To the editor:

Earth Day reminds me that the ultimate ecological crime would be nuclear war, and President Bush is threatening Iran with exactly that.

Can you believe it? (Granted, he allows others to speak of using nuclear bunker busters; he then says he will not exclude any option.) I certainly do not want Iran – or any country – to have nuclear weapons.

Threatening to nuke Iran, however, is like a parent beating a child to teach it that hitting is wrong.

This is insanity, and I am outraged that my country may be seen by the rest of the world as the real nuclear bully. We were fortunate to avoid nuclear catastrophe in the conflict between India and Pakistan just a few years ago.

The fact that we would even consider using nuclear weapons boggles the mind. Threatening the use of tactical nuclear weapons removes any sort of moral standing we might once have had. This is the action of a president, an administration, that maintains an arrogant and paranoid attitude toward the rest of the world.

Others are for us or against us and we actually don’t much care what they think; we prefer force over diplomacy.

I hope our congressional delegation will talk sense with Mr. Bush and bring us back to a more responsible position.

Joe Douglas,

Lawrence