All the evidence fails to support attack on Iraq

To the editor:

When you cut through all of the opinions, the spin and the media hype, have you heard enough credible, factual evidence to justify spending billions of taxpayer dollars to bring thousands of U.S. boys home in body bags and bomb hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi people? Have you heard enough to justify an unprovoked act of aggression that will likely unite the Arab world against us and turn our allies away from us? According to the London Guardian, many in the CIA don't see such credible evidence and certainly it has not been given to the people of the United States.

One Harvard study claims that a half-million children and more than a million people total have died due to the sanctions. All indications are that the Iraqi people attribute this to us. Incidents of birth defects and cancer have skyrocketed in Southern Iraq where the environment is permanently damaged by depleted uranium weapons used by the United States in the last war (probably also causing Gulf War Syndrome). Currently millions of innocent and vulnerable people are waiting to either die or live based on U.S. actions in the upcoming months.

Will the post 9-11 period be characterized by hasty, poorly debated and unending wars of repression? When you drop the media hype, do you really believe that war is justified now? The Catholic bishops, the Methodist church and a growing chorus of similar organizations don't think so.

ROBERT POLACK

Cape Girardeau