Please allow me to extend a point, slightly clouded, in Kristin Casale's Feb. 13 article on the Iraq debate. At the event, I expressed a level of discomfort debating a U.S. attack on the Iraqi people.

It feels as though it is the privilege of the privileged to debate whether the most powerful country, with the most destructive military forces, in human history, which has attacked more countries and killed more people than any other country over the past 55 years, should attack and kill (again) some of the most distraught and devastated people on the planet, who have already suffered under 12 years of sanctions, the malicious destruction of much of their country's infrastructure in the 1991 U.S. attack (with U.S. foreknowledge of the horrific consequences), and 12 years of continued illegal U.S. bombings, all of which have contributed to mass disease, mass hunger, mass suffering and mass death (low-end estimates report 350,000 Iraqi children killed).

I suggested that one fair way to proceed in a debate would be to invite the potential victims, the Iraqi people, into the room, into the U.S. media, etc., and ask them if they want U.S. bombs and missiles raining down and killing their children, family members, friends, neighbors, classmates and workmates.

Ask them if they want to suffer the physical, emotional and psychological consequences of mass death, hunger, displacement, disease and suffering that will almost surely follow a U.S. attack. What would we say if the bombs were falling on us? Peace!