Whether USA Today is now read more for the mere virtue of being available free to students or otherwise, Mr. John J. Koller appears to unintentionally explain the lack of enough historical and political accuracy in his reply on Sept. 20 to an earlier editorial by picking this news catechism paper as the point of reference for what he might assume to be an "informative" coverage of today's affairs.
Mr. Koller's bewilderment at questioning the logic of a drummed-up assault on Iraq was justified by his claim that the "Persian Gulf War was a complete and utter success." First, he did not specify which Persian War: Is it the first war in which the United States used the same Saddam Hussein as an attack dog against the Islamic radicalism of Iran, or the second after the invasion of Kuwait, or the later continuous wars against the Iraqi people in the form of sanctions?
Second, it is utter disinformation to state that, "very few civilians were injured or killed." A simple review of news sources, definitely other than the celebrated USA Today, would easily uncover the horrifically big number of Iraqi civilians who were killed during the war, by using "highly precision weaponry" that almost always ends up being imprecise, and of those who have been killed ever since due to sanctions - the number has totaled somewhere over one million, with 5000 children dead every month because of lack of drinkable water and medications.
Another shallow claim he makes is that the United States has every reason to wage a war against Iraq given the latter's blocking of U.N. inspection. Just as a reminder, the inspection operations were halted in 1998 simply because it was widely disclosed, except for USA Today and Mr. Koller perhaps, that there were CIA agents spying undercover on the teams that were supposedly tools of a credible international organization.
It would be good to refer to Scott Ritter, a U.S. head of one of those teams, for more details on this, and also on the Bush and Rumsfeld's myths about Iraq developing nuclear and chemical weapons (it's relevant to also remind that Mr. Rumsfeld was himself a Reagan's personal envoy to Saddam in 1982, after which an era of cooperation with one of the "Evils" was started).
Then if the fabrication of evidence against Iraq could hold to some minimal concrete credibility, why the United States, for instance, is fully justified to possess the most destructive weapons on Earth, and others aren't? Double standards, which are superbly the dogma of the day, can derail international law but can't fool everybody.
Mr. Koller's example to debase any complaints about the United States "meddling" in others' affairs is surrealist in the sense that it avoids the long and well documented list of countries and regions around the world that have been graced with a U.S. "meddling": Vietnam, Central and Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, the Koreas, and the list goes on and on. What is aspired from Iraq is no more than installing a proxy regime that could service the interests of a foreign power, with democracy and the well being of the Iraqi people probably coming last.
An unthorough examination of relevant historical realities could have given Mr.
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
