Letters to the Editor
Frank Smith, Bluff City, KS
Published Letters: 131 Editor's Choice: 15
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Sounds like a frame-up to me... Here's why.
[Read the article: Is Briana Waters a terrorist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I hope that Waters received a competent defense. If I were a juror, it would be hard to convince me that a woman who was about to commit an act which demanded considerable presence of mind and precision would have been stalling around, making a purchase in Olympia, 48 minutes before what might have been the most momentous act of her life. She then would have had to drive 60 miles to Seattle to meet her co-conspirators, averaging 75 miles an hour, not only for her time on I-5, but for the distance from the purchase point to the meeting point, each of which probably involved city street driving, traffic lights, etc. She would have risked a ticket that would not only delayed her, but would have placed her conclusively on the route she took. I don't know where the Seattle meeting location was, but the Center for Urban Horticulture is on the north side of the city, well off Highway 5, down North 45th Street, through the University center and northeast of the main campus.
To cover that distance, I can't imagine that she would have made the appointment without averaging over 80 mph on I-5, probably 15 mph over the limit. The traffic for the portions around Olympia, past SeaTac and through south Seattle, would have been moderate to heavy at that time in the early evening.
I hope counsel checked road conditions to ascertain if there were construction slowdowns at the time of the alleged drive. I would have even pulled the tickets written by the state troopers during those minutes to see how many cruisers she might have passed on her supposed dash to the meeting, perhaps making the prosecution's tale even more implausible.
The testimony of her putative co-conspirators sounds like the stuff of which bogus murder convictions are fabricated: Alleged "confessions" claimed to be made to career criminal cellmates,looking for prosecutorial leniency for instance. One even denied her participation. That would have been a statement "against interest," and would have jeopardized his deal with the Feds.
There were no disclosures to investigators until after much time and many interviews, quite uncommon with cooperating witnesses. I would have looked for videotapes and listened to audiotapes of those interrogations to see if words weren't being put in the mouths of the informants who may have only vaguely known Waters.
This certainly does not sound as if any sort of "justice" was done.
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Not all legislators are ignorant of the facts
[Read the article: Fred Kagan on Monday: "The civil war in Iraq is over"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When Chuck Hagel returned from Iraq, while his visiting colleagues were spending hours in the flower-strewn streets of the Green Zone, he stated unequivocally, "The South is lost."
Here's a conservative Republican Senator, an actual war veteran, and those from his party and most of the media pay next to zero attention to him.
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Will the real McCain please stand up?
[Read the article: McCain's Vietnam obsession]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While some previous posters make good points, I think the article that provoked them was wanting.
McCain is not the man he was in 2000 or earlier. He has become so obsessed with the presidency that he can't think straight. He believes he can't abandon Bush policy and still win. The straight talk that stood up to the Christian right and opposed Bush's tax cuts for billionaires continued through 2004 because he couldn't challenge the then-popular Bush. No matter whether Bush won or lost, McCain was sure he could grab the ring in 2008. He has abandoned principled position after principled position and there's no going back.
The McCain of the past would have been loathe to hook up with the likes of the Iraq National Congress $98 million booster, PNAC clone Randy Scheuneman. Now after Joe Lieberman of all people tells McCain he had mispoken when he claimed Iran was training al Qaida in Iraq, Scheuneman later corrects the record to say that's what he meant all along. McCain National Security Advisor Scheuneman represents Israeli foreign policy predominance over the U.S. McCain has got to know this, so it's obvious that he's willing to sacrifice the means for the end.
The worst part may be that a war with Iran is part of the package.
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The Field of Drones
[Read the article: Whom will McCain choose?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Crist would have to resign, probably, unless he can get the Florida legislature to repeal the statute that forbids him from running for federal office. He has a huge majority in both houses of the state legislature, so it's not out of the question.
Lieberman wouldn't do anything for McCain, just as he didn't do anything for Gore.
Thune's name has been bandied about. He wouldn't bring any big constituency: South Dakota has three electoral votes, tied for the lowest in the nation. No one outside the state knows who he is, though he's a "reliable" reactionary.
Lindsey Graham's name has also been mentioned. That will surely get someone to drag him out of the closet. See the DOJ story at Salon today, with an anonymous Republican being quoted as saying that being gay is "worse than being a Democrat."
Huckabee said in February that he was not interested in being Veep.
Alaska's Sarah Palin is losing some of luster and about to have another baby. Three electoral votes.
If McCain went with Ridge, the fundy wingnuts would stay home. That's the "base."
Jeb is dumb, as another poster said, but popular in a big state. However his wife's smuggling, his dope fiend daughter, his prostitute-patronizing son, his little-known hookups with the for-profit prison industry and last of all, Ms. Wingnut 2000-2006 herself, ex-Rep. Cathy Harris could cost him nationally. McCain has said he doesn't want to make a Dan Quale mistake. Bush would inevitably bring to mind another Bush, or two, and Quale in the bargain. Who in their right mind would vote for four more Bush years? (Fundies are by definition, inhabiting their 6,000-year-old world, not in their "right mind.")