President Bush doesn't deserve to lead American people again

My son, Jeffrey Mattison Wershow, died in Bagdad, Iraq, on July 6, 2003. He proudly went to Iraq as a member of the Florida National Guard in which he enlisted after a three-year stint with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Jeffrey believed in the mission and it was important for him to be a part of it. He believed in this country, its Constitution and the ideals established in the Declaration of Independence.

He believed that there was a connection between the tragedy of Sept. 11 and Saddam Hussein. He believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that could be used against the American people. He believed what his commander-in-chief told him.

He trusted President George W. Bush. That was a mistake.

I, too, believed these things. President Bush misled the American people about why we went to war in Iraq. He talked about weapons of mass destruction and the al-Qeada connection. What he told us was untrue.

When he spoke before a joint session of the United States Congress, he knew the intelligence did not support those conclusions. He took us into a war based on what he wanted to believe, not on the facts.

Perhaps he thought he would discover the facts to support his assertions either during or after the war.

My son is dead because our president misled us into a war in the Middle East. Jeffrey is not coming back. I wanted to believe that my son, in dying for our great country, died for a worthy cause. He is just one of 1,000 or more "casualties," statistics. But it is my son who is dead.

Presidents make both good and bad decisions. Very rarely, however, do presidents make decisions that lead us into war. When they do, those decisions should not be based on speculation, or on what they want the facts to be. They should be based on reliable intelligence.

President Lyndon Johnson led us into the Vietnam quagmire with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that was based on faulty intelligence, on what the politicians in Washington wanted to believe.

More than 50,000 soldiers died in that war. For what purpose? The Gulf of Tonkin resolution would not have been passed by Congress if the true facts were known. President Johnson knew he made a mistake and ultimately withdrew from the presidential race as a result.

President Bush continues to mislead and deceive the American people about his decision to go to war. He should not be allowed to retain the presidency.

President Bush sat in the White House, a very secure and well-guarded facility. From that place of safety, he told the world and all the people of Iraq to ‘‘bring ’em on,’’ in response to questions about the guerrillas in Iraq.

My son, on a mission guarding one of his diplomats, was killed after that ‘‘bring ’em on’’ statement.

President Bush through his lieutenant, Donald Rumsfeld, cashiered the chief-of-staff, General Eric Shinseki, because the general went before the United States Congress and told the world that we needed more troops to pacify Iraq than the Bush administration was allocating for the job.

He saw that we needed more ‘‘boots on the ground’’ than what was available, but no one listened and Jeffrey is dead.

I honor the men and women of the United States Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force for what they have done and for what they have tried to accomplish. They did not bring us into this war. Civilians, led by President Bush, brought us into this war.

The United States military devised a wonderful war plan to take out Saddam Hussein and it worked beautifully. Then the war was supposed to be over according to Rumsfeld and Bush. Remember President Bush on the aircraft carrier telling us the war was won?

The military did the job with which it was tasked. No one told the ‘‘boots on the ground’’ that after they won the war they would still have to fight another Vietnam for which they were untrained and under-supplied.

President Bush and his advisers had not planned for Act II, the guerrilla war. They knew that as the American GIs were welcomed in France in 1944, they would also be welcomed in Iraq in 2003.

Wrong. And Specialist Jeffrey Wershow paid the price. He is dead.

Jeffrey believed in standing up and fighting for his beliefs.

He believed in our democratic system of government. He wanted to be involved in politics. Much to my chagrin, he frequently asserted that he even wanted to be president.

For these reasons, I believe that Jeffrey would have wanted me to stand up and take a position in this election, an election that I believe to be pivotal in our history.

Presidents, like everyone else, make mistakes and no one suffers. But when a president makes a decision, the most important decision that ever can be made during a presidency — to send our sons and daughters to war, many to their deaths — he has to be right.

President Bush made a serious mistake and he did it with full knowledge that the basis for his decision was questionable. He needs to be defeated in his re-election attempt.

I do not believe that our country is safer today than it was before our invasion of Iraq. I believe that our country would have been safer if we had done more in Afghanistan to stamp out the al-Qeada networks located in that country. Afghanistan has been relegated to a minor stage.

It was al-Qeada that planned and carried out the 9-11 attack, resulting in thousands of American deaths, not Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein was a bad leader and his people should have deposed him.

Perhaps we could have helped, but it was not our responsibility to depose him and should not have been our priority, not at the cost of the lives of American children and the untold sacrifices of their families and friends at home.

When you go to the polls to vote in November ask yourself, "Was deposing the leader of Iraq worth the life of your son or daughter?"

If you believe it was, then vote for Bush. If not, then vote as I will vote. Vote with Jeffrey and me and vote for John Kerry.

Jon Wershow is a Gainesville attorney.