We need to find Osama Bin Laden

and kill him in a very gruesome way. We need to assure those countries

who offer sanctuary to anyone who is planning to attack the U.S. or its

interests that we will destroy them and show little interest in re-building

them.

Iraq was not a radical Islamic

state nor was it giving sanctuary to al Qaeda. It wasn't a nice place

and Saddam was the worst of the worst, but he was not a real threat to

us.

William Safire goes on about

Libya coming around because we invaded Iraq. Well, he's probably

right, but that doesn't seem like a great rate of return.

Those 150,000 troops could

be combing the Afghan countryside and scouring Western Pakistan to find

the real threat, instead of sitting in the shooting gallery around Tikrit.

I know one thing here: The

men assembled in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 would be appalled

if they could see what has happened.

We have a president invading

another country on false pretenses. We have a Congress that failed to

ask the right questions or insist on accountability. We have a public

so apathetic that they don't demand straight answers from the man

sending their sons into harms way.

We have evidence from Bush's

own former treasury secretary that he was interested, from day one, in

the forced military occupation of Iraq; that he seemed not to hear argument

to the contrary. We have innuendo from the intelligence community that

he ignored intelligence data that seemed to contradict his pre-conceived

notions.

This whole business reeks,

and the most unpatriotic move we can make is to support it unquestioningly.

The military will always do their duty. It is we who have failed them.

Timothy J. Parker

Peachtree City, Ga.