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Re: Grenade attack kills 3 soldiers, July 27.
Have the casualties of war become so mundane as to rate the back pages of newspapers? While I was overseas in World War II, we often asked ourselves if anybody back in the states cared about the dangers and death we faced every day.
The media today feature issues of politics, scandal, murder and sex with in-depth reporting, while the servicemen giving their lives rate "another soldier dies" on back pages of newspapers and passing comment by the broadcast media. These "soldiers" are real people; they have mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives and children. I care more about knowing them than about Bruce Kimball, who killed two teens in a drunken driving accident and now wants his driving privileges restored. (The July 27 story, Sincerely, Bruce D. Kimball, rated four columns on your front page and two full pages on 14A and 15A.)
The real threat to freedom is when we become so callous to human suffering that we accept it as a dry statistic not connected to us as human beings. I lost my best friend and buddy overseas. His name was Chester Parzak from Pittsburgh, Pa. He was a real person, not just another "soldier"!
Two Americans dead in Iraq last week, and it's reported on page 11A.
Will the next deaths be on page 13A? No names? No home towns? No family interviews? Each day will these stories be relegated to farther back in the paper? How quickly we forget.
It wasn't too long ago that bodies of dead U.S. soldiers were being dragged through the streets of Somalia. And we were justifiably outraged.
Now we are showing pictures of a father's mutilated sons to the world. Added to the bizarre practice of putting real human faces on playing cards for a "wanted" deck, it would seem our current leaders are going to great lengths to portray us to the rest of the world a bunch of cruel, juvenile hypocrites. Disgraceful.
How can President Bush provide for homeland security, prevent further terrorist attacks on our citizens, bring order out of the chaos in Iraq, and promote constitutional democracy in the Middle East, when he has so many domestic enemies in the United States?
His detractors have selective memories. It required four years and 400,000 deaths to eliminate the Axis powers and get rid of Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo. It required 50 years and 90,000 deaths in two wars to halt the spread of communism, which we are still threatened by in China, North Korea and Cuba.
How long and how many lives will it take to bring peace in those areas that are so hostile to us? In eight separate terrorist attacks by Arab Muslims, 4,000 American men, women and children have been murdered. In our own back yard an Arab Muslim professor has been indicted for supporting terrorism, and terrorist cells all over the United States have been exposed.
The Democratic presidential hopefuls and the liberal media have demonstrated only one objective: defeat President Bush in the next election. They seem to be uncaring about the long-term interests of the country. They crucify him for involvement in Iraq. Are they proposing that we cut and run, leaving Iraq to return to its prewar holocaust status?
It is one thing to engage in civil debate over the president's decisions. It is quite another to see his antagonists, who are not accountable for what they say, fill the air waves with hate and scorn. I wish you would stop it!
Although I voted for George W. Bush in 2000, I was against the war in Iraq and have been disappointed in Bush's domestic and foreign policies. Now I am horrified by what the Bush administration has done. Releasing the photos and video of the bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein is barbaric and uncivilized. What we have become is a nation of hate and full of vengeance. We are showing the world that we are no better than the terrorist groups we oppose.
I can only pray that our sense of justice and moral integrity will eventually win out. This is not the way to bring peace to the world. It will only add to the hate and brutality that already exists. The United States does indeed need a regime change in 2004.
Re: In Iraq, U.S. forges foothold of stability, July 25.
Thanks go to Charles Krauthammer for his enlightening article. It shows how a strong country and a strong president can effect good changes in the world. The United States and President Bush are the catalysts for peace, freedom and prosperity in the Middle East. It saddens me that the Democrats and the media are trying desperately to undermine all of the good that this administration has been doing not only for the United States but also the world. Anything to get their power back is their creed. If they cared about the citizens of this great country, they would be helping.
The really sad part is some of them actually believe the bilge they are spouting.
Re: Military family watches the death toll rise, July 23.
