A letter I wrote to the West County Times on Feb. 13 was finally published yesterday. Here's the letter, in its original form. Passages omitted from the published letter are shown in square brackets []; editorial interpolations (which may just be modifications of the omitted forms) are shown in curly brackets {}.
{In a letter to the editor,} Bob Armstrong, explaining the real reason for the war in Iraq, states that "after 9/11 it was imperative to put our spear into the heart of Islam" [(Feb. 13)].
Armstrong appears [to be] unfamiliar with Saddam's Iraq, which, although politically [speaking] a sinkhole of iniquity, was from the religious point of view probably the most moderate government in the Middle East, even [compared with] Israel. Saddam's government was [a] secular [one], not restricted to [Moslems] {Muslims}; his right-hand man, Tariq Aziz, with whom many readers [will be] {are} familiar from television, was a Christian[, and women] {. Women} in his country could learn to become engineers, truck drivers and doctors, something not at all common in Islamic countries [-- and, apparently, no longer as common in the new Islamic Iraq, where, under U.S. tutelage and sponsorship, the governing council has revoked certain women's rights that were common under the former government].
Armstrong more correctly worries about the situation vis a vis Saudi Arabia. Let us, however, put our minds at rest; chances are that, as the fickle winds of American politics veer righward or leftward, we will eventually find the Saudi government as inconvenient as we did those of such former good friends and clients as Ngo Dinh Diem, Manuel Noriega, and [...] Saddam Hussein.