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Dear Ithaca Times, The Calvin Crisses of this world never cease to amaze me. In his letter in your March 26th - April 1st issue ("Protesters Undermine War Efforts"), Mr Criss asserts that "because of [American] protesters Saddam finds comfort and solace in holding out and refusing to step down." Indeed, I'm sure the thought that there are more-or-less democratic countries where dissenting citizens are still free to voice their political opinions is of great comfort to the murderous Iraqi despot. Mr Criss seems to exist in a cartoonish world of blacks and whites. Saddam is a Baddie, so George W Bush must be a Goodie in opposing him, and thus protesters, in resisting the President's efforts, must naturally find themselves on the Axis of ... well, you know. The trouble with this simplistic worldview is that it is completely incapable of accomodating the facts - either of our history or of our present. I fear Mr Criss would be hard-pressed to produce even one peace activist from this country who does not abhor Saddam. And how can he begin to explain the fact that President Reagan sent none other than Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq during the 1980's to further our business interests, long after it was well known that Saddam had been using posion gases against the Kurdish population? (The gases had helpfully been supplied to him by our British allies, one third of whose GNP depends on the production of the instruments of warfare.) The fact is that this war is being waged for economic and political reasons, not humanitarian ones. This is why we are happy to support corrupt and murderous regimes in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and Kuwait (to name a few) but turn our wrath on Iraq: The other regimes are willing to allow us to dictate the terms on which we access their resources. Saddam is not. Time, therefore, to look for a pretext for regime change. When the charges of a link to Al Quaeda failed to stick we were quite happy to swallow our hypocrisy and shift to claims of humanitarian interest. And if this gloomy picture is at variance with what our media and politicans have portrayed for us, should we really be so surprised? It is worth remembering that both groups are owned by the same corporate interests. The American people have been systematically deceived about the nature and intent of our role in world politics since the end of WWII. When we recognize these lying tendencies in Saddam, we dub them "propaganda" and add that to the (already considerable) list of reasons to disdain him. Why then the log in our own eyes when we look at America? Those of us who do not live in Mr Criss's facile world of Goodies and Baddies are aware of the unprecedented wealth of information currently available to indicate that our nation is run largely to benefit her corporate managers. The intersets of the average American - be they soldier or civilian - rate a distant second place to our quest to secure Iraq's economic resources, as well as keeping the wheels of our national war machine well oiled, so to speak. And as for the innocent lives that are lost in Iraq (over 1 million to date since 1991) - well, they don't even chart. Is it any wonder people are protesting? Yours sincerely,
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