Saddam’s Palaces

“Re Iraq Takes Reporters on Palace Tours,” Dec. 20: Recent developments with Saddam Hussein and his “palaces” suggest to me a nonmilitary and possibly fruitful approach. The Iraqi people are having a hard time due to the boycott. The solution is to convince them that it is not the U.N. (and American) actions that are to blame, but Hussein’s diversion of funds. To achieve this change of understanding it seems to me that Hussein’s exclusion of his palaces from inspection, the number of them and the recent opening of some of them might give an opening.

If radio and TV (and Internet, if possible) continually blast their receivers with descriptions of the number and sizes of the areas involved, and the pictures of how expensive and empty they are, and translate those figures into probable financial costs, there seems a real chance to arouse the necessary resentment to perhaps bring about a change of regime.

L.I. KATZIN

Port Hueneme