Letter: Benefit of occupying Iraq outweighed by cost

Thursday, Oct. 12, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

Warren Willis Sr., in his Oct. 8 letter in the Las Vegas Sun, used a list of events to try to prove that because we have been fighting terrorism since 1979, "cutting and running" from Iraq would not stop terrorism.

Well Iran has, since 1979, been run by the Shiites, an avowed enemy of Osama bin Laden, a Sunni Muslim. The 1983 Beirut attacks on our peacekeeping force was Hezbollah's job, not al-Qaida's. Also, Saddam Hussein's secular, non-Islamic regime was a target of al-Qaida's subversion.

The remainder - all al-Qaida's job - included the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, bombings of the U.S. Army barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1995, truck bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Why did bin Laden choose to attack us starting in 1993?

After winning the Persian Gulf War in 1991, we drastically increased our military presence in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to ensure Saddam Hussein could not threaten our oil supply anymore. These acts were seen by Islamic extremists as infidels' occupation of Islamic countries and a serious desecration of their holy land, because Mecca and Medina, both Islamic holy places, are located inside Saudi Arabia. Many times bin Laden announced to the whole world this was the focal point of his anger. Yet we keep labeling the terrorist acts as the result of their hatred of our freedom and democracy.

It is true that leaving Iraq would not cause the Islamic extremists to lay down their arms. But replacing Saddam with anarchy - with Islamic women and children getting blown up every day - is surely good material for the Islamic extremists' recruitment literature.

For sure we cannot leave the Middle East alone - until the day when we no longer depend on foreign oil. So al-Qaida will keep plotting to attack us. But this question remains: Is it worth having another few thousand of our sons and daughters mutilated or killed in Iraq just for the sake of refusing to acknowledge that Saddam had no WMDs or anything to do with al-Qaida?

Steve Yuen, Las Vegas