To the editor:

Finally the truth has surfaced about Iraq. It turns out, after all the carnage of war, that Iraq had, in fact, complied with the United Nations resolutions about disclosure and the destruction of their banned weapons. There were no mobile bioweapon labs, no banned missiles being loaded onto trucks, no nuclear facilities, no WMDs and no links to bin Laden.

Every time you turn around, you hear one thing from the Bush administration and then find the opposite to be true. How many uncovered lies does it take for people to lose their trust? This blind faith is leading us so far off the right path, it’s dangerous.

We have become a nation that no longer sticks to our own law or the Constitution. The leader of the United Nations has even called it an illegal war and people the world over are listening to the news, reshaping and firming their opinions.

Sure, the old regime was no good. Twenty years ago they used gas and killed masses of people who sided with Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, a war in which we backed Iraq. I also remember Moammar Gadhafi admitting to bombing Pan Am 103, but he now is our ally.

The United Nations, with our help, had Iraq totally under its thumb. With no-fly zones, no air force, no weapons, defenseless, they were certainly no threat to us. We cannot become the modern-day crusaders for democracy. Can we justify killing so many by saying, “It was for their own good. They needed democracy”?

Stephen Crockett,

Lawrence