To the editor:

I sincerely hope the Washington Post-ABC News poll (Dec. 18, page 6A) is wrong when it reports that 60 percent of Americans “favor using nuclear weapons against Iraq if Saddam Hussein attacks U.S. military forces with chemical or biological weapons.” The sample size (1,209) was certainly small, and we can always question the location and age distribution of these “randomly selected adults.”

Anyone who has lived through World War II and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or has heard of it from parents and grandparents, surely knows how horrific and devastating a nuclear attack is for hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians! We shouldn’t even consider using atomic bombs in this controversial proposed war — or any war. Nuclear attack is not specific. It kills and maims for miles.

Whether this poll reflects flawed polling methods or flawed thinking by the handful of Americans surveyed, it certainly reflects blatant irresponsibility by the press. Polling a few Americans about war strategies and responses — while they sit comfortable in their homes or offices, far from the fighting, and (because we have never been asked by the Bush administration to make any real sacrifices in our war on terrorism) far from any real effect of war — is stupid. And reporting the results as general American views is unethical. It only serves to give Mr. Bush one more imaginary mandate which he will surely use to take this country into war and to possibly unleash the horror of global nuclear warfare in this troubled world of ours.

Sharon Dewey,

Lawrence