Letters to the Editors

Spend money on drug treatment, not Colombia aid

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 6, 2000

Re: For its own sake, U.S. should move quickly to offer aid to Colombia, April 29.

We are dismayed with Sen. Bob Graham's and Brent Scowcroft's scary scenario describing the deteriorating political and financial situation in Colombia. They say 90 percent of the cocaine and 70 percent of the heroin consumed in the United States comes from that country.

As a result of that they support the $1.6-billion aid to Colombia bill that President Clinton has proposed and the House has already passed.

We would be more impressed if they had suggested that we should spend even a small portion of that money on adequately financing treatment and rehabilitation programs in this country. We could then reduce what we spend now on interdicting drug smugglers, building new prisons to hold addicts and dealing with the reduced quality of life in so many of our neighborhoods.

By effectively reducing the demand for drugs, we can help Colombia and ourselves in a much more positive way.
-- Marie and Robert Condon, Palmetto

A distorted sales pitch

Re: For its own sake, U.S. should move quickly to offer aid to Colombia, by Brent Scowcroft and Bob Graham.

This essay, or should I say sales pitch, raises serious questions about the integrity of Florida's Democratic senator and his co-author, who are identified as co-chairs of a Council on Foreign Relations task force on Colombia.

These proponents of a massive increase in military aid assert that, "Since 1990, Colombia's growing insurgency has murdered 35,000 of its citizens . . ." As this statement bears no relation to anything I've read about Colombia in reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations and even the U.S. State Department, I thought I'd visit the CFR Web site and read the detailed interim report (a final report is due out in June), also penned by Graham and Scowcroft. It, too, is a sales document. The authors acknowledge that their goal is "to make an impact on deliberations in Congress, as well as respond to an immediate opportunity to shape the current debate about U.S. policy."

But unlike the column, the report is not a crude piece of disinformation. Thus it states that "Armed conflict has killed more than 35,000 Colombians in the past decade." It's not "guerrilla insurgency," but "armed conflict." Whether the distortion in the newspaper column stems from ignorance or dishonesty, either should disqualify the authors from participation in the military-aid debate.

The interim report is careful not to apportion responsibility for those 35,000 deaths, for to do so would undermine its sales pitch. Most of these deaths occurred outside of combat. The left-wing guerrillas, the police, the military and the right-wing paramilitaries allied with the army all have compiled horrendous records in the past decade. But the paramilitaries and government forces are responsible for perhaps 75 percent of the killings.

The CFR task force is "bipartisan" in the perverted sense that it is co-chaired by a Republican hawk and a Democratic hawk. The task force's most informed member, the Woodrow Wilson Center's Cynthia Arnson, who as a former associate director of Human Rights Watch wrote and edited reports on Colombia, refused to sign the interim report. The least informed and most dishonest member of the task force, convicted Iran-Contra perjurer Elliott Abrams (now laughably ensconced at something called the Ethics and Public Policy Center), did sign. He's fitting company for Scowcroft and Graham.
-- Dennis Hans, St. Petersburg

John McCain's whining

We have heard it said that more tons of bombs were dropped during the Vietnam War by American forces than were dropped by all sides during World War II. Thousands upon thousands of Vietnamese civilians of all ages and descriptions were killed by the bombing. If a Vietnamese pilot had flown to the United States and killed even one of our children, and we had caught him, he would have been sent to prison the way captured American pilots were. He would no doubt be hated and scorned by the American people, as the captured American pilots were in Vietnam.

When you contemplate the magnitude of the horror inflicted on the civilians of Vietnam by our bombs, it is inconceivable that John McCain would still be whining about his treatment as a POW. It is embarrassing that after all these years he is unable to face the past and forgive . . . and ask forgiveness.
-- R. Hamilton Jr., St. Petersburg

A bias toward the protesters

As a Vietnam veteran who served there in 1966 and 1967 and returned four times a year from 1968 to 1972, I read, watched and listened to everything I could find relating to the 25th anniversary of the end of our Vietnam involvement.

After giving consideration to what I'd seen, read and heard, I found it to be more a celebration by the anti-war protesters. Once again, they prevailed in coining this nightmare simplistically as "our nation's first loss of a war." More important, they have succeeded in indexing their behavior in the history books as the "only way to go."
-- John C. MacKercher, Weeki Wachee

A realistic reorganization

Re: Education overhaul, May 3.

