what if it didn't happen

A look back at Iraq
Colonel Lee R. Pitzer O'Fallon, Ill., St.Louis, STLtoday 03/25/2006

Three years ago this month you published a letter of mine which said, in part: "What if the United States invades Iraq, suffers a great many casualties of young American sons and daughters, causes a great loss of life of innocent Iraqi civilians and then finds little or nothing of weapons of mass destruction? How can this administration ever justify the loss of life of such an adventure to the American people or to the world at large?"

Well, unfortunately, that is what has occurred, and this administration has tried to explain it away by saying it wasn't their fault, they received bad intelligence and anyway, the war has been justified since we have removed a cruel dictator.

Those weak reasons do not justify the loss of life or the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars. The world has many more dictators around with whom we do not seem to be concerned. In fact, we have normal relations with most of them. Advertisement

The Congress bears much of the responsibility for this war by failing to perform its constitutional duty "to declare war." Instead it passed "a resolution" authorizing the president to use military force against Iraq.

A resolution does not carry the same weight as a "declaration of war" and our experience with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in the Vietnam War bears that out and is a similar example of the Congress failing to fulfill its constitutional duty.