Editor,
Joachim L. Oberst's diatribe in Thursday's Daily Lobo is the typical drivel of the hate-Bush people.
Not until the last sentence of the fifth paragraph does he say anything that gives us an inkling of the issue - "a genocidal war based on blatant lies."
Assuming he means Iraq, the war acts that are genocidal are being committed by al-Qaida followers who set off bombs in schoolyards, markets where families are shopping for groceries, funerals for those killed by previous bombings, wedding celebrations and such activities of ordinary people who are finally enjoying freedom after a murderer - the dictator Saddam Hussein - was chased into a rat hole.
The people of Iraq live freer today than at any time since 1983. The world must condemn al-Qaida bombers whose only goal is to terrorize the Iraqi people.
We must support the people of Iraq who are fighting with American soldiers by their side. To not condemn true evil is to imply by silence that it is acceptable.
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The "blatant lies" the instructor hints at must be those of the cabinet of the Clinton administration. Oberst does not name any lies, but a reading of the statements of the Bush and Clinton administrations and members of the U.S. Senate shows it was not Bush who made the statements many in the left attribute to him, but rather the aforementioned.
Stopping the war now, as Oberst advocates, will give us a replay of the killing fields. But instead of the innocent millions of Cambodia and Vietnam dying at the hands of evil men, it will be the people of Iraq as al-Qaida has promised and demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Even the radical leftist Sen. Barack Obama has said he will return U.S. troops to Iraq if al-Qaida invades that country. Unfortunately, Obama forgot his statements in support of Bush's policy when he was running for the Senate, and he denies that al-Qaida is in Iraq today.
No actions of this or past administrations since former President Harry Truman can be defined as torture. Waterboarding is not torture and has only been used three times, yielding very useful information.
Some nations - among them Iran, Cuba, China, North Korea and Sudan - use torture. The U.S. does not. The bulk of the instructor's letter is rambling conjecture. An examination of the facts and statements of the past 10 years will dispel the suppositions of the left as silly babble.
Philip Howell
Daily Lobo reader
