LETTER: Patience not a Bush attribute

Editor,

In the past two weeks the Bush administration has used word “patience” when asked about the ongoing violence and instability in Iraq: Once by Condoleeza Rice during her Senate hearing and then again by Bush himself after 37 troops were killed in a single day. I am not quite sure I understand this new logic.

In the months leading up to the war, U.N. inspectors were pressed for time to do their job. The Bush administration insisted that the inspectors would never find weapons because Saddam Hussein was leading them on a wild goose chase. During that time, allies of the U.S. were asking for patience and to let the inspectors finish their assignment. World powers were sharing the monetary burden and insecurity posed by threats of WMDs to let inspection run its course in Iraq. No talk of the Iraqi people and liberation had become the meat of the argument for war.

Now, here we are, 300 billion dollars and nearly 1,500 American lives later. NOW the Bush administration is asking for patience from his citizens and the rest of the world. Now that Iraq has become a center of violence, instability, and death for Americans as well as a serious financial burden, the Bush administration is asking for patience.

I understand that we must stay in Iraq and fulfill our obligations to the Iraqi people. Looking to the future, we must remember to ask not only ask, but to demand patience from our government when it asks us to pay with our blood and taxes for a war that should never have been fought. That means electing thoughtful, mature, creative and patient people. Attributes the Bush administration and its conservative supporters in Congress have not shown.

Jason Alexander