DRUG WAR

What drug war? Your article ("U.S. Is Losing the Drug War in Colombia,"
Aug. 8) details our expensive but ineffective efforts to interdict the
manufacture of cocaine and its export to the U.S. and other countries. Yet
no mention is made of military action to bomb the cocaine processing
plants, strafe the truck convoys, shoot down drug courier airplanes and
sink cocaine cargo ships. That's because there has not been any such effort.

War is politics by other means. It is brought forth when peaceful political
effort has failed. Peaceful political effort has failed to reduce the flow
of drugs into this country. We will not win the "drug war" until we have one.

GREG MEYER
Los Angeles