To the Editor:

In his column (“So, would the real Wesley Clark please stand up?” 9/30), James Kirchick ’06 criticizes Gen. Wesley Clark (Ret.) for calling President Bush’s drive to war reckless after once supporting it himself.

In the weeks and months preceding the American invasion, the Bush administration regularly told the American people that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, was a co-conspirator with al-Qaida in the Sept. 11 attacks, and constituted an imminent threat to our national security interests. Under such pretenses of clear and present danger, Wesley Clark was right to back a move to war.

Six months later, no weapons of mass destruction have been found and the Sept. 11 link has been discredited. It turns out that much of the alleged intelligence that led us to war was either “sexed up” or selectively chosen for political purposes. This was not a war of necessity as we were misled to believe, but a war of choice. Now, our troops are dying by the day and our armed forces are spread dangerously thin in the face of legitimate threats from North Korea and Iran. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and we have no exit strategy.

If that’s not reckless, I don’t know what is.

Jeremy Ershow ’06

September 30, 2003

The writer is chairperson of Yale Students for Clark.