More baloney

EDITOR: Referring to your Saturday editorial ("An unwanted war comes to an end"), so the ill conceived, ill advised, ill gotten Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld folly is, ostensibly, over.

The interminable sequel to Desert Storm was truly a mini-Vietnam, minus the image of people hanging from a helicopter as we bailed out ignominiously at the end. Colin Powell warned at the outset, "you break it, you own it." In terms of those killed or wounded and the monetary expenditure, it was a badly broken exercise.

Your editorial concludes that the ultimate outcome and if it was worth our costly effort is yet to be determined. However, one can rightfully surmise that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's pronouncement claiming the birth of "an independent, free and sovereign Iraq" parallels President George W. Bush's declaration of "mission accomplished" as pure baloney.

DENNIS TOBIN

Santa Rosa