Anniversary of the war in Iraq

Re “A Sliding Scale for Victory,” news analysis, March 19

Your coverage of the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq has been a sobering reminder of the disaster created by the Bush-Cheney doctrine of preemptive wars -- making America and the world less safe.

How can the public relations campaign being waged by the Bush administration be given any credibility, based on its track record these past three years? Most Americans and world leaders now agree that Iraq will best be able to achieve stability when U.S. troops leave.

Congress has an important responsibility to stand up to the president and insist on an exit strategy.

GARY FUSCO

San Francisco

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Re “Shock, awe and humility,” editorial, March 19

Iraq is not a quagmire. Vietnam was a quagmire because we were stuck there. We were afraid that all of Southeast Asia would fall to the communists -- just like Eastern Europe after World War II.

Iraq is simply a fiasco. We are not stuck there. We can easily withdraw now, or in 10 years, and the result will be the same.

BOB MUNSON

Newbury Park

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You dismiss those of us who mock this administration’s intelligence-gathering regarding weapons of mass destruction by citing a report that Saddam Hussein’s generals did not know that Iraq did not have such weapons.

Setting aside for now all the other reasons to mock the way the Bush administration presented this issue to us, are you trying to make the point that we Americans should be satisfied if our government knows no more about an issue of central importance to our national security than the military personnel in a country run by a paranoid dictator?

Personally, I have higher expectations.

DOUG HALES

Los Angeles

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You strain to characterize the Bush administration’s Iraqi policy as somewhat venerable, “rooted in a strain of American idealism most often identified with Woodrow Wilson.” The Bush administration took its lead from jingoistic neoconservative ideologues -- most too busy accumulating money to serve our country in the military -- whose major goal was hegemony over the Middle East, including the huge Iraqi oil reserve.

George W. Bush’s idealism begins and ends with himself. You call criticism of the war “fashionable.” I call it warranted and healthy.

Many of us -- like you -- were against the war in the beginning, and feel prompted to continue that opposition to save lives and resources in order to fight the real menace of terrorism, poverty at home and national division.

JIM HOOVER

Huntington Beach

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The Iraq war may be 3 years old, but Rudyard Kipling, no bleeding heart he, wrote its epitaph nearly a century ago: “If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied.”

DAVID S. ETTINGER

Oak Park