Bill Maxwell tells us the war on Iraq was "wrongheaded" and "perhaps built on a mountain of lies, deception and egomania." And he says this about his extended family, which includes many proud military veterans and two young cousins now serving in Iraq:
"None of us (as far as I know) ever believed one word of Bush's pretext for the invasion. . . . We knew that some of our kin would wind up in harm's way when hostilities commenced. As such, we wanted the reasons for the risk to be legitimate reasons, not mere manifestations of our leaders' obsessions."
So what did Bill Maxwell, twice-a-week newspaper columnist, do to expose what he strongly suspected were "lies" and "deception"? Remember, he had ample time, as Vice President Dick Cheney launched the prewar propaganda campaign way back in August 2002 for a war that didn't start until
Maxwell did nothing. The man who didn't believe "one word" of Bush's pretext chose not share that disbelief with readers.
In this Information Age, a series of columns in a Florida paper exposing administration deceit can zip across the nation and around the world in seconds. Maxwell could have put sound arguments in the hands of activists and spurred lazy journalists at his own paper and elsewhere to examine Bush's assertions and hold his feet to the fire. Instead, Maxwell slept.
The closest thing to an antiwar column in those seven months was a Feb. 23 tribute to Eckerd College activists. But even in that essay we learn nothing of Maxwell's views on the case Bush was making for war.
I suggest the Times replace Maxwell with one of his relatives - someone who understands the duty of a columnist who strongly suspects the president is deceiving the citizenry to gain support for an unnecessary war.
Bill Maxwell's July 23 column, Military family watches the death toll rise, hit the nail right on the head! With no draft, we do not have a true cross-section of our population represented in the military. If members of Congress and the big donors supporting this administration had family in the military, I believe there would be a lot more thought given before we commit our troops!
Is it just me, or is there something bizarre going on in the way our government is portraying the killing of our so-called enemies in Iraq? Last week, we saw graphic photos of Qusay and Uday Hussein, bloody, swollen and very dead. Why? Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that it was to prove to the Iraqis that they were dead, but what was he trying to prove to America? That we should kill and then glorify it, be proud of it? The talk coming out of this administration, and repeated in the media, is of finding and killing Saddam Hussein, as if that is the brand of justice that we are entitled to because they are "bad guys."
The fact is that they have never hurt us, and that this administration's using fear of terrorism (Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11) to whip up our population to "take out" Hussein is so against the idea of American justice and respect for the rule of law that it is stunning! The hawks in this administration, and our vigilante president himself, are terrible role models not only for the world, but also for this nation - we should be ashamed of killing, not enamored of it! How do we explain this type of "justice" to the children?
Over the last several weeks, I've raised concerns about the emergence of so-called nude summer "camps" for children ages 11-18 without parental supervision. As co-chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, I take very seriously the threat posed by those who would do harm to Florida's children.
Some in the media have snickered - and even ridiculed - my efforts to challenge the safety of nudist "camps" for kids. While it may be a joke to a handful of cynical media critics, every day we hear new reports of sick individuals preying on young children at playgrounds, within youth organizations and, increasingly, on the Internet. For those of us who work regularly with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the FBI, these camps immediately sounded alarm bells because we see these threats on a daily basis.
Most parents I've spoken with agree that when kids are exposed to situations like these in their early formative years, there is a potential to do real and lasting harm to a child's psychological development, especially when parental guidance is absent. Of even greater concern is the real possibility that a camp counselor, groundskeeper or other employee could attempt to exploit or abuse young children attending these facilities as they have at other camps. These camps have even admitted that predators have gained access to the children, taking their pictures and making inappropriate contact with them.
Just last week, it was reported in newspapers across the state that the former president of the nudist organization was peddling videos of fully nude young boys and girls on his own Internet Web site for as much as $100 a copy. The younger the boys and girls in the video, the higher the price he charged.
I'm pleased Gov. Jeb Bush has expressed concern and taken time to address this issue as well. The fundamental need to protect our children is not debatable.
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