Letter: Bush should go before he causes any more damage

Friday, July 11, 2003 | 8:58 a.m.

President Bush, in a desperate attempt to justify his actions in Iraq, wants us to believe his claims that he was snookered by misinformed experts when he plunged the U.S. into a bloody war that yielded essentially none of the weapons of mass destruction that he just knew were there.

It is odd that the U.N. inspectors could not find any, that the majority of U.S. allies were so unimpressed that they saw no urgent need to over run the country of Iraq, at considerable loss of life, and that Bush, who had a long-standing family grudge against Saddam Hussein, just knew what nobody else did, about the arsenal of one of his "Axis of Evil" countries. With greater credibility, he could have ill advisedly launched an attack against North Korea or perhaps even Iran.

To some of us, less gullible than our president professes to be, his argument sounds more than a little suspicious, a late-in-the game effort to cover the presidential behind. If President Bush really believes his own explanation, which follows the deaths of more than 200 U.S. servicemen, and perhaps thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, at an enormous financial cost and long-term responsibility to repair the damage, perhaps he should climb back on the turnip truck that brought him to Washington and return to Crawford, Texas, before he causes any more problems.

ERIC STEFIK