Friday, Dec. 20, 2002 | 3:36 a.m.
War with Iraq cannot happen before Christmas because it would hurt sales. In the spirit of the season, I have a modest proposal to keep war from happening at all.
I propose that a U.N. peace-keeping team intervene with this alternative: Iraq would declare itself a colony of the United States. As such, the United States would control all of the oil reserves of Iraq and would be able to station its military there to intimidate Iran and generally control the Middle East.
In return, Saddam could stay on as colonial governor. Hundreds of thousands of war deaths would be avoided. Sanctions could be lifted, and the water and sewage treatment plants we bombed after the Gulf War could be rebuilt, so that the hundreds of thousands of children under five would stop dying from disease and lack of medicine.
If war comes, the only resulting difference will be that Saddam is gone while innocent lives are lost, great destruction must be repaired, and our economy takes another hit. Another disadvantage to war is that there will be many more of our depleted uranium shells lying around to give cancers to our occupation forces.
The compromise would end all the nonsense about Iraq being a military threat to us or being involved in terrorism. Most important, it would keep us from breaking international law by attacking a nation when we were unprovoked.
I know that this proposal is too much like loving your neighbor to actually work. I guess I'm just a romantic who thinks Christmas means something other than the bottom line.
JERRY BITTS
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