NYTimes.com Article: Justifying a War After Blood Is Shed (3 Letters)

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by tganesh@stlawu.edu.


A sample of three voices - relation to Thomas Friedman's representations of the 
occupation of Iraq.

tganesh@stlawu.edu

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Justifying a War After Blood Is Shed (3 Letters)

July 18, 2003
 


 

To the Editor: 

In "Winning the Real War" (column, July 16), Thomas L.
Friedman tells us that "the notion that the president may
have misled the nation into war . . . is a big story."
Indeed it is. But apparently it's not big enough to worry
Mr. Friedman, who seems more concerned that the Bush team
is wasting time defending its "phony" reasons for going to
war when it should be focusing on the real reasons. 

The time to focus on those real reasons was before the war
began, and before the deaths of scores of American and
British soldiers and countless Iraqi citizens. If Mr. Bush
wanted to go to war so that he could, in Mr. Friedman's
words, "install a decent, tolerant, pluralistic,
multireligious government in Iraq," then he should have
said so. 

I fail to see how government lies, deception and
manipulation make the world safer for anyone. 
ROBERT BATY 
Oakland, Calif., July 16, 2003 
•  


To the Editor: 

Re
"Winning the Real War," by Thomas L. Friedman (column, July
16): 

Like many Americans, I agonized over whether to support the
war in Iraq. In the end, like Mr. Friedman, I had convinced
myself that war in Iraq was a "war of choice," and a
defensible choice at that, the administration's "phony
reasons" and shortsighted diplomatic tactics
notwithstanding. 

Nonetheless, Mr. Bush has a lot of explaining to do, and
Americans have an obligation not to let the administration
off the hook for the means it used no matter how they might
feel about the ends. If the administration knowingly
represented flawed intelligence as compelling new evidence
that the United States was facing an imminent threat from
Saddam Hussein's regime, we have every right to call foul. 
ANDREW J. KOMPANEK 
Pittsburgh, July 16, 2003 
•  


To the
Editor: 

Thomas L. Friedman refers to Iraq's "representative"
Governing Council as a milestone in Iraqi history (column,
July 16). One would be hard pressed to persuade the Iraqi
people that a governing body handpicked by an occupying
force is representative. 

Something tells me that true representatives of the Iraqi
people would have spent their first day voting on how to
restore power and security to the population rather than
patting the backs of their occupiers by declaring the day
that Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled a national
holiday. 
WALEED HASSEN 
New York, July 16, 2003 


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/18/opinion/L18FRIE.html?ex=1059663662&ei=1&en=fca6829bd4ed7374


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