Letters to the Editor
Air Force Vet in Amsterdam
Published Letters: 73 Editor's Choice: 5
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World Cup Baseball
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm also looking forward to the World Baseball Classic, though it is not really the first World Cup-like tournament in Baseball; while largely unknown in the U.S. there is a World Cup Baseball tournament, and 18 countries competed in the 36th edition therof here in the Netherlands last September. Of course there are no MLB players, and the level of play is no where near what the World Baseball Classic should be. It's probably somewhere around the level of AA to AAA ball, and like minor league ball at that level, the tournament has an enjoyable charm to it. The one downside is that Cuba (almost) always wins. Last September was their 12th in a row.
Johan Muller
Amsterdam
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Unlikable Frat Boy
[Read the article: The sixth-year swoon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The previous posts compared George Bush to an array of interesting fictional characters, but the one he has always reminded me of is Greg Marmalade, the odious president of the posh fraternity John Belushi battled with in "Animal House" - albeit with a different affected accent.
And apropos of the comment that the success of professional PR accounts for Americans seeing George Bush as likable, I agree, but I also lay much of the blame on the indolent media which in 2000 almost unanimously accepted the meme that Bush was likable, and Gore was not. How often did we hear that lazy, utterly subjective "analysis" repeated? No wonder people who themselves were in no position to assess whether or not Bush is likable came to accept what they were told, over and over. Even now Chris Matthews is expressing utter bewilderment that so many people say they no longer deem Bush likable.
Johan Muller
Amsterdam
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Impeachment, effective or not, would be a refusal to accept evil
[Read the article: The I-word goes public]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Talk of impeaching Bush makes one realize how incredibly fortunate the country was to have Spiro Agnew resign before Nixon was impeached, and that the beleaguered Nixon saw the need to look accommodating and reasonable by choosing as Agnew's replacement Gerald Ford instead of someone like John B. Connally, who was reputed to be his preference.
Impeaching and convicting Bush without simultaneously also doing so with Cheney (nothing precludes simultaneous impeachment of a president and vice-president, so this would be hypothetically possible) would put Cheney in the Oval Office; a depressing thought to be sure, and not really an improvement. Neither for that matter is the prospect of a President Dennis Hastert, currently next in line after Cheney.
But even if one consequence were a short Cheney presidency, impeachment and removal of Bush would have one great virtue: It would represent a refusal to passively accept the practices of torture, warmongering, erosion of civil rights, and the many other evils perpetrated by this administration. As Martin Luther King, Jr. stated: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
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Plame leak denials?
[Read the article: The questions McClellan never answered]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]On point 2: I may not have heard or read all McClellan claimed on this matter, but as I recall he did not actually say that Rove and Libby "assured" him "they were not involved" in the Plame leak; though what he did say could have been carefully parsed to give that impression.
His actual statement was that he specifically went to Rove and Libby so that they COULD assure him they were not involved; but I have never seen or read a statement from McClellan that Rove and/or Libby, once asked, in fact gave that assurance. McCellan's statement would thus be technically true in this scenario: McClellan went to R&L in the expectation - or at least hope - they would deny involvement, but they did not; whether they admitted it to McClellan or declined to answer is irrelevant to this scenario. Unable to truthfully report that R&L denied involvement, McClellan then described his own actions designed to confirm denial, and was mute on the actual result - but in a way that suggests he got the result he wanted.
Speculation, of course, but to borrow a line from El Rushbo: "It could be true!"