Delusions about Iraq, and the horrors of war

Re “Generals Give Grim Report on Iraqi Strife,” Aug. 4

Somebody needs to get the secretary of Defense a program. On Thursday in Congress, two senior U.S. military commanders said that the wave of sectarian bloodshed in Iraq has heightened the danger that the country will slide into all-out civil war, to which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld replied, “We can persevere in Iraq, or we can withdraw prematurely, until they force us to make a stand nearer home.” What page is the secretary on?

The administration really needs to give up the imaginary enemies and focus on the bodies in the streets of Baghdad.

Failing some plan to stop this civil war, the administration needs to bring our troops home before they give up their lives needlessly. Then, if we have to fight the enemy close to home, say Staten Island, we will have an army to put in the field.

BILL SPATER

La Crescenta

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I’ve been thinking for some time about the line from the administration that best sums up its delusions about what it created in Iraq and where it’s headed.

Vice President Dick Cheney famously said in June 2005: “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” No one that I know believed that at the time. On Thursday, a general confirmed our beliefs. What planet have our leaders been living on? How they can say with a straight face that we are making progress in Iraq is beyond all comprehension.

PAT PARRISH

Los Angeles

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Military investigators reportedly have finished their initial review into the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha and concluded that the Marines in question did indeed deliberately execute the civilians (Aug. 4). Thus, another sorry chapter is written in the shameful history of U.S. war crimes. This is not to say that all our troops are engaging in this inhuman behavior. The majority are not.

Haditha, unfortunately, is just the latest awful reminder why war must always be our last resort. War is the most vile and despicable thing we humans do to one another, and war crimes like Haditha are why we must always stand vigilant against making the terrible decision to go to war.

And when we are forced into using our awesome military power, we must always have a clear and justifiable reason to fight, like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, not this never-ending preemptive quagmire of deception President Bush has perpetrated in Iraq.

RICHARD MARRACQ

Redwood City, Calif.