Columbia Missourian
“I hate seeing war. I hope to see they finally get rid of that guy, though. It’s like if you saw a kid getting beaten up, right there on the border, and you knew you could stop that and you’re glad to go in and take of the problem. It might be messy, but you know it needs to be done.”
Benjamin Boone, 43, evening math professor at Columbia College
“I hope that we get Saddam out of power and restore the oil fields to the Iraqi people and the country. I think we’ll have him gone in 72 hours and Iraq will be occupied for a while. … I know we’re going to win the war. It’s a joke. He’s going to die, and we’re going to liberate the country. We’ve given him 12 years and we had to take care of this right now. Now he wants to go down in a ball of flames. Resolution 1441 gives us the right to do what we’re doing.”
Jeff Lyell, 32, independent contractor
“I hope we don’t incur many casualties… My fear is that we’ll be in Iraq for a long, long period of time and that the Muslim world will view us not as liberators, but as conquerors. … On Sept. 12, 2001, almost every country in the world were our friends. Now we have very few friends.”
Terry Sclemeier, 61, state lobbyist
“Wars are terrible. It is not easy to tell how it is going to end. We wish that war didn’t start, but it has started, and we wish it with the least possible damage to soldiers, civilians and to the infrastructure of (Iraq) … We always hope that individuals, whether they are soldiers, our troops or troops of other countries, won’t be hurt, but more importantly the civilians and the infrastructure of (Iraq).”
Ahmad Muraywid, 59, physician
“I hope that it doesn’t last long. I hope it gets done so gas prices go down. Maybe after this, we will own a few more oil wells. I don’t want it to drag out. If I could, I’d get back into the services and join them. From 1973 to 1979, I was a signal communicator for the Army, supporting missile artillery.”
Herb Hepler, 48, night-shift worker at the Columbia Daily Tribune
“There’s one thing I hope comes out of the whole situation. If we can put this kind of emphasis on something that’s constructive, we should be able to put this kind of emphasis on other things that need attention — education being a big one….It’s just something that the powers that be decided needs to be done. There’s a lot of things here in this country that could use that emphasis, that focus, that power.”
Ray Parker, 40, employee at Moser’s Discount Foods
