Cronkite hopes for peace ‘American public being fooled about danger of war in Iraq’

Concordia University journalism student Grace Fergusson attended a veterinary conference last week in Orlando, Florida. One of the guest speakers at the conference was seasoned journalist Walter Cronkite. Fergusson also had the opportunity to sit down with Cronkite.

Concordia University journalism student Grace Fergusson attended a veterinary conference last week in Orlando, Florida. One of the guest speakers at the conference was seasoned journalist Walter Cronkite. Fergusson also had the opportunity to sit down with Cronkite.
An advocate of peace, Cronkite admonished Americans for their waste of money and lack of interest in the misfortunes of other countries.

“No wonder they don’t like us,” he said, “(we) spend billions of dollars on TV, we should have plans to help poor countries. “We have more weapons of mass destruction than the rest of the world put together,” he said of the United States.

With a price tag  of several billions of dollars, the war against Iraq will take a
considerable amount of American capital. Cronkite feels that the public is
being fooled about the expenditure and that the war will be more dangerous
than it appears.

“It will be more costly and bloody[…] than the President
and his administration are trying to tell us,” he said.

Noting that Sept. 11 and the Al-Quaeda threats were cataclysmic for the U.S. to declare war on the Middle East, Cronkite questioned the fact that although Afghanistan is
the enemy, war has been declared on Iraq, which he believes will be a “never-ending war.”
He proposed that because the U.S. is highly interested in the rich oil lying beneath Iraqi soil, this factor may have spurred the Gulf War under the former Bush administration of the early nineties, and seems to be the main propelling force for the new administration.
“The President’s new policy of going to war pre-emptying defense leads to a world
with continuing war,” Cronkite said, “I’m very much worried about it.”
In New York City, the National Debt Counter proved that the U.S. is billions of
dollars in debt. With all the money being spent on high-tech weaponry added
to the American national debt in an outstanding proportion, the U.S. has forgotten something, according to Cronkite.

“Why don’t we spend any money on peace?” he asked the audience at the conference.
Powerless to do anything else, the crowd gave a burst of applause as an answer.
In his own words, “and that’s the way it is.”

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