To the editor
I don’t hate the members of Somerset Voices for Peace and Justice, (Peter and Ann Kindfield are friends of mine), but I do disagree with them.
I am not pro-war. No one really wants war, but I think this particular one is a necessary evil.
I feel for our troops and allies who will be wounded or killed. I also feel sorry for the Iraqi civilians who will die and for the Iraqi soldiers who are being forced to fight at gunpoint or because their families are being held hostage. Our armed forces are all volunteers.
I also feel for the innocent Afghans killed when we drove out the Taliban and their pals, the Al Qaeda terrorists, but I wonder if asked, how many Afghans would prefer we hadn’t bothered.
Ask the young girls who can now go to school and ask the women who can go to their jobs not afraid of a public beating just for having a job or walking the streets without a male relative as an escort or showing a square inch of skin not covered by a suffocating burka.
I would feel far sorrier if Saddam Hussein developed nuclear weapons or bought them from North Korea and one of them somehow found its way into freight container onboard a ship sailing to New York, Philadelphia or San Francisco.
As to Ann’s second letter: The father at the game either wasn’t thinking about what he was saying or he was just being a jerk.
But I’d like to ask Ann, how many Iraqi children die each day from starvation or lack of medicine, not because of sanctions, but because Saddam Hussein diverts the UN Oil for Food money to buy illegal weapons from Russia and spare parts for others from French companies? Wait, aren’t those his buddies on the UN Security Council?
We may have supported Saddam to some extent during his ill-fated war with Iran, but only because we felt he was the lesser of two evils. We neither installed nor supplied him to any great extent. If we had, why is his army equipped with T-62 and T-72 tanks and his men with AK-47s.
Why does his air force fly mostly Migs and Mirages? Opps, Russia and France again. Could it be that they backed him in the Security Council because he owes Russia over $8 billion for arms and the UN Oil for Food program is mainly run through a French bank that rakes off millions in fees each year? They both just happen to also have large stakes in the Iraqi oil industry.
I hope the U.S. and our allies stay the course in this war and that casualities are low on all sides. When Saddam Hussein has joined his role models Hitler and Stalin in Hell, I hope we again stay the course and help the Iraqis build a free and democratic Iraq.
In a year or two, lets ask the average Iraqi if they would prefer to have Saddam or one of his psychopathic sons back.
Zion Road