To letter writer Terry Nugent and all others who continue to implicitly or explicitly question the patriotism of those who ask why we are in Iraq (including the parent of one of our fallen), here’s a news flash: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did not attack the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
Hussein was not an Al Qaeda jihadist.
The pre-war evidence that he had weapons of mass destruction was extremely weak and there is no evidence at all that he had any intention of actually attacking the United States.
In fact Hussein was a garden-variety brutal tyrant who killed and tortured his own people.
He was not alone in that–unfortunately many countries are run by such tyrants. Most of them we choose to ignore.
The unfortunate truth is that our government all but walked away from the fight against the jihadists who actually attacked us in favor of the ill-conceived and astonishingly badly executed experiment in Iraq, for reasons that nobody to this day has yet adequately articulated.
It is not unpatriotic to ask why.
Oh, by the way, for those who’ve forgotten, the Al Qaeda jihadist who attacked us was named Osama bin Laden. Why hasn’t he been brought to justice?
Editor’s note: Readers may now post comments on letters to the editor that have been published in the Chicago Tribune by visiting chicagotribune.com/letters
