To the editor
Reader Michael Klueber’s letter regarding the possibility of war in Iraq contains several false statements.
Mr. Klueber writes that "direct connections between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein have been proven."
This is incorrect. No credible evidence has yet been found showing a link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. The most frequent example cited the alleged meeting between hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi official in Prague hasnever been verified and is considered false by the Bush Administration’s own director of Central Intelligence.
Additionally, the allegations that Iraq is harboring Al-Qaeda terrorists neglects to point out that these suspected terrorists were in the Kurdish territories over which Saddam Hussein has no control.
A report by John Scarlett, chairman of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Conunittee, stated that there is no evidence to link Iraq with the Sept. 11 attacks or to the Al-Qaeda network. FBI Director Robert Mueller reiterated this in April, 2002, when he stated that the FBI had run down "literally hundreds of thousands of leads and found nothing."
A connection between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda is far-fetched due to the nature of both regimes. The secular Hussein is despised by the Islamic fundamentalist bin Laden because of Iraq’s war against the Islamic regime of Iran (a war in which the U.S. provided military support to Saddam).
Bin Laden has criticized Saddam for not "believing in most of Islam" and during the first Gulf War bin Laden had offered to raise an army to drive Iraq out of Kuwait without Western support.
Saddam has no incentive to pass weapons to Al-Qaeda since those weapons could very well be used against his own regime.
Even much of the evidence presented to the United Nations by Secretary of State Colin Powell has been discredited as second-hand information, much of it dated, according to independent media sources and the British newspaper, The Guardian.
While every nation, to some degree, acts in its own self-interest, the opposition to preemptive war expressed by other nations is not evidence that these nations "despise" America, as Mr. Klueber writes.
Objectivity allows other nations to see what many Americans choose to ignore: a preemptive war of aggression against Iraq will only increase global insecurity and make the risk of future terrorist attack more likely.
The Bush Administration is playing a public relations game to sell its imperial designs on the oil reserves of Iraq. Its gung-ho attitude toward war and its "with us or against us" mentality may have dire consequences down the road.
Military and economic superiority does not guarantee a nation’s moral superiority.
A regime change in Washington would do more to promote peaceful stability than would regime change in Iraq.
Deanna Drive

