Letter to the editor, With scant forethought beyond doing what his father had not, topple Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush launched his war into Iraq. Now mired in the fourth year of this misadventure, Bush’s litany of justifications has him sounding like the perpetual delinquent that thinks he can talk his way out of anything. As shortsighted now as before, Bush spins out his broken-record mantra: “The world is better off without Saddam Hussein.” If Bush can find a silver lining in a manmade disaster of his doing, surely he might be able to detect great purpose in a catastrophe of Mother Nature’s making. To wit, if a tsunami had swept up the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and had gotten Saddam Hussein, but in the bargain also took the lives of thousands of Iraqis, killed over 2,000 of our troops, permanently maimed untold more, seriously damaged our nation’s hard-gained reputation, and cost our people billions upon billions of dollars, we might expect George W. Bush to place much value in the devastating wall of water and to take credit for its course. He talks and talks and turns a deaf ear as he leaves unanswered the damning question; was war with Iraq our nation’s only course? The answer is no. When presidents of past were faced with the threatening march of Communism from a USSR bristling with real weapons of mass destruction and with agents secreted throughout the world, these leaders opted for containment of this threat until it inevitably fell of its own weight. These courageous Commanders in Chief believed in the courage of our people and in the superiority of our free way of life.

Sam Osborne