Letter to the Editor

Iraq to blame for its own deaths

Subaram Raman’s opinion piece (“Iraqi losses take backseat in U.S.,” Oct. 3) conveniently omits that the vast majority of Iraqi deaths are perpetrated by Iraqi militias and not by U.S. forces.

Shia battles Shia, Shia and Sunni battle each other. There are non-Iraqi murderers too: al-Qaida in Iraq.

Any piece that ignores the slaughter perpetrated by Iraqi on Iraqi and that also considers Saddam’s murderous regime to be socially progressive has some ulterior motive.

However incompetent America has been “in its reconstruction of Iraq,” it is the lifting of Saddam’s choke hold on the people of Iraq that has unleashed the already existing intra-Islamic sect hatred.

Gene Warech

UCLA senior scholar