Bush squandered opportunity to get Sept. 11 attackers

To the editor:

Following Sept. 11, 2001, the civilized world was united in horror at the carnage visited upon Americans by terrorists. The world was ready to unite in addressing the global problems that produce such acts. Broad international support existed for rooting out Osama bin Laden and the perpetrators of this atrocity.

Regrettably, the Bush White House has squandered this opportunity. Rather than focus on terrorism and its causes, President Bush has diverted world attention to what seems to be a personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein, power-hunger or an empire-building thirst for the oil of Iraq.

Although the White House argues that attacking Iraq means defending the world against terrorism, the U.S. intelligence community considers this connection either undemonstrated or vastly exaggerated. The rest of the world, meanwhile, just doesn't buy it. Elsewhere, the news media still seek and report news rather than ignorantly accepting the opinions of their corporate sponsors and politicians. Other peoples do not blindly accept the naive argument that governments have secret information sufficient to justify unprovoked military aggression.

The question is not what a tyrant Saddam Hussein is. We all know this. It is whether U.S. use of weapons of mass destruction (including the nuclear option) against civilians in Iraq serves planetary peace. The United States is threatening exactly what it accuses Saddam of doing. I firmly believe the United States is better than Bush would have it be. Certainly, the American people are better than this.

ALAN R.P. JOURNET

Cape Girardeau