Our nation needs the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld
Published May 12, 2004
Re: Rumsfeld should go, editorial, May 11.
Did Ted Kennedy take over the editorial page of your superliberal newspaper? I cannot believe you are echoing his sentiments when it comes to the fate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
You do not remove a brilliant leader over the unfortunate mistake of a few. He has given his "mea culpa." He and his boss, President Bush, will clean this "abuse" issue up.
As to his leadership in the war on terror, I, for one, feel safer with him at the helm. It is a new type of war, where you do not know who is the enemy by looking at his uniform.
I will continue to subscribe to your liberal-leaning paper as it gets my juices going by stands like these.
-- Marc Scheel, Tarpon Springs
Many resignations are in order
Re: Rumsfeld's resignation demanded.
It looks like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been chosen to take the heat for the Bush administration for all the problems in Iraq under the guise of accepting blame for the Abu Ghraib prison atrocities. Too bad.
Why should he take all the blame when it was the whole crew of Cheney, Ashcroft, Wolfowitz, et al., who got us into this mess in the first place? If they hadn't manufactured the situation to convince Bush and the rest of the world that this war was absolutely imperative, we wouldn't be there, the prisoners wouldn't have been mistreated, our citizens wouldn't have been incinerated, dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge, and thousands of our young people would be at home enjoying their families.
Rumsfeld must go? Why only him?
-- G.B. Leatherwood, Spring Hill
An anti-American opinion
Re: Rumsfeld should go.
I know that I was not the only reader who felt that your editorial to denounce our Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was politically motivated and so premature as to to be called "anti-American."
It was a very bad morning for an old veteran, who was a trained U.S. Army military policeman, to read your editorial. I can say the buck always stopped with the MPs.
I knew of course that what I was reading was your usual far-left propaganda, politically motivated, by an election year.
The afternoon news, however carried the gruesome story of a 26-year-old American who was beheaded by the same sick radical Muslim extremists that you were pandering to in your morning sob story. This young man had a dynamic future on earth - a civilian American who traveled half-way around the earth, trying to help others.
These very sick extremist Arabs who killed this boy are the only ones you are supporting by your continued denouncing of our American leadership at home or abroad during wartime.
-- Guy Nash, St. Petersburg
Is Bush covering himself?
Re: Rumsfeld should go.
Your editorial alludes to President Bush's "loyalty" to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld as a reason he has not fired Rumsfeld, who has accepted full responsibility for the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.
"Loyalty?" I wonder. I have yet to see or hear any media commentary concerning the probability that Bush was well aware of these atrocities right from the start, and chose to do nothing about it. But this suspicion is voiced regularly and spontaneously in daily discussions with my friends and acquaintances. Is it not possible that Bush, in refusing to fire Rumsfeld, is simply covering his own well clad posterior?
-- Donna C. Bronhaver, St. Petersburg
A way to attack the president
Re: Rumsfeld should go, editorial.
It's stunning that you would defend Bill Clinton, a president who knowingly broke the law and deliberately lied to the American people, then apply an entirely different standard to Donald Rumsfeld today. Granted, the secretary of defense could have been more forthcoming about the prison abuse scandal in Iraq, but in no way did he try to cover it up or mislead the public. In fact, U.S. Central Command sent out a press release last January disclosing that an investigation into prisoner abuse was under way. It wasn't until the pictures were released by CBS that the media finally paid any attention.
Buried in the body of your editorial, however, one can find the real point of the piece: "President Bush," you say, "bears ultimate responsibility for those military and moral failures." Knocking off Rumsfeld is only another move toward your goal of taking President Bush down in November, and a transparent one at that. If this were just politics, I would grant all was fair. But in fanning these flames, your paper becomes part of an irresponsible frenzy that will only put our troops in greater danger.
If you want to be fair, I suggest you run pictures of what Saddam Hussein did to his own people side by side with what happened at Abu Ghraib. Or better yet, show pictures of the four American civilians who were butchered in Fallujah for the crime of ferrying food to hungry Iraqis. One evil act cannot be used to justify another, but it might at least give the public a sense of scale.
-- Marc Giller, St. Petersburg
Secrecy and deception
For all of those who may have been unclear about the current administration, the responses by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush to the horrific torture of prisoners have revealed startling themes of secrecy and deception. Controlling the release of information and images of the torture conducted by U.S. troops only promotes ignorance.
Why has our president not taken responsibility and instead utilized Rumsfeld as his political deflector? Where does the "buck stop," Mr. President? Why is information concealed and suppressed so as not to have political implications? Truth and honesty are American values, not deception and censorship!
