Letters to the editor

Nuclear warnings

Danger accompanies general confidence Iran won't explode

Editor, The Times:

Retired Brig. Gen. John H. Johns is quoted in editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey's "What would it take to launch a war with Iran?" [Times editorial column, Feb. 20] as saying that Iran would not commit suicide by using nuclear weapons.

How he can be so confident — or so naïve? The Iranian regime has initiated hundreds of suicide attacks all over the Middle East, and its very pursuit of nuclear weapons demonstrates that rational self-interest considerations are not its main driver.

Moreover, former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani stated that "application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world."

Shouldn't we take him at his word?

Playing Russian roulette with Iranian nuclear weapons and the stated intent to use them is pure suicide on our part, not the Iranians'.

— Nevet Basker, Bellevue

The indirect hit

It seems that Bruce Ramsey cannot pass up an opportunity to express his bias against Israel or those who support her. He quotes a retired brigadier general who claims that one of those who favor an attack on Iran is the "hard-line Israel lobby."

Those who support Israel are not a monolithic hard-line lobby and they surely do not favor attacking Iran.

The pro-Israel community supports the concept of strong international sanctions against the current regime in Iran, to encourage it to stop its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran has been very clear about its intentions and the world needs to take its threats seriously.

Iran supports terrorist organizations in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza; and while the Iranians may not want to "commit suicide" by using nuclear weapons (which is not a given, by the way), there is little question they could offer such weapons to the likes of Hezbollah or Hamas, which have shown no restraint when it comes to killing innocents using suicide.

Being opposed to a nuclear Iran does not automatically make one favor war, and implying so is disingenuous.

— Michael Spektor, Bellevue

Bush-button reaction

Bruce Ramsey reports that a retired general, who claims to be well-connected in the military and intelligence communities, told The Seattle Times editorial board: "The intelligence community intended [the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear-weapons program] to be public to lessen the president's chance of going to war."

Apparently, no one at The Times balked at this frank admission that intelligence had been doctored to support someone's preferred policy.

To be sure, few who bothered to read the Estimate found its conclusions to be credible. The authors reported that Iran had halted its weaponization program in 2003 "in response to international pressure," even though there was no international pressure on Iran at that time. (There was, however, an American invasion of Iraq, which had removed Saddam Hussein from power.)

Moreover, the report's authors conceded that Iran had not ceased its uranium-enrichment programs and that Iran was on track to acquire nuclear weapons sometime between 2010 and 2015, the same time frame projected by an earlier estimate, made before Iran was believed to have "halted" its nuclear-weapons program.

Since the "civilian" programs take many years to complete, while the "military" programs can be completed relatively quickly, and since Iran has not halted or even slowed its "civilian" programs, Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons has neither been halted nor slowed by the interruption of its "military" programs.

In view of the runaround Iran has given to European and IAEA diplomats, it is unreasonable not to believe that unless stopped, Iran will have nuclear weapons sometime during the next president's administration.

It is against this background that consideration of military action against Iran must be weighed, taking into consideration the difficulty of destroying an enrichment program that is probably distributed among hundreds of locations and having the benefit of less-than-perfect intelligence. That is a difficult issue President Bush or his successor will have to decide. Yet to fear the president's decision more than he fears an Iranian bomb, as Mr. Ramsey appears to do, attests to a lack of seriousness.

— Brad Rind, Mercer Island

Entrenched in old war

Fighting new peace

I appreciated "Washingtonians who've visited Cuba ponder its future" [News, Feb. 20, and see "Castro's historic reign ends," page one, Feb. 20]. I visited Cuba in 1998 as part of Radical Women's International Feminist Brigade, which openly challenged the U.S. embargo against travel to Cuba. The brigade was made up of people from several countries.

We were warmly welcomed and spoke with neighborhood groups, economists, agricultural workers and teachers. Despite shortages, we found free health care, child care and education; superb services for the disabled and AIDS care; and groundbreaking medical research. The people felt a kinship with us and did not blame us for the policies of the U.S. government.

They also asked us to work to end the blockade that to this day hampers Cuba's ability to fully develop its socialist economy. Their health services and low infant-mortality rate (a benchmark of a healthy society) result from their anti-capitalist economy.

The U.S. system has little to offer them except increased debt, economic stratification and privatization of their free social services.

There is a reason the U.S. tried to kill Fidel Castro so many times: He represents a different system that threatens the U.S. private-profit economy, where the rich and powerful thrive and everyone else struggles to survive.

— Adrienne Weller, Seattle

Chinese pattern

We bought it, they broke it

The Chinese can't make dog food or children's toys right but apparently can build a better missile-defense system. China hit a satellite 500 miles up in space with a missile, we hit one only 150 miles away [U.S. missile hits spy satellite," page one, Feb. 21].

Why has the government spent trillions of dollars militarizing space when the best it gets is second place?

This show of military prowess, disguised as George Bush's single greatest environmental achievement, is disheartening to Americans who remember the good old days. Republicans are shaking their heads in shame all across America. Reagan would have made that missile go farther, they whisper.

It is about time we started the Cold War again. Terrorism hasn't really been working that well as an excuse for keeping an absurdly large military-industrial complex going. It feels like we spend a billion per terrorist killed, including their camel and family.

The U.S. scoring second place is embarrassing. I guess if the U.S. can't hit a camel very well, then we'd be much worse at hitting satellites. Maybe we should start importing missiles from China.

— Bruce Wilkinson, Olympia