Subject: Letters Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1999 22:48:57 -0500 From: Armond Simmons To: Anniston Star I wish to commend "The Anniston Star" for advocating and demonstrating a sane approach in dealing with the many decisions that are before our community as a result of the closure of Fort McClellan and for allowing a forum for the expression of opinions, whether of gratitude or of misdirected anger toward the departing bedrock of our community, whether of serious agonizing of closure related problems of substance or of simple whining. We should keep in mind that Fort McClellan is ours, the unexploded ordinance in the thousands of "trashed" range acres is "ours" and the chemical weapons and poisonous gases are "ours". "Our" ordinance which trashed "our" acres of ranges was used in the training of past generations of "us" that enabled "us" to ward off enemies intent on denying "us" the freedoms that "we" enjoy today. "Our" chemical weapons were a Godsend that served as a deterrent to enemy use of those devastating weapons against "us". Mr Editor (to paraphrase a previous commenter), those are the "our" chemical weapons. "We" developed them, "we" built them, "we" brought them here, stuck them in "our" own face and said, “breathe this and like it, Anniston.” Thank God this pittance of "destruction" over which we agonize, is the extent of Anniston's WWII, Korea, Vietnam, et al. war s' battle damage. In the name of the folks at Arlington and Normandy and Omaha, I'm ashamed to hear some of this REAL trash. Did some just parachute in ------- from Mars? Armond "Si" Simmons 104 Wadsworth Lane Pell City, AL 35128 205 338 7378 205 812 9085 psysim@voy.net http://earth.vol.com/~psysim/dustoff.htm http://members.tripod.com/psysim/msvn.html