-- Clifton Wright, Palm Harbor
Flawed reasoning on abuse
There is absolutely no comparison between the indecencies suffered by a few Iraqi prisoners (or even all of them!) at Abu Ghraib by U.S. personnel and the death, dismemberment and rape carried out in the same facilities by Saddam Hussein and his regime. Such flawed reasoning does not engender serious thought or discourse; it renders the opinion ludicrous and illustrates the Times' grossly biased view of the present administration. Further, it makes me wonder how many other inaccuracies were proffered as the "truth?"
-- Bob Lowe, Clearwater
Unseemly rationalizations
I am a daily reader of the Times' op-ed pages and also an avid AM talk radio listener. Like everyone, I am outraged and disgusted by the actions of those involved with the abuses in Abu Ghraib prison. Whether or not these are the isolated actions of a few or part of a larger pattern remains to be seen, although the circle seems to be widening. What is more disturbing are the reactions I hear on radio or read in the op-ed pages by those who seek to rationalize these events by saying that "at least we didn't burn and dismember anyone." Is this what we have descended to? We are supposed to be the greatest country on the planet.
To those who seek to rationalize or defend these abusive actions: Are you proud of what has occurred in Abu Ghraib prison? Is this the example we want to set for the rest of the world? Our president has told us that the closing of rape rooms and torture chambers is a prime example of the benefits of the Iraqi liberation campaign. Those who follow the news reports have already heard that there may be charges of both forcible rape and homicide coming soon. What is next by those who write to rationalize these actions: "Well, at least we didn't rape and murder as many people as Saddam ..."?
Whether you support the war and President Bush or oppose them, we should all agree that these actions are beneath us as a society. Those who defend and rationalize what has happened need to take a second look at their blind support for President Bush and his policy in Iraq and start acting more like Americans and less like Republicans.
-- David Coash, Tampa
Newspapers deal in reality
Re: An image that's hard to explain, May 8.
I wholeheartedly agree with the writer of this letter regarding pictures of Iraqi prisoners and the like. She should let her subscription run out. If she doesn't want news, why subscribe to a newspaper?
Reality (presumably what news is based upon prior to filtration) isn't always pretty. This world is indeed a scary place for those of us with open eyes.
The pictures or stories can be of Iraqi soldiers being beaten and abused, Americans being burned and dismembered, airplanes flying into buildings. How about family, clergy or caregivers neglecting, abusing, assaulting or molesting children or the elderly? Natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes, wildfires and mudslides aren't pretty either. Nor are accidents. Where do we draw the line?
It is unfortunate that these events are reality for all of us who share this planet. There are plenty of other places to go besides the daily newspaper to get a fix of fantasy, and perhaps that's where children should be directed if you don't want them to know about "reality."
But then why not explain to children that there are people on all sides of all conflicts that do bad things to other people? Is it that difficult to explain that all people have both good and bad in them? It may be easier to simply hide the newspaper, but it seems like a golden opportunity for learning to me.
If the children are too young to comprehend the ways we treat each other, welcome them to the club. They can sit at my table. At 49, I don't understand it either.
-- J. Donovan, Tampa
Get facts right on Albert Gore Sr.
Re: Johnny Byrd far from the worst, May 5.
This letter rhetorically asked if "... Albert Gore Sr. could have ever reached the Senate without the support of Boss Hague of Memphis," thus implying that the father of the former vice president would never have been elected without the support of a corrupt political boss. The writer's assertion is incorrect for several reasons:
The political boss of Memphis was actually Ed Crump, whose grip on the reins of the Democratic Party in Tennessee already had been weakened when congressman Estes Kefauver beat the Crump machine's candidate in the 1948 Democratic primary before winning election to the U.S. Senate.
The "Boss Hague" to whom the writer refers was actually the political boss of New Jersey, Frank Hague of Jersey City.
Albert Gore Sr. won election to the U.S. Senate in 1952 after defeating the candidate backed by the Crump machine, six-term incumbent Kenneth McKellar, in the Democratic primary earlier that year.
Albert Gore Sr. was a reformer who dealt an electoral death blow to the corrupt Crump machine that had dominated statewide politics in Tennessee for a generation. During his 18 years in the U.S. Senate, Gore Sr. took many politically risky stands, such as voting in favor of civil rights legislation, supporting foreign aid and opposing the Vietnam War. It's unfortunate that your Republican letter writer impugned a true statesman by being careless with the facts, and that you didn't catch his factual misrepresentations.
-- Joe McColloch, Tampa
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