Lawmakers should ‘veto Bush’

Re “Bush vetoes Democrats’ Iraq war bill,” May 2

President Bush will go to any lengths to blame others for his own shortcomings. Unable to accept responsibility and learn from experience, the president accuses Democratic leaders in Congress of seeking to substitute their own judgment for that of the generals in the field. He says nothing of the generals whose advice he dismissed and whom he and his administration treated with contempt. The president says nothing of the distorted intelligence he repeated endlessly to justify the war, or the cockeyed predictions about the flowering of democracy throughout the Middle East.

The American people have had more than enough. The Iraqi people have to settle their differences through political negotiation. The likelihood they will do so while American troops fight and die is exactly nil. It’s time to bring this fiasco to an end.

DONALD BRODER

Studio City

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Congress provided funding for our troops in Iraq; President Bush vetoed the funding. I’m sorry my president no longer supports the troops who are giving their lives to protect me.

SETH HILL

Topanga

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As I remember, there were two initial goals of the Iraq war: Remove Saddam Hussein from power and find weapons of mass destruction. Hussein is dead. We didn’t find any weapons. We are done now.

TOM GRANER

Hermosa Beach

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I wonder why setting a timetable always seems to imply that the enemy will rise up. We have been in Iraq for four years. Why doesn’t the Bush administration think our side could step up and take charge instead of the enemy? Or is there another reason to keep the war going that we don’t know about?

JOHN OTTERNESS

San Pedro

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It is important to remember that the bill passed Congress only with the help of Republican leaders who are also concerned about Bush’s policies. It is time for the Democrats and their Republican allies to veto Bush.

DON FISHER

Claremont

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Re “What war?” Opinion, April 30

Niall Ferguson quotes Army Gen. David Petraeus as saying that stabilizing Iraq would require “an enormous commitment.” And that “this effort may get harder before it gets easier.” And that real stability may be “years down the road.” For me, these are code words for sacrificing at least 3,100 more American lives, squandering hundreds of billions of dollars and, maybe worst of all, killing and displacing millions more Iraqis.

All I can say is that, once again, the American people are being lied to. There can be no victory when we can’t identify the enemy. We lost the war in Vietnam using labels that provided self-gratification, and we are doing the same in Iraq. We should end this fiasco the way we started it: unilateral withdrawal now.

BENNY WASSERMAN

La Palma