I think bringing the battle to the terrorist at a place and time of our choosing beats another 9/11. Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't supposed to mention 9/11 and Iraq in the same reference. We all know that the terrorists that we are fighting in Iraq today are nothing like the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11. There I go again.

If we only left Iraq today, then the terrorists would all put on suits and ties and begin finding meaningful work that doesn't involve blowing people up least wise not Americans minding our own business in America.

There is no way to interpret the behavior and rhetoric of the left other then as anti-American and treasonous. I will define "betrayal of a trust." Soldiers were deployed on orders of the president with the express approval of Congress. Some Democrats have forgotten their obligation to the soldiers, but I will assure you the soldiers and their commander have not forgotten.

J.W. "Bucky" Buckner, Springfield

I will also pass over the lives, resources and international good will America has forfeited fighting a country which (as President Bush himself admits) had no direct connection to 9/11, and lacked (as the bipartisan WMD Commission discovered) confirmable WMDs. Instead, I pose a simple question: If President Bush was so determined to forestall further terrorist attacks, why did he invade Iraq instead of eradicating Osama bin Laden?

With Saddam Hussein in prison, Iraq is a better place. But it was never the location of any "central fight against terrorism."

To me, the war against terrorism has been centered since 9/11 on wherever bin Laden, the admitted murderer of 5,000 innocent Americans, rests his filthy head. To me, letting our nation's most dangerous enemy off the hook in order to beat an already defeated dictator further into the ground is much closer to anti-Americanism and treason than exercising one's constitutional right to free speech ever could be.

Joe Hughes, Springfield