Ryan Kaminski’s letter regarding the War in Iraq, published on Thursday (1/27), was so far from being realistic that I actually had to read it twice just to be sure of what I was reading.

Whoever announced that the primary purpose of the war was to find WMDs? Just because Mr. Kaminski believes this to be the primary purpose does not make it so. As I remember it, there were many reasons for the war. Now, maybe Mr. Kaminski saw a couple ten-second excerpts from some of President Bush’s speeches on CBS where the President called for the removal of WMDs, but the rest of the speech pointed out other reasons. Besides, at this point, I don’t think I would believe Dan Rather if he told me I lived in Illinois.

One of those other reasons was the suspected link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. I guess Mr. Kaminski did not read the report from the 9/11 Commission. If he did, he would have read that “personnel at the headquarters of Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad were told before September 11 to go on the streets to gauge crowd reaction to an unspecified event.” Now, I am by no means saying this constitutes proof, however this strengthens the evidence that Iraq did pose a threat, as Mr. Kaminski claims was not the case.

Another bit of evidence to prove that Iraq was a threat is a report written by Charles Duelfer, the special advisor to the Department of Central Intelligence on Iraq’s WMDs. He writes, in what is commonly referred to as the Duelfer Report, that Saddam “wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction when sanctions were lifted.” If we had done nothing, there would be no telling how long this would take to occur.

Apparently, Mr. Kaminski didn’t read the 9/11 Commission’s Report, nor did he read the Duelfer Report. Nonetheless, I’m glad he’s getting his information on the Intelligence Community from sources other than their own reports. Thanks for writing, Mr. Kaminski, but next time you should check to see if the facts agree with you. To do otherwise would be, as you put it, “ridiculously outrageous.”

Gregory Meves

junior in LAS

President, College Republicans