Editor, the News-Herald:

Once again Robert Pocklington (&uot;Our dear friends in Europe,&uot; July 24) takes France (and others) to task for not &uot;fighting along side our troops in Iraq.&uot; But he fails to answer one very simple question: why should they? What did Iraq, or Saddam Hussein, ever do to France? The answer is also simple: nothing. Exactly the same thing they did to us – absolutely nothing! So why should France add the bodies of her sons and daughters to those of the nearly 1,800 young Americans who have already been sacrificed for a phony cause.

Pocklington maintains that the &uot;greatest danger to our troops&uot; is a press that &uot;forever question[s] our nation’s objectives&uot; and &uot;have forgotten 9/11.&uot; A far greater danger – to our country as well as our troops – would be a press that fails to question those objectives. And as for remembering 9/11, the greatest service Pocklington could render would be to constantly remind his readers that Iraq had nothing to do with that tragedy. To suggest otherwise, as he seems to want to do frequently, is to divert attention from the search for the real culprits – whoever they may be.

Read my lips, Bob. Iraq didn’t have any WMDs; they didn’t have atomic weapon capabilities; they didn’t have connections with Al Qaeda; they didn’t send the airplanes into the Twin Towers.

They posed no threat to the United States.

So don’t blame the French for refusing to play our deadly game. They learned from Algeria and Vietnam that imperialist occupation of another nation just doesn’t work. You would have thought that Vietnam might have taught us the same lesson. Apparently not.

John M. Sharpe

Suffolk