Troops were sent to war without proper protection

Re: Care-package contents: body armor, Oct. 4.

It's so hard to be a parent these days, so difficult to help your children make the right decisions involving drugs, alcohol, smoking, body piercings - and in the case of a growing number of moms and dads of U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq, preventing their kids from receiving piercings of a very different kind.

Suzanne Werfelman's experience of having to shell out $650 to provide her son with life-saving body armor is but the latest example of the Bush administration's obscene lip service paid to our young men and women in harm's way.

While President "Bring 'em on" practically blames a good portion of the federal deficit on his insistence that the military have "the best possible equipment," the sordid truth is that he sent the sons and daughters of America to fight an unnecessary and elective war inadequately protected.

If just one of the poor, brave kids who died (and continue to die every day) could have been saved by Interceptor body armor, then George W. Bush has failed miserably in his duty to protect the soldiers under his command.

How could this happen?

Re: Care-package contents: body armor.

I am angry and shocked at President Bush and the government for allowing our men and women to go to war without proper protection. These brave soldiers in Iraq put their lives on the line 24/7 and the United States can't issue them the latest Interceptor vests. Something is wrong here.

Congress should demand that every soldier be given an Interceptor with plates without delay. When lives are needlessly lost, the question is why? The American people deserve the truth. The commander in chief said they would have the best support and the best possible equipment. So how could this happen?

It's them or us

I am speaking as a wounded veteran of World War II who served our country for the entire war. Over this period we suffered, killed and wounded, more than 200 casualties per day. Now our Democratic Party is shedding crocodile tears over the loss of three or four a day.

We are engaged in a war every bit as important as World War II and perhaps even more so. Two civilizations are head to head and only one will be left to rule the world. Our choice is them or us. There can be no other result. If the Democrats are successful in their endeavor to take control of our country, by their very words we would pull out of Iraq and quit trying to bring democracy to the rest of the world. In other words, they would permit our enemies to destroy us.

So who is the enemy to a democratic world? As Bill O'Reilly of Fox News so eloquently states nightly, "You decide."

We do need to hear the truth

Re: White House steps up media campaign, Oct. 14.

I just read that President Bush has a sense, "that people in America aren't getting the truth." He is right. His administration is the master of spin. He and his warhawks didn't hesitate in lying to the public about those illusive weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as an excuse to start a pre-emptive war and alienate the rest of the world.

He is right. The American public was not told the truth about the dangers of the polluted air at the World Trade Center site.

He is right. The American public isn't being told the truth about the so-called Clean Air Act that loosens the controls regarding pollution.

He is right. The American public has been not been told the truth about the real cost of this war, the national debt, etc.

He and his administration certainly have never hesitated to use the media to promote their version of the truth. All is not as they would like us to believe and the media need to report the other side of the truth as they see it happening.

Consider the source of the deception

Re: White House steps up media campaign.

Who needs comics when we have all the laughs we need right in the news? The funniest of all was President Bush saying that he has "a sense that people in America aren't getting the truth."

How right he is! And most of that untruth came right from his administration: from the beginning with the overblown ideas of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to the attempt to confuse the people about the relationship between 9/11 and Iraq to the present situation in Iraq, which is not good.

Bush wants to tell us, "Hush, hush, don't you worry. Everything is all right. Just give me what I want and believe everything I say."

This from a man who admits he never reads and gets all his information from his advisers who are even more narrow-minded than he is. All along he has tried to control the news. The administration had reporters "embedded" in the military so that only what was pleasing to the government got out. There were staged events like the time when we saw on television a young woman being rescued as well as Iraqis cheering for American soldiers.

As Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all the time . . ."

Putting a negative spin on things

Re: By the numbers.

Your front page article on Oct. 9 about Iraq really showed your bias. Not enough power to go around. Only about half of the police officers needed. No commercial traffic in refurbished airports. Not enough school books. You do your best to show everything in a negative manner. Our servicemen gave so much, some their lives, but it must have been a waste!

