My letter in the Chicago Trib (along with many others)

[Wink]

A good quality

Paul Winkelmann
Published July 11, 2004

Romeoville -- Is it really the GOP's contention that Sen. John Edwards' lack of experience would keep him from running our country in the same manner as our current president? Sounds to me like an endorsement.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/

[NMDemDist2]

heheh good one, congrats on getting published n/t

[Paradise]

1. Nice, Wink! :) nt

[kanrok]

2. I got a kick out of reading that this morning

Good job. Lots of wing-nuts boo-hooing over Edwards. He must be the right choice.

[coda]

3. LOL

I'm a big fan of the short n sweet. Good job Wink. :thumbsup:

[Martin Eden]

4. They printed a freeper letter in praise of Dennis Byrne's column

But they didn't print my response to that same column:

Dennis Byrne’s July 5 commentary (Swaying media about an Iraq-Al Qaeda link) casts more shadow than light upon whether Iraq’s contacts with terrorist organizations presented a threat sufficient to justify military invasion. As with weapons of mass destruction, the issue of a Saddam-Al Qaeda link is assumed to be an all-or-nothing proposition – that if anything at all turns up, the war was justified. But a few chemical warhead relics from the 1980’s do not constitute mass stockpiles or mushroom clouds over America, and the evidence of contacts with Al Qaeda do not reveal an operational alliance.

To the contrary, the 9-11 Commission reported that Saddam rejected such an alliance, and with good reason. The fundamentalists wanted his secular regime overthrown. The CIA concluded it was highly unlikely Saddam would give weapons to any organization that was a threat to his hold on power. We know that Saddam ruthlessly crushed all opposition, which explains why the hardcore terrorists in Iraq are mostly foreigners – their organizations were unable to flourish under Saddam’s tight-fisted repression.

The question we need to ask is whether Saddam Hussein was likely to commit suicide by attacking America directly with weapons of mass destruction, or to empower Islamic radicals who sought his destruction. The well-informed answer to this question prior to the invasion was no, and what we have learned since that time reinforces the conclusion that this war was not justified in terms of self defense.