You were right about Iraq. It was the wrong war for the wrong reason.

I feel your intentions are indeed honorable, but I would like to add to them with respect to 'we are in it and we should remain in it until our stated goals are achieved.'

I do not think this is the only way to support the troops, since 60 percent of the troops now think as you do.

The goal post keeps moving, and what we say we want to achieve as a desired objective may, in fact, not be that at all. I believe G.W. Bush may indeed believe it is possible to turn the Middle East into a democratic utopia of sorts, but sadly if that's the case, he may be deluded. On the other hand he may be lying. We'll never know.

Behind him is the oil lobby and Dick Cheney. These are not guys whose eyes are shining with the inner light of goodness or godliness but rather with the energy of greed in a vision of American economic and military dominance and riches beyond belief to the very few.

Iraqis are fighting for their country, their homes and the survival of their civilization. Wouldn't you do the same? Our soldiers are fighting for their own survival in desperate circumstances, and at heart they just want to come home.

Some sort of phased withdrawal with the help of the U.N. peacekeeping forces might stand a slim chance of rescuing the situation, but with John Bolton as the American representative at the U.N., there isn't much of a chance of that. The Bush administration told the world to buzz off a couple of years ago, and the world did exactly what he said. Therefore, we will not get much help - unless we are successful at getting those oil wells up and running and preventing the almost daily blowing up of the pipelines. If we can secure the oil then, of course, greed being what it is, much of the world will be back - extracting the most beneficial deal possible from our government and from us.

Recently we have begun negotiating with Iraqi
terrorists. We just don't know what to do. We look weak, and the longer we stay, the weaker we look.

Definitely a bipartisan failure.

So I wish you would simply not take a stand on this issue because you and I both know where this is going, and the fact is we simply don't know how to stop the madness.

Jeanne D., Upper Black Eddy