Letters to the Editor
ondelette
Published Letters: 1957 Editor's Choice: 19
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@WT @PR
[Read the article: The president receives "lessons" from his neoconservative tutors]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I lived near Logan Airport, probably there. The people who bragged that they had done it also went to Chicago for the '68 convention, so maybe there. They bragged about it, I actually saw people yell baby killer at returned vets in my home town at more than one peace rally. I saw and heard a whole lot of things at the rallies I went to, I don't understand how you could be "medias res" and not have seen anything. The people at the rallies weren't a bunch of perfect angels, at least not the ones I went to. Nor were the organizers always filled with peacefulness and altruism, as I indicated in the long post.
It didn't have to be that widespread to be used as an image by people who wanted to do that, did it? But I find Paul's posted quotation absolutely stunning. What's next? Pretending that not one of us yelled "Off the pig"?
If this is what I get from people I basically agree with, its no wonder nothing gets done about this administration.
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@WT
[Read the article: The president receives "lessons" from his neoconservative tutors]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As I said, I only saw people yelling baby killer, I did not see someone spit. People (as in 3) bragged about doing it to our loosely knit group. I am somewhat younger than you, by your post. I never saw the campus shut down, personally, I arrived on campus to find it in an uproar in the fall about what to do about the seniors who hadn't graduated because the university shut down before finals the previous Spring.
Not all confrontations were very organized, not all protesters walked up to police and vets who put on their uniforms and came down to yell at us and put flowers in their hands.
You know that, because you know about the Bank of Americas. I had one friend who had the misfortune of being hit by both a brick and a billy club within minutes on April 15th.
Personally, I have always been proud that I never did that, never disrespected any returning troops. Collectively, though, even though I personally didn't do that, I feel a responsibility not to see the repeat.
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Okay, this is the unstable solution I was talking about
[Read the article: The president receives "lessons" from his neoconservative tutors]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But if there were a few such scattered incidents, they had nothing to do with the generation of the myth. What's more, the fact that the myth came about later is all the proof that's needed that this can't explain any political failure of the anti-war movement. PR
The myth always comes later, not at the time, and the small, scattered incidents are always the ones it is predicated on. You really have to be on your best behavior to prevent the use of such stuff from becoming the justifications of your opponents.
Unstable solutions are prone to defeat by butterfly effects. That's why what Petraeus and Matthis are doing in Iraq right now has very little chance of success. But if you think of Cheney's group as an insurgency, then we have the distinct possibility of not winning against them, unless we keep track of the scattered incidents.
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Re: IOKIYAR
[Read the article: Support for al-Qaida plots on large right-wing blog]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is identical to the takfiri philosophy on committing sins: It's okay if you are ridding the world of infidels.
Zbignew Brzezhinski called it "Manichean Paranoia" on John Stewart last night.
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Re: The confession of the terrorist
[Read the article: Support for al-Qaida plots on large right-wing blog]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Gabe,
This was not a Military Commissions process. It was a Combatant Status Review Tribunal. They were set up by the Administration before the MCA of 2006.
I don't think the confessions came from waterboarding. Mohammed makes it clear that he was tortured, and that what he said under duress isn't the same as his confession. If you read the statement he made after the list of confessed deeds, he is making the argument that he is a man of war, these are acts of war and he is an enemy combatant, that he is sorry for what we would call collateral damage but considers it a necessity of war. Whatever.
He spent most of his time pleading for those Afghanis at Guantanamo that he says weren't involved. I'd say he's motivated by trying to get other people off, knowing that he's going down.
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duffelonius: PTSD
[Read the article: Support for al-Qaida plots on large right-wing blog]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sally Satel of the American Enterprise Institute has been on this toot against PTSD for a couple of years now. She claims the government is spending tons of money in waste, fraud, and abuse for vets with PTSD. Her argument is she basically doesn't believe in any PTSD that manifests itself later, and not immediately after the traumatic incident. She's an M.D. so she gets airplay.
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@fotini901: Where's he from
[Read the article: Support for al-Qaida plots on large right-wing blog]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He's a Baluchi, from the Iran-Pakistan border area, raised in Karachi, Pakistan.
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I don't understand LGF
[Read the article: Support for al-Qaida plots on large right-wing blog]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why, on a site where they declare that the war is against Islam, and wish that Al Qaeda had murdered him, do they refer to Jimmy Carter as "Dhimmi Carter"? Don't they know what dhimmi means?
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FYI Redaction change
[Read the article: Support for al-Qaida plots on large right-wing blog]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If anyone downloaded the transcript of the CSRT from the Washington Post website, the PDF has changed in the last 40 minutes or so. The new version has less redacted. It has the same file name though.
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LWM attributing Reagan
[Read the article: Support for al-Qaida plots on large right-wing blog]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is absolutely no record of Thomas ever saying or writing anything remotely similar to that, no surprise there.
Kinda like the quote that the U.S. would "drop like ripe fruit into our hands" that Reagan attributed to V.I. Lenin. In that case, it turned out to be from Robert Welch in the blue book of the John Birch Society.
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Extremely highly suspicious
[Read the article: Freedom by fire]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Given the circumstances, the part of the world, the fact that there were degradations for which women can be "honor killed" involved, and the specific mention of Kandahar, the Taliban homeland, I have grave doubts. I hate to sound cold. I believe within one or two years they are going to find out a lot of these are intra-familial murders. Remember that for many years the bride burnings in India were thought to be cooking accidents.