Letter: Many reasons to be skeptical about Iraq war

Friday, Oct. 3, 2003 | 9:15 a.m.

Nevada's robotic, rigid Republican Congressman Jim Gibbons predictably supports the war in Iraq. He should be more skeptical.

One reason for skepticism is Secretary of State Colin Powell's record for inaccuracy. It was Powell, remember, who laid out the purported reasons for the war in a Feb. 5 speech to the United Nations Security Council.

In November 1968, as an Army major in Vietnam, Powell was assigned to investigate allegations brought forward by a soldier in his division, who told of brutality by U.S. forces toward Vietnamese civilians and Viet Cong suspects. Although the My Lai massacre, not yet publicly known, had been committed the previous March by his own division, Powell quickly dismissed the allegations without ever interviewing the soldier who wrote the letter. In his report, Powell concluded that while there "may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs ... relations between (his division's) soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." History shows how wrong he was.

Also, Powell was President Ronald Reagan's national security advisor when the United States was backing Saddam Hussein's war against Iran. When Saddam gassed the Kurds, there was no response. Now Powell says, well, we are fighting because back in the Reagan/Bush administration, Saddam gassed the Kurds. Bizzaro!

Now we have no weapons of mass destruction, no evidence of attempts by Iraq to buy nuclear material from Niger, and President Bush himself stating there is no evidence Saddam had anything to do with Sept. 11.

Yet Gibbons says the soldiers are fighting as a "tribute to the Americans lost on Sept. 11." Gibbons also claims that 30 other nations supported the U.S., Britain, Poland, Spain, and Italy in this war. I challenge Gibbons to name them.

LARRY M. JEPPESEN