The Sun Journal is right to call for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to be dismissed. If President Bush is correct that the torture, killing, rape and abuse of Iraqi prisoners does not represent America, then he should apologize to the Iraqi people – not just to the King of Jordan – for what we have done to them. He should dismiss Joint Chiefs Chair Myers, CIA Director Tenet and Iraqi Administrator Bremer along with Secretary Rumsfeld. They all allowed the people under their command to practice torture systematically. They all ignored reports from their own investigators that described it and pleas from the Red Cross to stop it.

Then President Bush should stop lecturing the Iraqi people about democracy and start listening to what they are saying. Iraqis who have been tortured in Abu Ghraib prison by Saddam Hussein’s people and by George Bush’s people are saying that the Americans were worse. When it turned out that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no Iraqi connection to Sept. 11, President Bush told us that it was still good to have invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein was such a bad man. Now it seems he can’t even convince the Iraqis of that any more.

If they don’t want us there, our soldiers can’t do any good there. Their presence just makes them the target of Iraqis, who regard them as torturers. They don’t deserve that. Bring them home.

James Parakilas, Lewiston

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