Letter: War with Iraq is a crazy idea

Thursday, March 6, 2003 | 8:59 a.m.

The pending war against Iraq is the craziest idea I have ever heard of in my life.

President Bush has tried to make a case but he has fallen very short of that objective. Two of his stated reasons for going to war with Iraq dealt with Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and its ties to terrorist organizations that threaten the United States. Yet there is no evidence that Iraq poses a direct threat to the U.S. or that Iraq has direct ties to al-Qaida. He and (presidential adviser) Karl Rove have now come up with the justification that the U.S. has to change the Arab world into a set of democratic states. That will be a fatal and unattainable dream.

Sunday's Las Vegas Sun carried an excellent article on the subject by New York Times writer Steven Lee Myers. It explored the lack of success and the stifling of democracy in the Arab/Muslim nations of the Middle East. Why would Bush and Rove think that an armed imposition of democracy in Iraq, with its history and diverse ethnic groups, would be successful?

I guess one has to look to history for answers. Remember the comment by "Deep Throat" during Watergate: "Follow the money trail." The only difference in the Bush administration is a personal vendetta and that the money trail leads to connections on the road to control of the world's second-largest oil reserve.

RAYMOND HARBERT