Why didn't you present the story above it about the new University of Florida president in the same manner? You could have said that two men were tragically disappointed not to be named president. Why wasn't a women chosen?

Why don't you try to be fair?

A Baghdad perspective

Everything the Times prints can be counted on to have a pro-liberal, anti-Bush slant. The article by Sara Fritz on conditions in Iraq is the latest example. Readers should get another view. Our church, Northeast Presbyterian, has been sending comfort items to the chaplain of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq for distribution to the troops. We have never met this man who is of another denomination. I asked him to describe what the 2nd ACR was doing in Baghdad so that our congregation would have an on-the-ground view. By e-mail of Oct. 2 Chaplain Scott Riedel writes:

"The 2nd ACR does a lot of patrolling and a lot of operations to hunt down the bad guys. We are always in the hunt for Saddam. We do a lot of projects for the Iraqi people such as build roads, build bridges, clean their streets of debris, coordinate with nongovernmental agencies to feed them, make soccer fields, buy them soccer uniforms, renovate hundreds of schools, build market places (real big ones), train them to form a government, have neighborhood and district council meetings, we recruit and train Iraqi Police Force and new neighborhood security forces, and we hire them to be workers in our camps. They do just about everything: laundry, renovate buildings, build walls, fix generators, work on our equipment, they run our REC room, they run our Internet Cafe, clean our buildings, bulldoze everywhere, build huge gates, they are our interpreters, they go on patrol with our soldiers, they help us guard our posts, they are our electricians, plumbers, and even our doctors. We have a very close relationship with the Iraqi people that is very positive. Don't believe everything you hear on the news, it can be quite negative. We are doing a good job here. The people who are fighting against us are the old regime, al-Qaida and outside forces. We are winning, it just takes time. Are we losing soldiers? Yes, but we are at war. War comes with costs as you very well know. That's about it. I hope that will help the folks in your congregation know a little bit about what we are doing out here. God Bless." - Capt. Scott Riedel, chaplain, 2nd ACR

On a disastrous course

As the travesty called the Bush administration continues, I grow more concerned about the severe divisions being created within our population. As my first phrase indicates, many of us, but not a majority, consider this administration to be the architect of the worst policies this country has known in the past 100 years and maybe since our founding. We see the deterioration of our global leadership, the severe and possibly irreversible economic decline of the middle class, the Justice Department-directed attacks on the Bill of Rights, the wanton creation of unprecedented deficits, the disregard of environmental protection as leading this nation into a lasting and perhaps devastating decline.

While I understand why some wealthy Americans might be pleased with Bush and his policies, it is difficult to understand why average Americans remain enthusiastic about a leader who has lied to the people whenever it proved convenient and has created policies that are so destructive. My 40 years of service to this country both in the Army and as an intelligence professional seem to be on the verge of being thrown away by the disastrous course we are following.

Music vs. money

Re: Tunes for the taking, Oct. 6.

After reading this article, I went off on one of my typical "What the heck?!" moments, involving me complaining about its stupidities.

Here is what bothers me: Everyone gets so mad about downloading music. My personal opinion is the artists are already rich for the most part, and they won't become suddenly poor should several eighth graders (and other grades) download music. Plus, any true musician should care more that his music is out there, and someone likes it enough to listen to it, not, "Oh my goodness, I lost $18!"

So many people don't even have the chance to have their music heard, and a lot of times they're the ones who are in it for the love of music, not money. I often wondered what went wrong in our world. Then I realized it was money. Our world has gotten so greedy.

If the music artists truly care that much about money, maybe they should quit the industry, because that's not what music is about.

What's wrong is wrong

Re: Tunes for the taking.

After reading the article of Susan Farmer's classroom at Orange Grove Middle School regarding downloading music from the Internet, I want to share a powerful quote that all teachers and parents may want to print and boldly display. Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, which promotes Christian and family values, once said: "What is right is right, even if no one is doing it. What is wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it."

Correction

A letter on Oct. 14, Beware airport expansion, overstated the projected costs of improvements to St. Petersburg's Albert Whitted Airport. The correct figure is $38-million.

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