Letters to the Editor
had_enough
Published Letters: 816 Editor's Choice: 48
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shooting from the hip..
[Read the article: The Bush-league economy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]as in, I shot from the hip earlier in describing Prescott Bush as an arms dealer. If he was one, it was indirect. He first worked for, then had continuing connections with, Harriman Bank, the Wall Street portal for people like Fritz Thyssen, who ran various companies that gave a lot of money to the Nazis in the 1930s.
After WWII, at least a couple of formal investigators felt Bush, and others, should have been prosecuted for complicity in the Holocaust, as money flowed through their bank, and thence to the people who built the concentration camps. It seemed clear from the evidence that Bush and others involved should have or would have known where the money was going. To simplify matters over-much.
It's definitely a debatable subject, at any rate.
My point in the original post, made badly, was that the Bush family has no scruples, except those that allow them to help themselves. I suspect you have to go back to feudal Europe, or ancient Rome, or Greece, to find families of the same ilk: out for themselves and ready to sacrifice anyone and anything for their benefit.
Strikes me people like this should not be allowed anywhere near the levers of power in a democracy. But here we put TWO of them in the Presidency.
Sorry for the mis-statement of fact. My bad.
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stakes are too high
[Read the article: Will the real Colin Powell stand up?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you really start to break this all down, you realize pretty quickly that the stakes are way too high for Powell to start telling the truth. All the truth.
Were Powell to tell everything he knows, it would create a political crisis of epic proportions. Much would depend on how he told the truth, to whom, and how much.
But if he did the right thing...if he told everything he knows about these criminals, it would be a Very Big Deal.
That's why I don't think he'll do it. I don't think he has the courage.
He's like Daniel Inouye during the Iran/Contra hearings. Inouye's committee, by all the evidence, had enough to nail Reagan's hide right to the wall. Instead, Inouye shut down the investigation saying "The country can't take another Watergate." I always thought that was an arrogant, cowardly thing to do, and I still think that.
Similarly, I suspect Powell is just arrogant enough to think that he must stay quiet, for the good of the country...and, of course, let's not forget his income from various sources..
Although, you have to believe that if he came clean, he'd be spun into some kind of national hero, and he could make plenty of money with that status.
So, something else is going on. What exactly? Why not tell the truth now, now that Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld and Franks and Rice, and Addington and Yoo and all the rest are proven traitors? Why not? That's the question Blumenthal does not answer. Why does he not rehabilitate himself, at this late date? He still has enough credibility with the rest of the country that anything he said would likely be taken seriously. So what's his interest now in staying silent? When his historical legacy will be as a lapdog? He can't be happy about that.
So, I propose the reason he stays silent is that he believes the consequences are too dire if he speaks.
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the newsconference
[Read the article: Remember when Iraq was a sovereign nation?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I usually don't listen to these news conferences, because they're so demoralizing. I caught part of this one, this morning, and it was every bit as demoralizing as usual.
The man sounds like a wind-up toy, when he doesn't sound like an ignorant fool. I don't know what to think about him anymore. I expect he's actually a very confused and frightened human being, hiding carefully inside his manichean view of the world.
He never should have been appointed President. That was among the very worst things a corrupt Supreme Court has ever done.
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@tiberius, you're an embarrassment to yourself
[Read the article: Remember when Iraq was a sovereign nation?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Moondoggy wrote:
Everyone remembers, tiberius
Especially the Iraqis, who are now calling them "the good old days". (You know, back when there was electricity, water, jobs, and you only had to worry about state-sponsored violence.)
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So, what about it, Tiberius? Do you recall Iraq under Saddam? Not a lovely place, but you could walk the streets in relative safety, read a book at night by something other than candlelight, drink clean water, carry on something like a normal life. Have a job, get paid, eat, sleep, live, in some kind of security. Your relatives weren't being shot on sight, blown up in car-bombs, or otherwise targeted by any one of a 100 or more rogue militias.
Tell us, Tiberius, when would you like to be a Sunni in Sadr City? During Saddam's rule, or now? Tell us. We'd really like to hear.
A majority of Iraqis would take Saddam back right now, over what we've done to their country. What about that?
And, by the way, naming yourself after a great Roman general, who, one assumes, had some basic intelligence, is, at best, deceptive marketing. At worst, pathetic.
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@thrasher...yer missin' the point
[Read the article: Thank you, Hank Aaron]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thrasher, haven't you been listening?
We dismiss Bonds and his "record" solely because he's been cheating for years to achieve that record. Not because he's black.
You want to play that game go play with people who take your reflexive and simple-minded racism seriously.
I don't care if Bonds is black, white, or purple. His "blackness" has nothing to do with my attitude about his "record." The fact that he is a proven asshole has nothing to do with it, either.
He cheated, plain and simple.
I have no respect for Lance Armstrong's achievements either, because I'm convinced he cheated too.
My personal feeling is that all drugs should be legalized for sports figures. All of 'em. But until they are, using illegal drugs for the purpose of improving your performance at the expense of others who *don't* use those drugs, is cheating. And I've never respected a cheater.
My sense is that you think it's perfectly ok that Bonds cheated. Is that right?