As America is sounding its war trumpet on Iraq, it makes me wonder if the United States is really as committed to world peace, democracy and freedom as we so proudly claim.

The Bush administration has not come up with any solid evidence to prove that Iraq does indeed possess weapons of mass destruction.

It has instead been trying to convince people by using mere propaganda.

While it may be true that Iraq has dodged U.N. weapons inspectors in the past, this time around, they seem to be fully cooperating with the United Nations, who on their part, have now gone into Iraq with more resources and tougher resolutions to inspect more sites than before.

The recent voluminous weapons dossier submitted by Iraq, declaring its weapons program, is a step in the right direction.

It is, however, ironic that a few months ago, while the Bush administration was pushing Iraq to declare its weapons program, has now instead chosen to criticize the document stating that submitting a voluminous document is a clever way of hiding or deceiving things that are not in there.

This sort of double-talk and hypocrisy only goes to show that the administration is not serious about removing weapons of mass destruction from Iraq but instead wants to attack Iraq just to boost its public opinions before the polls, trying to impress the public that it is still serious about fighting terrorism. The war rhetoric is a clever way of distracting the American people from the failure of the government to capture the real al-Qaida terrorists (which it so promised more than a year ago) like Osama bin Laden and his top aides like al-Zawahiri.

It is unfortunate that as I type this letter, more and more American troops are being sent to the Middle East to fight a war that will kill several innocent Iraqi civilians, cause more anti-American sentiments in the Arab world and put the lives of young American soldiers at risk.

Prasanna Padmanabhan

Alumnus