Letters to the Editor
RBrudzynski
Published Letters: 16 Editor's Choice: 3
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TV Ads
[Read the article: The battle to ban birth control]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here in the Midwest, there have been a number of televised ads promoting "natural" birth control, i.e. the rhythm method. The clear implication in the ads is that other forms of contraception are somehow untested, dangerous, or at least contrary to nature.
I note that the "One More Soul" website is promoting the "Feast of the Annunciation" on its home page. Clearly, some segment of the Catholic Church is behind this drive. The Catholic Church has never been reluctant to use civil law to enforce its own version of personal morality. This includes not only birth control and abortion but other issues such as forbidding divorce and requiring stores and shops to close on Sunday.
A lot of folks may be too young to remember that contraception was once illegal and criminal in most states. A Supreme Court decision based on a constitutional "right of privacy" overturned these laws. There are likely some out there who would like to return to the days when contraception was a criminal act.
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Casualty Study
[Read the article: Four more years?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Interested folks can find a copy of the study on-line at:
http://web.mit.edu/CIS/pdf/Human_Cost_of_War.pdf
I was initially quite skeptical when I heard about it on the news -- the number of deaths was way higher than anybody (even political enemies of the Bush Administration) had claimed.
On the other hand, there are some impressive institutions backing this study: the Bloomberg School of Health at Johns Hopkins University and the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy. These are people who know what they're doing when doing medical studies. Indeed, if you wanted the best possible medical study done (and had a LOT of money), they are the people you would hire to do such a study.
Medical statistics is a highly specialized and technical field. There are a lot of traps for the naive and unwary. I doubt that any of us has the necessary knowledge or experience in biostatistics to critique it. In this regard, I was dismayed to hear President Bush "dispute" the study the very day it was released.
Bush obviously has no knowledge or background in medical statistics. His "disputing" the study makes about as much sense as his disputing the theory of relativity. Bush does, however, have access to top-flight experts at the Centers for Disease Control who could conduct a knowledgable review of the study, critique its findings and expose any flaws or limitations.
It would have made sense for Bush to say that he was "skeptical" about the study's conclusions and that he'd asked the CDC to take a look at it. Instead, Bush considers himself enough of an authority to "dispute" the study on his say so. He apparently also thinks were dumb enough to take his word for it that the study is flawed!
(Curiously, this behavior is coming from a man who says that "the jury is still out on evolution.")
This pattern of behavior has become a characteristic of the Bush Administration -- if something is bad news for the Administration, they dispute it without regard to whether it is true or not. To coin a phrase, the Bush Administration "can't handle the truth."
It's not even a question of telling lies, it's a question of denying reality in the first place.
Woodward's title "State of Denial" seems to describe the Bush Administration all to well.
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"The Land of Lousy Options"
[Read the article: Wagging the "Big Dog"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Given the nature of the North Korean government, just about any policy designed to keep it from going nuclear was likely to fail. As I heard someone describe it, North Korea is the "Land of Lousy Options."
Clinton's Agreed Framework was never strong enough to prevent North Korea from cheating. It did however put us in a better position than we would have been without it.
In the absence of the Agreed Framework, North Korea would have had the bomb a long time ago. Indeed, the abrogation of the Agreed Framework is the only reason why North Korea has the bomb now.
The Agreed Framework froze North Korea's stockpiles of Plutonium and placed them under the control of inspectors. Plutonium is the quickest and easiest path to a nuclear weapon. Without access to his plutonium, if Kim Jong Il wanted to acquire a nuclear weapon (and he did), the only available option was through the production of enriched uranium. The production of enriched uranium is a massive and expensive industrial undertaking -- a path to a bomb that is difficult, expensive, and hard to conceal. Clinton's Agreed Framework was successful insofar as it moved North Korea off of the fast track to a nuclear weapon and onto the slow track.
If the Agreed Framework were still in place, North Korea would still be a long way from having a bomb. Indeed, when the Agreed Framework broke down (with a shove from the Bush Administration), Kim Jong Il immediately kicked out the inspectors and moved his plutonium stockpile to a place where we could never find it and went back to the production of a plutonium-based nuclear weapon. It only took him three years.
Clinton's Agreed Framework was successful in that it bought us time and the possibility that events over which we have no control would stop North Korea's march towards a nuclear state. Time isn't much but, in the Land of Lousy Options it was the best option available.