Letter: Letter writer is confused about some things

Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

I'm glad that Joyce Segal, according to her Sept. 10 letter, "U.S. went to war for all the wrong reasons," is "not confused at all" about Bush administration policies and our actions in Iraq. I myself have many questions and doubts.

For one, I wonder how people can so quickly forget that everyone - from the Israelis to the French - thought that Saddam Hussein was hiding an active WMD program. We had good reason to believe so. Saddam worked very hard to give us that impression, by thwarting U.N. weapons inspectors at every turn. It wasn't until allied forces scoured Iraq that we realized it was all a sham, probably meant to intimidate Iran and Saddam's internal opposition.

I also wonder how people can assume that we had Saddam in a proverbial "box" thanks to U.N. sanctions, or that the status quo ante was in any way acceptable. Those who say such things today are the same people who then argued against the sanctions because of the hardship they were causing ordinary Iraqis. (Of course the sole author of the Iraqis' misery was Saddam, but never mind that.)

I ask myself how Ms. Segal can assert that the Iraqis "may not care" about or "understand" democracy, when twice they defied the terrorists' threats and came out by the millions to vote in national elections. Or how anyone can advocate for a quick pullout when we know that many of those brave Iraqis would be butchered in the catastrophic aftermath.

And I wonder how Ms. Segal can claim that "Bush essentially arrested Saddam for crimes committed by Osama bin Laden," when it was the interim Iraqi government that arrested Saddam for the many crimes he himself committed during his brutal reign. Those who today insist that the world "do something" to defend the innocent in places like Darfur must also explain what they would have done to defend Saddam's victims.

I wonder whether Ms. Segal is "confused" about that.

Jeff Nation, Las Vegas