This war conceived in the fiction that Saddam Hussein is a serious threat is bearing bitter fruit.

The car bomb that recently killed four American soldiers is a glimpse of the future in Iraq. For the rest of the war, we can expect more sneak attacks from "irregulars" disguised in civilian clothing willing to sacrifice themselves and innocents to kill Americans.

Those thousands of hard-core Fedayeen will, after the war, become the nucleus for acts of resistance joined by scores of militants from outside the country and our days of occupation will be perilous.

The promise of flowering democracy in occupied Iraq is a fantasy. Do we really expect decades of tribal and ethnic hatred and mistrust among the Sunnis, the Kurds and the Shiites to evaporate and see Iraq transformed into a Western type of government?

At best, we will be able to paste together a phony democracy whose legitimacy can only be maintained by the conquering army.

Do we really believe that the occupation of a Muslim country in the middle of an angry Islamic world will bring peace?

Stan Ellsworth

Lodi

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