U.S. Iraq Plans Are Costly; What Do We Get in Return?

Re “Iraq War Cost Could Soar, Pentagon Says,� Feb. 26: What the Pentagon neglected to state is the added cost of lives -- both American service members’ and those of their allies -- to say nothing of innocent civilians in Iraq and its surrounding areas. I guess the value of life is no greater than the mighty dollar to President Bush and his cronies.

David Graham

Los Angeles

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So now it’s $100 billion to take over Iraq. We become even more of a terrorist target, deficits and gas prices soar, stocks and the economy plunge, we earn the scorn of our allies, and money for schools and other services is handed over to Turkey in bribes. And what was it again that we get in return?

Kurt Page

Laguna Niguel

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We had no qualms about taking war reparations from defeated Germany in 1945. What would be wrong with tapping into Saddam Hussein’s huge oil reserves to pay for costs we incurred in conquering and occupying Iraq?

Gordon L. Froede

Cheviot Hills

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In his speech to the American Enterprise Institute Wednesday, President Bush said the overthrow of Hussein would help bring peace to the Middle East. I truly hope that he is right this time.

But, like the tax cut that was supposed to improve the economy, the budget that was not going to result in massive deficits, the lack of response to the energy crisis that was supposedly not caused by the greed of energy brokers, the invisible reform of executive stock-option policy that was going to put the market back on its feet and the foreign policy that was not going to make the U.S. the most disliked country on the planet, I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Richard S. Marken

Los Angeles

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The bottom of the diplomatic barrel has been reached with Bush asserting that success with Iraq could be the key “to begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace and set in motion progress toward a truly democratic Palestinian state.� After a 35-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel, which has been funded by the U.S., allegations of Iraqi complicity in the failure of Israeli-Palestinian peace are nothing less than absurd political pandering by Bush to his supporters. With Jewish settlements still being constructed on land that is supposed to make up the future Palestinian state, the true villains against peace lie not in Iraq but within our own past and current administrations.

David N. Seaman

Long Beach

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I don’t recall reading about those brave “human shields� (Feb. 25) when Hussein was gassing and mutilating thousands of his own people or when Hafez Assad of Syria massacred 10,000 of his own at Hama. And they’re notably absent in Israel to shield innocent civilians against suicide attacks. I expect these misguided fools will soon be joined by the likes of Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, et al. Well ... one can live in hope!

Pauline Regev

Santa Monica

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Re “A Huge Postwar Force Seen,� Feb. 26: We are going to liberate Iraq by deploying an estimated “several hundred thousand soldiers� even after the war. Is it liberation or occupation?

Mohammed Khursheed

Long Beach

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Robert Scheer’s premise (Commentary, Feb. 25) is that the French disasters in Vietnam, Algeria and other imperialistic ventures portend the certain disaster awaiting Bush’s foreign policy. He writes, “France’s colonial wars were waged ... to civilize the natives. A million Frenchmen gave up the joys of life at the center of Europe to colonize Algeria alone.� Well, that was France, and that was the British Empire, when each of them attempted to control the world by exporting thousands of their citizens to colonize the lands they conquered.

U.S. foreign policy under Bush has no such imperialistic ambition. Our treatment of Japan and Germany after World War II is the model for postwar Iraq. U.S. foreign policy has often supported weak governments, sometimes with unfortunate collateral damage. But it has never exercised direct control, even of protectorates. Undoubtedly, the U.S. and its allies will occupy Iraq until local government is established and secure. This is the best hope for the world to find some degree of peaceful stability.

John A. Saylor

Long Beach

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In “Postwar: Iraq Is No Japan� (Opinion, Feb. 23) we read that the U.S. government spent several years planning the postwar occupation of Japan, including training thousands of intelligence officers in the Japanese culture and language. On Feb. 24 we read about Paul Wolfowitz’s eve-of-the-invasion trip to Dearborn, Mich., to offer money and accelerated citizenship to Iraqi expatriates in exchange for their assistance to U.S. forces.

What kind of Mickey Mouse statesmanship is this? Has the Bush administration really given so little thought to postwar issues? I anticipate that we are going to “win� the war and then lose the occupation, with disastrous consequences.

Jean K. Moore

Los Angeles

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There seems to be something askew when Hussein is ordered to disarm completely, when we are going to war with him no matter whether he disarms or not -- thereby leaving him and his people with no weapons to defend themselves. Does that make sense? Get rid of your weapons! We’re coming in to kill you!

Lynne Savage

San Diego

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As the peace activists mindlessly chant their slogans, we can be grateful that this mentality didn’t prevail in the 1940s, or we’d all be speaking German or Japanese. Of course, it wouldn’t have come to that: The peaceniks would have prevented the American Revolution. Peace and negotiations have had their chance and merely encourage Osama bin Laden and the other mass murderers who want to destroy us and the individualism, freedom and productivity we represent.

Mike Berliner

West Los Angeles

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Vast overspending on military adventures destroyed the Soviet Union. Bush’s vast overspending on military adventures will ....

Tom Clayton

Santa Clarita