To the editor

In 1972, I was newly discharged from the Army, having returned from a 1970 Vietnam tour. I badly wanted to believe that what we had done was worthwhile, and that those who died had been sacrificed for something. George McGovern seemed an unacceptable candidate, a frothy man with a simplistic answer. I voted easily for Nixon, a criminal with no moral compass save self-interest. McGovern now has become an icon, a true hero.

Today we are asked to support a president who led us to pre-emptive war against a country that had been exhaustively inspected, surveyed and patrolled. Our reasons turned out to be concocted of distortions, selected evidence and some outright falsehoods. We have seen an administration that betrayed a CIA operative for nothing more than vindictiveness. I have not since the Nixon era seen an American government less worthy of respect or support.

The thousands of Iraqi civilians we have murdered in this effort are not warmed by Bush’s vision of Iraqi freedom. The thousands of Iraqis murdered by Saddam at least were not killed by American arrogance.

Mark Brooks,

Overbrook