Letter: Main “Justification”

Gregory Meves, in his Jan. 31st letter, “Real Threats,” makes the claim that there were many expressed reasons for going to war with Iraq, and weapons of mass destruction were not the main reason. I have heard this deeply offensive assertion before and so I would like to briefly discuss President Bush’s March 17, 2003, address to the nation, in which he gave the American people his rationale for going to war.

The first four paragraphs of this speech deal explicitly with WMDs and the necessity of disarming Iraq. In fact, over 33 percent of all the words in the speech reference WMDs and disarmament. As an American, on March 17th, I was led to believe that WMDs were the main reason we were going to war with Iraq. The contention that WMDs was not the main justification given to the American people about going to war would have been more puzzling to me on that night than it is now.

The reason why I call this assertion offensive is because over 1400 Americans have died in Iraq. The main justification the President gave the American people for sending them to their deaths was WMDs. Then one year later President Bush is narrating a skit in the Oval Office, where he makes fun of the search for WMDs. The obvious question here is, ” What is so funny about the deaths of 1400 Americans?”

Owen J. Kopon

junior in LAS

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