As a Gulf War veteran and a veteran of the U.S. Navy, I am appalled at how our foreign policy on Iraq has led to thousands of needless deaths and the continued subjugation of the Iraqi people by that fat maniac Saddam Hussein. If George W. Pardington (Letters, Jan. 15) and his group of protesters got their way, the killing and the sanctions would continue and Saddam would grow stronger.

The Iraqi people have suffered enough from people like Pardington. They suffered from eight years of Bill Clinton’s lack of a foreign policy on Iraq, from endless bombings and cowardly politicians who allowed the U.N. sanctions to keep on killing year after year. We stabbed the Iraqis in the back at the end of the Gulf War when we didn’t support their first uprising against Saddam, now if we follow “Pipper Pardington’s” excuses we will stab them in the back again.

Enough is enough. This nation did not become a beacon of hope to the oppressed thanks to Pardington’s cowardice, it became that light because it was willing to deliver the thunder of that light to the doorstep of the oppressor. The Iraqi people are owed liberation, they deserve liberation and we should give them liberation. The time has come to end this decade-long disaster and do what we should have done in 1991. Saddam must go, his machine of murder must go.

Pardington and his band of merry mouths have no faith in the ability or capability of our people in uniform. He may speak for himself but he will never and does not speak for me, my shipmates, my brothers and sisters in uniform or for the people of Iraq. The time has come to deliver to the Iraqi nation the promise of freedom and it is the Americans in uniform of my generation who will deliver that fist of promise to Saddam’s face.

Dan Rush

Oak Harbor