I have, on occasion, had a chance to read your publication. One of those chances was on Oct. 27, and I found Stephen Johnson’s letter to the editor of considerable interest.

Mr. Johnson states that the large cache of explosives now reported missing in Iraq was already gone when U.S. troops got to the site in April of last year. Several news organizations have since gone back to the original source of that story and found that, in fact, the bunkers where the explosives were stored were not searched, so whether the explosives were already gone as Mr. Johnson claims is open to question.

As to his attempt to lay the loss of this dangerous material at the feet of the United Nations, I would ask him: What did he expect a few dozen unarmed inspectors to do, stand there and die if someone came around looking to cart the lot off? The U.N. officials in question did what they could: They oversaw the storage of the explosives (after the United States refused repeated requests to oversee the destruction of the material) in bunkers that they then sealed and checked as often as possible. Then, on the verge of the U.S. attack on Iraq, as they were leaving along with all other U.N. official envoys (in order not to end up in a fire fight between invading U.S. troops and Iraqis), they notified the United States that the explosives still existed and where they were.

Mr. Johnson then goes on to repeat the Fox News line that, in fact, Saddam really did have WMDs, and they’re just hidden/misplaced, given away to terrorists (even though our own search teams have turned up zero evidence that there ever were any such weapons). If, in the final days before he was driven from power, Saddam was willing to pressure his own people to attempt suicide bombing missions, does Mr. Johnson seriously believe Saddam would have held back from using any WMD if he had them?

As for his fixation on CBS, I fail to understand why he has it. They got fooled by a bad source and were possibly willing to go further, faster with a story than they should have. So what? It’s not like they were making up stories (like Fox’s insistence on claiming each “suspicious” find was proof of Saddam’s evil intent and thus justified President Bush’s actions). But I guess, if you’re like Mr. Johnson, you’re desperately trying to spin out the tale of how our glorious leader has done a valiant thing in overthrowing the evil dictator Saddam (even though we as a nation helped make that particular monster in the first place), and thus, over 1,000 young Americans have died glorious deaths, not fighting for a lie. If you start thinking otherwise, you might think it’s time for a regime change here in the United States.

Andrew Reynolds

Rochelle resident