Letter: Arguments supporting president are weak

Sunday, Dec. 4, 2005 | 8:34 a.m.

Paul Larsen, in his Nov. 30 letter to the editor, tells us that our president is being attacked by Democratic extremists without a shred of evidence. The letter goes on to say that there is no evidence that President Bush lied to us about reasons to attack Iraq.

In my opinion, the arguments being used to protect our president are not very strong. We do have evidence that this administration was given intelligence that supported not attacking Iraq as well as intelligence that supported the attack.

Members of Congress voted on giving the president authority to attack Iraq only after they were given the intelligence reports Bush chose to give them.

I am not saying that the president made this choice knowing he was wrong, but it is frustrating that those who still support the president's decision will not accept these three strongest pieces of evidence we now have: that there were no weapons of mass destruction; that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11; and that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

The argument that it is better to fight the enemy on their turf than on our own may be true, but the fact that the Iraqi people are not really our enemy kills that argument.

An intelligent person would look at the scenario in Iraq and ask: What are the benefits of continuing the occupation of Iraq, and what are the benefits of leaving Iraq?

A conservative might agree that withdrawing troops would save future lives and stop the flow of taxpayers' dollars to a situation we can't win. A liberal might agree that we have made a commitment up to this point, and it would show weakness to pull out now.

The odd thing is that the conservatives and liberals have taken each other's argument. Go figure.

Ken Anderson

Las Vegas