WMD and war on Iraq

[Dayne Goodwin <dayneg@xxxxxxxx>]

I sent this letter to editors of two daily newspapers in Salt Lake City.

Editor:

The Bush administration is well down the road toward a "preemptive" war on
Iraq, whipping up war hysteria based primarily on the accusation that the
Iraqi government has or would like to have weapons of mass destruction
(WMD - nuclear, chemical and biological weapons).  Before we citizens of
the U.S. become responsible for bringing further suffering to people in
Iraq, please consider the following two issues:
        1)  There is one nation in the Middle East which definitely does
have weapons of mass destruction, Israel.  Ignoring UN resolutions, Israel
occupies Arab land seized in war and continues to replace the indigenous
Palestinian people with Jewish settlements.  Would it be more reasonable
to expect the Iraqi government to forswear WMD if the U.S. government
stopped its support for Israel's policies of military occupation and
expansion and held Israel to the same standard of WMD disarmament?
        2) There is only one nation in the world that has actually used
all three forms of WMD against other nations, the United States - nuclear
weapons against Japan, Agent Orange in southeast Asia, and biological
weapons against Cuba.  U.S. Senate investigations led by the late Idaho
senator Frank Church revealed that the U.S. government was responsible for
spreading African Swine Fever virus in Cuba in 1971 (_Washington Post_,
January 9, 1977, page A-2).
        If the U.S. government was not the world's foremost developer of
WMD, and instead led by example in WMD disarmament, would the Iraqi and
other governments be more willing to forswear development of WMD?
        The Bush administration claims to be working to build peace and
security but Bush's policies will actually spread more war, destruction,
repression, suffering, turmoil and hatred.
        Sincerely,
        Dayne Goodwin





~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.