I support every decent effort to rebuild Fallujah, even if I do believe there could be a better vehicle for Iraq reconstruction than the U.S. military. However it’s done, Iraq certainly needs clean water, sewers, electricity and all of its infrastructure repaired.

But there are two aspects of “Navy officer from Maine helping Iraq city” (BDN, Jan. 16) that I find troubling. First, it seems to me that expansion on the notion of Fallujah being “historically violent” is necessary. Sadly, the greatest purveyor of violence in Fallujah has been the U.S. military itself. During the course of two major 2004 sieges, Fallujah was bombed mercilessly. Published reports demonstrated that the U.S. used a chemical munition known as white phosphorous in civilian areas. The city was totally sacked by the attacks with over 1,000 civilians dead, at least 200,000 of its residents displaced and 70 percent of its buildings totally destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. Thus the article fails to convey the melange of destruction and reconstruction that characterizes the U.S. in Iraq.

Second, conditions in Fallujah, and in fact in much of Iraq, are not as cheerily returning to normal as the article implies. A number of recent stories posted for Inter Press Service by the very reliable Dahr Jamail paint a different picture. (Jamail gave a fine talk at the University of Maine a little over a year ago.) The following is a fact that emerges from Jamail’s reporting: The U.S. military keeps Fallujah under an aggressive, brutal occupation not unlike the Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

I don’t disparage Capt. McLaughlin or any U.S. military personnel or contractors who genuinely are trying to help the Iraqis. But the BDN article left a lot out.

Eric T. Olson

Veazie