by Gordon Poole*

Mr. President,:

The last letter I wrote to a President of the United States was addressed to Kennedy shortly after the invasion of the Bay of Pigs. It was silly of me, I know, but I was much younger, believed in the American Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, etc. That is to say, I believed that Kennedy believed in them. But now, on the verge of retirement ...

Still, I want to beg you, at the cost of making a fool of myself, to explain how matters really stand. I mean make clear whether you are threatening to slaughter thousands of Iraqis in order to punish Saddam or, just the opposite, you threaten Saddam in order to have an excuse to slaughter. Isn't the million who have been killed by seven years of embargo enough for you? Nor the present rate of 4,500 children per month?

What a strange creature man is! He can rain down tears of commotion for the movie Titanic, go into spasms over a child blocked in a well, and yet contemplate genocide with detachment. No, not man. Some men. You, for example.

It's as if you had a need for military action, a "military need." Other needs of yours that seem to shock and anger your fellow citizens are fairly widely shared in these parts, as long as they are not imposed with violence or deceit, and might even make you likable. But this need of yours for something "military," this I do find obscene.

If I could, I would force you to explain to me what on earth sort of secret super-bombs you have at your disposal - one that can sniff out, uncover and annihilate stockpiles of chemical weapons (assuming there really are any), without thoroughly polluting the countries in the Persian Gulf area? Another with such a sense of smell, like a truffle-dog, that it can zoom in on biological arms which, as you know, can be concocted in any spare room (even in Boston, Tokyo, Afragola ...), and then soak them up, depurate them. and turn them into attar of roses? Still another bomb that zaps atomic weapons, which have incredibly been missed during seven years of expert UN inspections, without producing a string of Chernobyls? You say you are attacking Iraq to allow inspections to take place. I'm afraid that after you're done with Iraq, the inspectors won't want to go there any more.

If I could, I would demand another answer: how many Iraqi and American victims do you foresee in this conflict? Last time some 200,000 Iraqis were killed outright and something over a hundred Americans, killed by mistake by other Americans, plus a large number of US and allied veterans who have died as a result of the Gulf Syndrome. More importantly, how many Iraqi dead are you planning on in the long run? Certainly a much higher number. The Iraqi people, on account of the embargo, are without medicine, short on drinking water, food, etc. It is no longer the well-nourished, healthy people it was eight years ago. Their land is spread and infected with depleted uranium (a half-life of 2 billion years, if I remember rightly), brought in by the projectiles used during the Gulf War. You have used them in Bosnia, too, carried by planes flying out of an Italian airfield. Do you plan to use them against Iraq this time, too?

I want to remind you that Mordechai Vanunu has been in a maximum security prison for 12 years for having made public the fact that his country, Israel, was engaged in the secret preparation of atomic arms. No, hold it, Bill! I'm not asking you to bomb Israel. Nor to bomb the United States, which possesses and continues to test atomic weaponry (and is the only nation to have actually dropped the bomb in war). I ask you, absurdly I beg you, not to bomb the Iraqi people on the excuse that Saddam has tried to do the same thing Israel has done without any punishment. I mean, just for now, how about not bombing anybody?

Because, for one thing, there is a strange circularity to your reasoning that risks not being widely understood. Nuclear weapons are wicked and nasty; hence, to stop Iraq from some day in the future using tactical nuclear weapons, you reserve the option of striking Iraq with tactical nuclear weapons. Against the USSR, at its strongest, a deterrent was enough, the balance of terror, and now you say you can't keep an exhausted country like Iraq in line with a simple threat? You really must think Saddam is crazy. Watch out, though, that you don't go crazy yourself.

I'll ask you a cultural question. During the other war, US tanks used the Ziqqurat of Ur for target practice. This time are you planning on knocking it out? The list of artistic and archeological treasures ripped off in Iraq during the allied presence there is a volume in itself. Iraq is the cradle of our civilization, which is your civilization, too, Bill. Someone said at one point that in bombing Iraq, we had bombed ourselves.

I want to hope that the real motive for this war of yours is not to strengthen your base of operations in the Persian Gulf in order to control the oil fields in that area (against Europe) and aim at other oil fields near the Caspian Sea, with further aims at Caucasus and south-central Asia, and that the imminent intensification of the slaughter of Iraqis is just a minor variable in a long-term strategy. Not a personal obscene need of yours, as might appear, but - as the Godfather would say - just "business," an obscenity of the system.

I know, of course, that your Iraq policy is shared by various, valiant European heads of state and heads of government, herded into line by the threats and strokes of Madam Albright. But I also know that there is a yearning for peace throughout Europe, a sentiment that is popular and deep. I stand on that side, if not to prevent the war of today, perhaps to build the peace of tomorrow.

Don't attack Iraq!