ventures rather than rushing to hand over power to an international body of bureaucrats. Iraq has a highly educated population; the people are smart enough to realize that we have done them good by getting rid of their evil dictator. That’s why they welcomed us with open arms at the outset. Why and how did that change? One major reason could be that they were not seeing how the U.S. was planning to help them.

Along with building major roads throughout the country, we should divert businesses into less-populated areas. We need more architects, urban planners and accountants (I am one) and fewer military troops. We who are here to honor the actions of the U.S. would find it more enticing if we started doing things to win the hearts of the Iraqi people fast. Do not underestimate them. They are quite thankful to us for what we have done. Passing the buck to a group of international bureaucrats would be a disservice to these people. Politics, or presidential elections, should not be factored into our judgment. Whether we become a success here will have a significant effect on future goodwill.

Andrew Weeraratne

Marina del Rey

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Re “Sometimes, It’s a Simple Game of Spy Versus Spy,” Commentary, May 25: Though I have no spying credentials, I do wonder why our intelligence services, knowing as they did that Ahmad Chalabi was wanted for fraud, failed to penetrate the enormous intelligence deception he apparently perpetrated.

Second, I wonder why someone like Thomas Patrick Carroll, with his apparently impeccable intelligence credentials, would come to the conclusion that CIA Director George Tenet is the person to lead in the recovery and expansion of our intelligence-service capabilities.

Wasn’t Tenet in charge when the fraud wasn’t detected? Wasn’t Tenet the one who said something about it being a “slam-dunk” that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? It seems to me that Tenet has already reached his level of incompetence. Why encourage him further?

Rebecca Novelli

Santa Monica

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Re “Rumsfeld’s Long List of Failures,” Commentary, May 24: Why is Anthony Lewis saying the buck stops at Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld? Who hired him? Who supported and allowed him to continue? Who bought his lies and deceit? Who still maintains that Rumsfeld is doing “a superb job”?

The real problem is not Rumsfeld but the president. The U.S. will solve the situation in Iraq and begin to regain international credibility only by removing the person most responsible for the sorry state of things: George W. Bush. I voted for Ronald Reagan, but I won’t vote for a Republican again because of Bush.

Jeff Nelson

Chatsworth

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Ronald Brownstein is right on with his criticism of the proponents of this war who don’t want to pay for it (Washington Outlook, May 24). The only addition to be made to his column is to state the answer to his climactic rhetorical question, “If Iraq is important enough to bleed for, isn’t it important enough to pay for?” The majority’s answer begins with, “So long as it’s not with our money, or with our children....”

Blaise Jackson

Escondido

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“The Nice Way of Q&A; Paid Off in World War II” (Opinion, May 9) and “Once, a POW Sent Thanks to His American Captor” (Commentary, May 21) both lifted my heart in what otherwise has been devastating news recently. They relate to treatment of POWs during World War II. Both restored some of my faith in the integrity of the American military, at least as it was constituted in the past. I am sure that many men and women of character still serve in the armed forces, but the news from Iraq these days certainly doesn’t offer much solace. Maybe a war to defend your country instead of a war for oil makes the difference.

Jeanne Whitesell

Huntington Beach

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Has the U.S. lost Iraq? Are we near or past the “tipping point”? Today’s events shouldn’t blind us to the larger drama. The real tipping point will arrive around midcentury, when the Age of Oil will draw to a close. Only then will the West leave the Middle East. For the next 50 years, expect a bumpy ride.

John T. Luoma

Huntington Beach