Mr. McLeary is too kind in his closing comments in his excellent and informative review. He says, conceding that Rumsfeld's plans were not the whole story, "There are no guarantees that even with more troops and better planning, things would have turned out differently in Iraq." There was no guarantee that dropping two atomic bombs on Japan would end the World War II, either. But the probabilities were certainly a lot better.

One of the reasons liberals are so angry now is that we saw it happening and could get nobody to do anything to stop it. I'm just an old guy sitting in the Florida swamp an Internet connection, which lets me read news summaries from half a dozen good sources with links to full articles.

Even I could see that Rumsfeld was discarding the Powell Doctrine of flooding the battlefield with enough troops to do the job, I saw Rumsfeld belittle Shinseki who tried to follow that doctrine, I saw the author if the doctrine sitting on his hands instead of resigning loudly after the tenth outrage to truth and good sense, and I saw Democrats, burned in the Gulf War, shrinking in timidity from telling truth to power. I, and lots of people like me, felt very frustrated.

So I am deeply grateful to Gordon and Trainor for their fine book, which goes a long way to making the truth of this war indelible, and shows Rumsfeld to be a reckless diletante in military affairs.

The big news about millions of phone records being cajoled from telephone companies by NSA waving the flag is certainly important.

But I am disappointed that nobody is raising hell about the other story that came out yesterday that, on the outrage scale, is even more gross: the NSA has shut down the Justice Department investigation into its data mining by simply refusing to grant security clearances to the Justice Department lawyers. Come on, folks. THIS IS CRAZY. We can't let them get away with it.

At least with the phone records, NSA asked politely and didn't send the Qwest people to the Gulag when they declined. It is entirely possible that, barring some specific Privacy Act violation about phone records, what they did, being consensual, was legal. At least it does not involve getting that information through direct seizure.

But sabotaging an important investigation by the highest law enforcement agency in our government through a security technicality means all they have to do is classify everything and PRESTO! we have a fascist state.

So read yesterday's news again and refocus, everyone.

Doug Wilson

Naples, Florida

In our slow but steady march towards fascism, the expansion of secrecy from things that really need to be kept secret from enemies to everything the Bush administration says or does is a major tool in protecting the dictatorship.

But we still have a few laws, and one of them is the Freedom of Information Act.

In this case, you can request copies of any directives issued by Negroponte to the telephone companies.

I suppose you might get a response saying that such information was itself classified. But that would be worth knowing, too, wouldn't it?

Doug Wilson

Naples, Florida

Your journalistic point is certainly valid.

But you're not going to get me to stop eating Big Macs. Not entirely, anyway. And those McDonald's fries -- I salivate at the thought.

See, everyone knows you're not supposed to live on that kind of stuff -- even McDonald's. They have a nice selection of salads that are quite nutritious. And I recall one article, about the Zone diet, noting that an Egg McMuffin was an entirely appropriate breakfast, especially if accompanied by milk, which McDonald's also sells.

I would be as interested in factual criticisms of "Fast Food Nation" as you, but even without such information, nobody is going to kill off fast food. It's way too tasty and fun. Taco Bell's Gorditas? Too yummy. Burger King's fish sandwich? Delicious and so good for you.

And don't forget that Subway, until recently the most unrelentingly nutrition-conscious food vendor in America, is all about fast food.

If I were writing a book on this subject, it would be something like "Big Macs Without Guilt: Fast Food and a Balanced Diet".

In short, my greatest criticism of most critics of fast food is that they focus on the food and not the people eating it. To paraphrase the NRA, fast food doesn't make people fat; people make people fat.

See? I do not have to order those fries to go with my burger. Do I?

Doug Wilson

Naples, Florida

Here are a few:

"Hit the Road, Jack"

"Mother-in-Law"

"Roll Over Beethoven" (your NEA grant is cancelled)

"Git up Offa That Thing"

"Back in the USSR"

"Short People" (got no reason to live)

"Rave On"

I knew the commercial media were incompetent, never asking the key questions, never pursuing lines of inquiry, never headlining the really big news (e.g., New Iraq Government Supports Iran's Nuclear Program).

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think two leading reporters of a formerly elite news organization, would be so brainwashed that they completely gave in to the fantasy of WMDs the government initially sold the nation.

Given that the polls show that most of the nation now is very aware that that story was a fantasy, the fact that two news aces, both with excellent journalistic credentials, can parrot the same fiction leads to frightening speculation:

1. They are on the take from Rumsfeldian media manipulators.

2. They were abducted by Cheney agents and subjected to deep hypnotic suggestion reinforced with heavy psychotropic drugs.

3. They are secret adherents of a Christian theocratic cult which holds that George W. Bush never lies.

I really can't come up with an alternative explanation. So if any of these top three theories is true, things are coming unglued. Maybe it's time to buy an NRA-supported assault rifle, and perhaps a surplus howitzer or two.