To the editor:

Wherever he may be and whatever his disguise, Saddam Hussein is not Hitler. Even in costume as a warrior on an aircraft carrier, George W. Bush is not Winston Churchill. May 2 was not VE Day.

To justify war, Donald Rumsfeld told us that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction posed an immediate threat, but Rumsfeld now guesses that they might have been destroyed before the war started. Thus war was not necessary.

Rumsfeld was also wrong about the number of troops that would be needed to keep the peace in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was an evil man but Iraq had hospitals, libraries, museums and universities, as well as basic services for water, sewage, electricity and telephones. Bombing, and the subsequent failure to provide security, destroyed them. Anarchy in Iraq makes new enemies for us every day.

We have found no weapons of mass destruction and no connection between Iraq and the 9-11 terrorists. Everyone knows that most of the 9-11 terrorists were Saudi Arabians. New attacks in Saudi Arabia confirm the presence of terrorists there. However, the hawks in the Bush administration now tell us that Iran is the enemy. Is their “intelligence” to be trusted now when it was clearly at fault about the threat from Iraq?

The Bush administration has not brought peace to Afghanistan or to Iraq. Let it finish those wars before it starts another.

Mary Davidson,

Lawrence