Letter: Rationale for war in Iraq was all lies

Monday, Dec. 15, 2003 | 9:07 a.m.

Army Specialist Lori Piestewa, a Hopi woman killed while driving a Humvee carrying Jessica Lynch, was a single mother who left behind two orphans -- Brandon, 5, and Carla, 3. According to Lori's mother, Priscilla, Carla "saw her mom's picture on the computer one day and she said, 'Grandma, my mom has been in heaven too long, it's time for her to come home.' "

The neglected final verse of our National Anthem refers to the duty of "free men (to) stand between their loved homes and the war's desolation ..." We are now a nation that allows male cheerleaders in high political office to send women -- mothers such as Lori Piestewa and fragile little girls such as Jessica Lynch -- to fight the foreign battles of an entrenched Power Elite.

Our men and women in Iraq are not killing and dying on behalf of our nation. As George Bush has explicitly said on scores of occasions, the war on Iraq is intended to validate the United Nations' authority and prestige by enforcing its disarmament decrees.

With American men and women being killed and maimed in Iraq, and the advertised rationale for war exposed as a tissue of lies, King George and his retainers have a lot to answer for.

FRANK M. PELTESON