Editor, the News-Herald:

Mr. John M Sharpe wrote on 7 Sep 05 to Robert Pocklington that he would like for Robert or any &uot;War Supporter&uot; to explain what we are doing in Iraq since there are no WMDs there.

Man where do you begin to answer that?

I don’t say that because it is hard but because there are so many details and breadth of an answer.

But here goes just a couple.

Not finding WMDs is not equal to Saddam Hussein not trying to develop them.

Is it not more plausible that when the &uot;kitchen got hot&uot; he could easily have given his mobile chemical trailers, materials, and everything else to a brother Muslim nation, such as Syria.

Syria, who is doing everything but be neutral in the conflict.

Syria, who’s borders couldn’t be more easily accessible to any and all insurgents from everywhere in the Muslim world.

Syria, the sister nation lead by the same party (Baath) as Saddam’s Iraq.

Ask the American inspectors who for years got abused and rebuffed when trying to inspect Iraqi facilities.

Why would Saddam be so reluctant for so long if he truly had nothing to hide?

The argument of not finding anything being equal to nothing being there is silly.

Prior to US involvement in WWII, Germany and many Nazi supporters in the US and the free world argued that the stories of atrocities by the Nazi’s were manufactured and false.

If we had not totally overrun Germany by force, if there had been some kind of treaty, would we have ever have been able to prove what they were doing? It would have been allegations!

He also said that Iraq had no ties to Al Qaeda.

Holy cow; how wrong is that?

What about the 1300 man camp of insurgents in one of the more remote northern areas of Iraq. This group, Ansar al Islam, was clearly a terrorist group that was totally unchecked by the Iraqi government.

If Iraq was restraining terrorists from using their country as a training and staging ground then they were assisting them by their passive acquiescence.

Further, Ansar al Islam was in direct conflict with the Kurds, so excuses of Saddam Hussein ignoring them as a counter weight to the Kurdish freedom movement seem silly.

According to lots of information available online such as Wikipedia and others,

Ansar al Islam controlled about a dozen villages in Iraq. It was only abandoned with the impending onslaught by the US Army.

So I think Mr. Sharpe and lots of others who want to walk away from the fight with terrorists, terrorist nations, and nations assisting terrorists, they should expect $100 per gallon gasoline and terrorist attacks everywhere.

So should we wait until an aggressive dictator who has previously invaded neighboring countries to try and take their oil reserves, who supported large terrorist operations in his country, who wouldn’t let us inspect his facilities even after losing a war,

who launched Scud Missiles at Israel who wasn’t even participating in a war,

starts sending nuclear missiles at a free country or maybe us or maybe gives them to a terrorist group?

I vote no and I hope everyone else continues to support this effort.

Passive disengagement doesn’t work just ask England’s Mr. Chamberlain.

David M. Forsythe P.E.

Jacksonville, Fla.