Letter: Mistrust of religious factions not surprising

Sunday, Aug. 5, 2007 | 1:15 a.m.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Aug. 2 that the U.S. had "underestimated how difficult it would be for the Iraqi government to pass political reform ... adding that the 'depth of mistrust' among the factions is greater than anticipated." (Source: USAToday.com)

How extraordinary is our thinking. Here we have religious factions that have been at each other's throats for ... 1,500 years? And we underestimated this? Yet Americans are supposed to trust the "intelligence" that runs this war?

Secretary Gates also likened the current problems to being akin to "our constitutional convention." I don't recall that event involving millennia-old warring religious factions that did not get together voluntarily but that were pretty much thrust into the game of "let's create democracy."

Perhaps what we should be championing is the fact that the current Iraqi government is able to follow in the footsteps of American government in at least one vital area: It has learned to take one-month vacations in the midst of crisis.

If the U.S. government wants Americans to have faith in this war effort, then perhaps it had better start coming up with information and ideas in which we can actually have faith.

Timothy James, Las Vegas