To the editor:

I have just listened to Mr. McCain talking on CNN and he has made the statement that he wants our troops to come home after the victory in Iraq. I have a question. What constitutes “victory” in this elusive, shadowbox “war” started by President Bush to stop Iraq’s production of (what proved to be nonexistent) “weapons of mass-destruction?

World War I was concluded with the armistice signed in Marshal Foch’s railway carriage at Compiegne, France.

World War II was ended (in the Pacific) by surrender terms signed by the Japanese envoy in the presence of Gen. Douglas MacArthur on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The Korean “police action” is technically still going on, but was halted by agreements signed by both participants at a location on the 45th parallel. The Vietnam “War” was ended by people jumping off the roof of the U.S. Embassy onto helicopters in (what was then) Saigon.

Does Sen. McCain wish that this ill-starred oil war in Iraq end when our military representatives meet in some location where Osama Bin Laden and his cronies have come down from the mountains in Pakistan to sign an “armistice” or “surrender terms” ending the war in Iraq and Afghanistan?

I would like some of these political persons to please define to me just what constitutes a final victory in the Iraq war?

Fred Whitehead,

Lawrence