Opinion: Letters to the Editor

From his first days in office, President Bush was planning for war with Iraq. That decision having been made, the president ran a campaign of misinformation, hype and hysteria that led America into an unnecessary war.

Before the war, Bush was repeatedly told there was no definitive evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. He knew Iraq was not a nuclear threat. He knew there was no Iraq connection to 9/11. Iraq posed no imminent danger to the United States. There was no case for a pre-emptive war.

Yet he relentlessly led us into a war. I'm concerned about the enormous price military families are paying for the war in Iraq. So far, more than 500 American service people have lost their lives, and more than 3,000 have been wounded.

President Bush was not honest with military families or the rest of the country about why he felt that it was urgent to launch a pre-emptive war in Iraq last March. The clear implication of all the statements made by President Bush and his administration before the war was that Iraq was an imminent danger to the US and that we had to act, alone if necessary, to defend ourselves.

But last week, CIA Director George Tenet told us that the intelligence analysts “never said that there was an ‘imminent’ threat,” and that there was disagreement over the status of Iraq’s WMD programs. Now we know, of course, that Iraq didn't have any weapons of mass destruction.

So far, the war in Iraq has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $150 billion. It cost $14 billion between last September and last November alone. Not only do we not know how much more American taxpayers will have to pay, but the Bush Administration won't even give us an estimate until after the election — the costs of military operations in Iraq are not included in the 2005 budget.

Now we know that Iraq was not an imminent threat to us, and that we could have used more time to work toward a peaceful solution, or at least to build more international support, which would have lowered the price we're now paying, in both dollars and American lives.

President Bush must be held accountable for his actions. I hope our senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, will censure him for misleading the American people. I encourage other citizens to speak out on this important issue and ask elected officials to hold President Bush accountable.

Liz Scranton

Lopez Island

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