Letters to the Editor
fetboy
Published Letters: 1220 Editor's Choice: 22
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Assessment of 1994 forgot backlash of the assault weapons band
[Read the article: The party's over]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"The Party's Over" presents a good argument for the Democrats, who control the 110th congress, to oppose an escalation of The Bush W war (AKA the Iraq War) by denying President Bush the necessary funds, or better yet by impeaching him. But the author left out the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban when he listed reasons why the Democrats got slaughtered in the 1994 mid-term elections. True the bogus Whitewater scandal and the "don't ask don't tell" policy had a lot to do with the Gingrich led take over of congress in 1994, but I don't remember anyone saying much about the Democrats being more corrupt than Republicans even at that time, or that the efforts to get a National Healthcare plan passed had caused much voter discontent (except maybe because a plan still hadn't been passed yet).
When reminiscing about 1994 people should be honest about what really cost the Democrats in 1994 (gays, guns and witch hunts).
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18 Months of Martial Law Isn't Going To Break Over a 1000 Years of hatred.
[Read the article: The real Iraq Study Group]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Kagan should be arrested for being near sighted and stupid in his philosophical/ideological believes, and should be barred from ever writing another crack pot military plan ever again. Does this idiot even have military or foreign travel experience? Does he know anything about the Sunnis, the Shais or the Kurds, or the reasons behind their Hundreds of years of hatred?
Does President Bush understand that the Civil War in Iraq is based on ethnic differences that date back to over a 1000 years ago?
Why would anyone think that patrolling the neighborhoods of Baghdad for 18 months would suddenly cause the Sunnies, Shias, and Kurds to want to stop killing each other? It hasn't worked in Northern Ireland or Lebanon, so why would such a plan work in Iraq?
President Bush reminds me of a really bad poker player who remains determined to bluff even though everyone at the table knows he has nothing substantial in his hand.
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The Iraq Invasion Had Everything to do with Revenge
[Read the article: Theater of blood]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is true that Bush, Cheney, and the Neo-cons had desire to overthrow Saddam before 9/11, but their reasons for wanted to overthrow Saddam had everything to do revenge. Bush made this point clear when he said "After all, he tried to kill my daddy." Cheney was tired of having to live with the fact that he couldn't get Saddam in the Persian Gulf War, which put Saddam square in the middle of his ire. And the Neo-cons saw Saddam's continued existence as a form of mocking they couldn't accept.
The decision to invade Iraq didn't have so much to do with 9/11 as did with Bush's, Cheney's, and the Neo-cons personal hatred of Saddam.
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Good paper, but the author lacks true insight.
[Read the article: Colorblind]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Debra J, Dickerson understanding of politics is at the text book level, and she has no idea how American voter really think.
The infatuation with Barack Obama (or Obama mania as she put it) isn't based on the fact that he is black, but rather on his amazing ability to give off the cuff speeches, with an earthly wit, and a background that most generation X and Yers can relate to (most of us have grown up in broken homes, and dabbled with drugs in high school before we became adults).
Also when it comes to politics it is not what you have done (because that usually works against you, and if don't believe me, just ask John Kerry), but rather the people you surround you with, and your ability to deliver on the national stage. The fact that people are in awe of Barack Obama is not a fluke; we like what he says, and we know the passion he feels about what he speaks is genuine. For us infatuated with Obama he is the first politician, after a long line of disappointing white males, who doesn't bore the hell out of us, and it is easy for us to believe that he wants to make difference, and that he is not just trying to get our vote for his own personal gain.
As far as a political careers, Obama has 4 more years of experience than Hillary Clinton does (unless you consider the position of governor and president Clinton's wife political experience), 6 more than John Edwards will have in 2008 (unless you consider John Edwards' time out of office part of his political career), and unlike Hillary Clinton has suffer political defeats that he has learned from. But most importantly Obama has gathered a good staff of highly praised Washington insiders castoff from big wig Democrats who lost in 2004, like Tom Daschle. His support of coal liquification (which like or not will get us weened off of foreign energy) is not nearly as glaring as Hillary and Edwards's initial support of the Iraq invasion, which Obama had outspokenly opposed when he was in the Illinois senate.
At the moment I would say that Obama's credentials, record, and backing put him a few steps ahead of the other (Democrat and Republican) contenders regardless of the fact that he black.