Maine taxpayers pay two U.S. senators and two U.S. congressmen over $600,000 in salaries and untold dollars in staff and support costs to deliberate national security matters in Washington. Incredibly, Lewiston’s two Maine state senators, Rotundo and Douglass, recently joined a divisive, partisan Democrat effort in Augusta to pass a resolution urging the USA to use diplomatic efforts in dealing with Saddam, the psychopath leader of Iraq.

The day after the “”give peace a chance”” resolution passed in Augusta, Secretary of State Powell told the world what Saddam has been up to over the last 12 years.

While the United Nations has issued no less than 16 disarmament resolutions, Saddam has been busy as a beaver developing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. He is spending most of his time these days hiding the WMDs from Hans Blix and his inspectors.

We know that Saddam has 65 bio warfare sites, 30 chem warfare sites, 25,000 liters of Anthrax, 7 mobile bio warfare production labs on trucks, unmanned aircraft designed to spray bio weapons, 1,000 tons of chemical weapons, 6,500 bombs fitted to drop chemical weapons, 4 tons of VX gas, 16,000 battlefield rockets fitted to deliver chemical weapons, missiles that can reach into Russia and Egypt and an al-Qaida terrorist bio/chem weapon training facility.

He has spent several billion dollars trying to develop a nuclear weapon while his people ‘starved’ due to the sanctions. Oh yes, he tied 1,200 prisoners to beds and gassed/infected/killed them to test this sadistic weaponry.

It takes but one drop of VX to kill a human. Saddam has 4 tons of VX. Saddam developed VX to use it. He even tried to assassinate former President Bush in Kuwait in 1993. He’ll stop at nothing.

Just what will Saddam do while we are negotiating per the wishes of Senators Rotundo and Douglass? Smuggle one of those 500-mile-range tiny unmanned aircraft into Connecticut and have it take a low and slow flight over Manhattan, spraying a few hundred pounds of VX over midtown?

Time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Bob Stone, Lewiston