Iraq War

Washington is creating more animosity among Iraqis and friendly Middle East nations with its pathetic response to the growing refugee emergency in Iraq. The United Nations estimates that 700,000 Iraqis fled to neighboring Jordan, as many as one million more to Syria, and an additional 160,000 to other countries to avoid sectarian violence. Syria and Jordan are straining under the added population. They have made clear they expect others to take some of those refugees to relieve the stress.

Two years after U.S. soldiers stormed into Iraq, and college students protested a new war in the Middle East, thousands of troops are still in Baghdad. But back home, most students have moved on. Street-clogging antiwar demonstrations - and equally strident counterprotests - are gone, at least for now, giving way to activism that concentrates on other foreign-policy concerns, such as human-rights violations, and domestic issues. "Especially now with everyone talking about Social Security, I didn't even realize the anniversary" was approaching, Niva Kramek, a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, said recently.

Back in October, U.S. Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel joined 80 other Democrats crossing party lines to give President Bush authority to wage war in Iraq. And yesterday, after a week in which the United States crept closer to an attack, Hoeffel received payback for his views from more than 250 antiwar protesters at a rancorous town meeting at a health-care workers' union hall at 13th and Locust Streets. "My concern with Iraq is that Saddam Hussein is a murderous tyrant," Hoeffel told a room packed with representatives from labor unions, veterans organizations and peace groups.

THE WAR may be winding down in Iraq, but the war of words over the war itself continues. And the latest casualty is one of the least likely - the hallowed halls of Baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. The hall's president, Dale Petroskey, who apparently bats from the right, canceled a long-scheduled celebration of the great baseball film, "Bull Durham," because of the anti-war stance of the stars in the film, Susan Sarandon and...

Dear President Bush: Tomorrow night you will take the podium at the Republican Convention and talk about the need to win the war on terror. No one should question the need for the United States to continue the battle against Islamist groups like al-Qaeda. We needn't quibble about whether we can "win" in a conventional sense, like a World War II surrender. What is more important, and what has confused many Americans, is how you define this war. Most confusing is where Iraq fits into the picture.

President Bush said yesterday the United States and its allies had foiled at least 10 serious plots by al Qaeda in the last four years, including plans for Sept. 11-like attacks on both U.S. coasts. In a speech designed to revive flagging public support for the war in Iraq, the president also said the United States and its partners have stopped at least five more efforts by al Qaeda to case targets in the United States. "Because of this steady progress, the enemy is wounded, but the enemy is still capable of global operations," Bush said.

Don Harrison is former deputy editor of the Daily News opinion pages 'I hope they hang him," a Philadelphia woman told TV interviewers, "after all he's done to us. " Saddam Hussein is, indeed, a vile monster who tyrannized and terrorized Iraq for many years. But Saddam has done nothing to us. A majority of Americans seem to believe he had something to do with 9/11 (maybe they confuse him with Osama bin Laden), but there is little evidence that he ever had much substantive connection with al-Qaeda.

ALTHOUGH I was profoundly disappointed when George Bush was elected president all those many month ago, I am now at or near the point of calling him a hero because he made two evildoers, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, disappear. And as long as I'm voting, the president of the United States must and will be a man. We will have a female president when the Eagles win the Stanley Cup. Tim Short, Bryn Mawr Well, it looks like Don Harrison, although retired as deputy editor of the Daily News opinion pages, still receives the latest talking points from the Democratic National Committee (op-ed June 7)

The folks at the U.S. Army War College expected that Jeffrey Record's opinions on Iraq might spark some debate, even disagreement. They did not expect a public firestorm. But since Record's essay came to light last month arguing that the Iraq invasion was "unnecessary" and a "detour" from the war on terrorism, the elite military college west of Harrisburg has come under an unaccustomed glare. Antiwar activists, hardly the college's traditional champions, have embraced Record's commentary as proof that the war was misguided.

Ross Katz figured the last thing the world needed was another movie about the Iraq war. But when he read Lt. Col. Michael Strobl's account of escorting the body of a young Marine named Chance Phelps home to his family in rural Wyoming, the story got its hooks into him but good. "I was sort of avoiding it," Katz said, "and then I read it one day and I couldn't shake it. " Havertown native Katz, 37, started out as a DJ on Christian station WZZD-AM (990) under the name Ross Andrews.