Every point in the letter "If Saddam had a weapon he would have used it" (April 18) is entirely wrong. He thinks that since we have not found weapons of mass destruction now, they must not exist. The majority of our troops have been busy pacifying a country about the size of Texas and notorious for having scores of underground bunker complexes. Since we have taken effective control of Iraq for about one week now, I think we can give our troops more time.

There is the possibility Saddam was killed in one of our early attacks, or the delivery systems for these weapons was destroyed. Additionally, we have dropped leaflets for months explaining the consequences for using weapons of mass destruction. If any Iraqi military personnel along the chain of command for their use feared either a war crime tribunal or a devastating American response to the use of weapons of mass destruction, they could have decided against carrying out such an order, especially from a doomed regime.

Finally, to refer to Saddam as "a gentleman" is a slap in the face of the hundreds of thousands of Iranians killed in the Iran/Iraq war, the gassed Kurds, the Kuwaitis killed in their occupation, the conscripted Iraqi military personnel, as well as the Iraqi citizens living in a police state with torture, rape and murder as methods of public policy.