With a mouthful of hypocrisy, President Bush remarked during the Terry Schiavo case, “when in doubt we should err on the side of life.” Yet, before the invasion of Iraq, the president did no such thing.

The Silberman-Robb commission appointed by the president to investigate prewar intelligence failures not only found that “the intelligence community was wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction,” but they also found that top CIA officials who warned that information given by a single Iraqi defector about Saddam Hussein and WMD was highly doubtful.

These warnings were shoved aside by agency managers, including the most recent Presidential Medal of Freedom winner George J. Tenet, warnings that must have leaked through to the administration. Why would the commission lambaste the quality of the president’s daily brief, supposedly the “gold standard” of American intelligence?

A commander-in-chief handed bad information? Impossible. There must have been some doubt in the mind of the president.

Ignorance has cost the lives of over 1,000 brave American soldiers in Iraq, wounded 10 times that amount, and scarred the lives of their families forever. It has diverted our attention from capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and has compromised U.S. credibility.

Yes, we must support those who are fighting and honor those who have paid the ultimate price. I salute them. But we must also speak out against the incomprehensible stupidity and ineptness of this administration.

Larry Comeau, Auburn

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