Dear Editor,

It seems Bob Anderson and I were looking for different things in Bob Kay’s report to the United Nations. I was hoping there might be something in the report that showed our president wasn’t deceitful (to be kind) in his proclamations building up to our invasion. Proving that Hussein was lying through his teeth did not require going to war.

In Kay’s conclusions he wrote that Saddam “had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Even those senior officials we have interviewed who claim no direct knowledge of any ongoing prohibited activities readily acknowledge that Saddam intended to resume these programs whenever the external restrictions were removed.”

---

---

So it seems to me that the sanctions (which could have been revised to ease the suffering on the civilian population) and the inspections were impeding Saddam’s aspirations.

Furthermore, in regards to an error in Mr. Anderson’s paraphrasing: David Kay was fastidious in delineating between research programs and discoveries of reference biological weapons strains. He clearly stated they discovered only one hidden reference strain that could be used to produce biological weapons, that being C. botulinum Okra B. The other BW-applicable agents he mentioned were in the research stage.

---

---

Granted, it is difficult to summarize such a complicated report and make a point, but Mr. Anderson should hold himself to the same high standards you would like to see at our universities.

Bryan Zukowski

Glenwood Springs

Dear Editor,

Newsflash! For those of you not paying attention, watching Fox News or believing reports by weapons inspectors hired by the U.S. government, no WMDs or WMD programs have been found in Iraq!

The single vial of botulinum B, listed in the report by U.S. weapons hunter Kay, was cited in speeches by Bush, Cheney and other senior administration officials as proof that President Hussein maintained an illicit bio-weapons program.

But the significance of the vial is being called into question by U.S. biowarfare experts and former United Nations weapons inspectors. The vial had been stored in an Iraqi scientist’s kitchen refrigerator since 1993, and was apparently produced by the American Type Culture Collection, which legally exported botulinum to Iraq under a Commerce Department license in the late 1980s.

Dr. David Franz, a former chief U.N. weapons inspector who is considered among America’s foremost experts on biowarfare agents, said that no one has ever succeeded in using botulinum B for biowarfare. So there was no reason to have declared it as a weapon to the U.N.

It has been repeatedly stated by the world’s experts that Iraq’s weapons program was 99 percent if not 100 percent destroyed. Yet this administration and its patsy “weapons inspectors” continue to try to spin the truth to fit the crime. The sad thing is, after all of the lies we’ve been told, if U.S. inspectors eventually do discover WMDs in Iraq, who (besides Bob Anderson) is going to believe them?

Sue Gray

Carbondale

Dear Editor,

When is this newspaper going to allow someone other than a flaming liberal and in a few cases a left-wing radical to write a monthly column expressing another view of the world?

Why are the rest of us, who by the way are the majority in this valley, forced to read the rantings of these liberal ideologues who get their information and political inclinations from National Public Radio (another disgrace because this liberal media outlet is in part funded by taxpayer money) and CNN? Inquiring minds want to know.

Now on to some interesting facts.

1. If you are a U.S. citizen and have never been in a battle for your life, have never been imprisoned, have never been tortured, or suffered from starvation, you are ahead of about 500 million people in the world.

2. If you go to church and are not worried about being harassed, arrested, tortured, or killed, you are more blessed than 3 million folks on this planet.

3. If you have some food in your refrigerator, some clothes to wear, a roof over your head in which to sleep, you are richer than 70 percent of this world.

4. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and a little spare change in a jar, you are in the top 8 percent of the world’s wealthy.

What’s my point?

If there is a better place in the world to live and love, let’s hear about, OK?

Liberal ideologues are invited to respond.

Bob Anderson

Glenwood Springs