Now that the educational system of our state has been overhauled, I suggest we take the next logical step and acknowledge by law what is already a fact: that our government be reorganized.

I propose that 50 representatives of the corporations doing business in the state with the largest net worth constitute the Senate and that the representatives of the next 100 corporations become members of the House. The governor's office can continue as the public relations office to convince the public that its interests are being served, because less is really more.

Besides acknowledging what is factual, this reorganization would save corporations the need to pay exorbitant salaries to lobbyists. It would save the citizens the need to participate in primaries and elections.
-- Jack Vigneau, Spring Hill

Slapstick lawmaking

Each day when I read in the paper about the actions of the Republican controlled Legislature, I laugh. It reminds me of my afternoons home from school, when I would watch The Three Stooges on television. I never once thought that real people behaved that way.

Boy, was I wrong! Moe, Larry and Curly are not gone, they are busy at work in Tallahassee, passing unconstitutional legislation, destroying what makes Florida great (nature's bounty) and generally behaving as any 6-year-old would. It looks like I am going to be a liberal Democrat for a very long time to come.
-- Paul Kuykendall, Belleair Bluffs

License to do favors

Yes, let Sen. William "Doc" Myers avoid recertification as a physician. Why not? He may not know the difference between a genome and a Nile virus, but what the heck!

How many more exemptions will be passed? Do we have any legislators who are stock brokers, insurance salesmen, financial planners, etc., who have let their licensces lapse because they were feeding at the public trough?

Let them all in. They deserve it -- NOT.
-- Joseph King, Hudson

Ruling is an insult to justice

Re: Court affirms check on malpractice suits,
-- April 21.
I'm one of those people affected by this unjust and discriminatory law that states because I'm over 25 I can't sue a doctor or hospital responsible for malpractice or wrongful death inflicted on a parent (in my case) or an adult child over 25 years of age.
To the Florida Supreme Court justices who just ruled on this, I hope that none of you loses a parent or child to malpractice and then realizes because of your vote that justice will not be served.
You say this will keep insurance rates down? How? By having doctors get away with malpractice and wrongful death and know they will not be taken to task for what they have done? Let the people speak by judging these so-called doctors who are disgracing a hallowed profession by their actions. The attorneys that look at each individual case will weed out the cases that do not have merit before going to court.
Imagine the heartbreak of losing a relative -- parent or child -- to wrongful death or medical malpractice and being told that you have a good case but, because of your age, you can't bring the parties to justice. Where is my justice?
The Supreme Court may have dug a hole, but the court has not buried me. I have just begun to fight.
The people who have been discriminated against because of age will be back and we will carry this fight on.
P.S. If the doctors knew they could face charges in court, they would be more careful in their practices, which would bring insurance costs down and save a lot of grief!
Terry J. Dayton, Spring Hill

Gun locks wouldn't have helped

Re: 6 children wounded in shootings at D.C. zoo, April 25.

Washington, D.C., has the strictest gun laws in the country. These laws include a total ban on owning handguns by private citizens. That did not, of course, prevent a group of teenagers from having a gunfight at the National Zoo, because laws are only followed by law-abiding people. Criminals, by definition, ignore laws.

Al Gore, never one to miss an opportunity to pervert facts for political gain, used this shooting as an opportunity to promote gun locks. Gun locks, like child proof caps on medicine bottles, are intended to be used by parents to keep young children from accidentally firing a gun. But these were not children. These were teenage criminals. Gun locks would not have prevented the woundings resulting from this shootout.

Only when people know that regardless of their age, regardless of their record, regardless of how much money Daddy has or whether Mommy really loved them, that a death resulting from their unjustified use of a gun will for certain land them in jail for the rest of their lives, will these shootings stop. That is the only "new gun law" that will have an effect on criminals.
-- Jim Westerkamp, Indian Rocks Beach

A valuable lesson

Re: An Exceptional Performance, April 29.

Congratulations to Tyrone Middle School music teacher Linda Clark for inspiring us with the production of Annie by her exceptional and mainstream students. She is truly teaching the basics for a peaceful and productive society -- respect and empowerment.
-- Jean Lersch, St. Petersburg

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