Justice as a pretext for war

Re “Protests mark Iraq war’s 5th anniversary,” March 20

With all the hoopla surrounding the fifth year of an unsuccessful war effort by the Bush administration, the president has stated the removal of Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do. But look back at Bush’s stated reason for invading Iraq: to destroy weapons of mass destruction. The president emphatically stated on more than one occasion before the invasion that this was not about regime change. Well, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, Hussein is dead and we, the American taxpayers, are still paying for Bush’s folly in lives, money, anger and political allies.

Bush is a liar, not a decider, and has clearly not learned the lessons of history.

Joseph R. Healey

Fullerton

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Lately, I have been reading the works of Voltaire. By coincidence, on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I came across his feelings about war: “The greatest of all crimes, at least that which is the most destructive, and consequently the most opposite to the design of nature, is war; but there never was an aggressor who did not gloss over his guilt with the pretext of justice.”

Robert C. Lewis

La Mesa

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This is not a war. Where is the opposing army? Where is the front? Where are any uniformed enemy soldiers? Call it Bush’s legacy, Cheney’s folly or Rumsfeld’s fiasco, but this is not a war. If we were to invade and occupy any other country with dead-wrong intelligence, the locals would respond the same way many Iraqis have.

Bob Munson

Newbury Park