To the editor:

How ironic that one year after Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, berated critics of the American occupation of Iraq for allegedly undermining the authority of the U.S. military, his troops are exposed as unquestionably undermining that blessed authority.

In the past year, reasons cited for the American occupation of Iraq and removal of Saddam Hussein have been reduced from finding weapons of mass destruction and saving the world from future terrorist attacks to protecting the weak Iraqi public from a rogue regime’s brutality. All of a sudden, the United States is a humanitarian nation? If the Bush administration and the majority of Congress are currently determined to initiate humanitarian efforts to save weak nations from the brutality of rogue actions, why has there been no movement to occupy Sudan where evidence of ethnic cleansing is mounting? Why do Americans let their leaders use humanity to justify aggression?

The Bush administration and the majority of Congress should be held accountable for perpetuating U.S. aggression, weakening national security and planting seeds for future terrorist attacks by occupying a weak nation on a false premise, and the majority of the American public should be ashamed for supporting this occupation. Where is their humanity? Probably lost in the destruction they were so eager to initiate and the resulting chaos they have been unable to prevent.

Dylan Rassier,

Lawrence