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Letters to the Editor
The world is listening
I was very disappointed to read
Wednesday's lead article ("Bush defends U.S. on Saddam ouster") and
editorial ("Bush's powerful case") addressing President Bush's
speech at the United Nations.
Essentially ignored in both articles is
any adequate discussion of the magnitude of the world reaction to
the speech. As The Washington Times surely must realize, the
reaction from the very nations we are imploring to assist us ranged
from indifference to rejection of the president's defensive and
self-serving speech.
Frankly, The Times
did a dismal job of providing its readers with a sense of how the
speech was received by the world leaders who will decide whether the
American taxpayer continues to fund the lion's share of the bill for
Iraq and absorb the vast majority of the daily casualties inflicted
by our adversaries. After all, at least on the surface, the
president's appeal was supposed to animate the rest of the world to
come to our aid. The speech did nothing of the sort, and The Times
dropped the ball in its coverage of the event.
ALEXIS
DURHAM
Safety Harbor, Fla.
Tell the
truth
According to the Editor in
Chief of The Washington Times, Gen. Wesley K. Clark seems to like to
make up stories about himself for political gain, which turn out not
to be true when somebody does their homework to check their veracity
("A rubdown can't cure everything," Nation, Tuesday).
Haven't Democrats gone down this road
before? I seem to remember a candidate in 2000 who claimed to have
invented the Internet, whose Mom rocked him to sleep by singing
union songs when he was 27 years old.
After the experience of 1993-2000,
American voters have had enough with presidential liars. Hopefully,
this time, the best way to get elected (or re-elected) president is
to tell them the truth.
Judges
who interpret law
I simply have to
respond to the assertion made by Glen Hooks ("Behind the Estrada
filibuster," Letters, Sept. 19). Mr. Hooks does what most Democrats
and their supporters do. He attempts to make a point citing a
reference, but leaves out a particular but salient point contained
in the reference because the point would smash his argument.
Mr. Hooks says, "Mr. Estrada was
rejected because he refused to answer questions and share his
judicial philosophies during his confirmation hearings ... Nominees
who refuse to share their legal viewpoints and philosophies are
rightly setting themselves up for failure."
Mr. Hooks does not seem to realize
certain facts, or he purposefully omits them from his letter.
For example, Mr. Estrada rightfully
declined, as all previous solicitor generals have, to submit his
work product writings. The Democrats on the Judiciary Committee were
told by former solicitor generals that such submissions would not
only be inappropriate, but would be potentially harmful to future
employees who had served in Mr. Estrada's capacity. Also, no
candidate for the bench ever should have to tell how he would rule
on a potential future case. Should I be on the other side of such a
potential ruling and my case were to come before a Judge Estrada,
what hope could I have for a fair hearing?
As we have seen with the debacle in that
clown factory known as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, judges
are more and more putting their personal preferences on paper and
calling them decisions and not following the law. How can a
three-judge panel find unanimously for one party in a case (the
California recall) while an 11-judge panel, reviewing the
three-judge panel's decision in the same circuit, finds unanimously
for the other side?
Putting Mr. Estrada
on the bench was a clearly political decision (one I admittedly
support) on President Bush's part. Though Mr. Estrada's
qualifications are exemplary, Mr. Bush clearly wants to put a
Hispanic on the high court if possible. The Democrats clearly don't
want any type of Hispanic on the high court, other than someone like
"Paez the Clintonite." Richard Paez was on the three-judge panel
that wants California to have a Democratic governor, no matter what.
Judge Paez, unlike Mr. Estrada, is an
example of liberal, activist judges who use pretzel logic in order
to re-create themselves as "philosopher kings" who would steal our
democracy from us and supplant it with rule from the unelected
bench.
We have a clear contrast between
the type of Hispanic nominee a Democrat will appoint and vote to
approve and the type a Republican will appoint. Democrats want
philosopher kings who owe allegiance to them. Republicans want
judges who interpret law.
Shame on the
Democrats for what they did to Mr. Estrada, but more shame on the
Republicans for allowing it to happen.
JOSEPH KNIGHT
Columbia, Md.
Supporting the troops
For Congress in general and the
Democrats in particular, handing the Bush administration its
emergency $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan to "show support for
the troops" would be a monumental cop-out ("Democrats likely to OK
Iraq spending," Nation, Wednesday).
To
begin with, the fact that it is an "emergency" request speaks
volumes about the lack of forethought behind the administration's
Iraq adventure. But more to the point, our troops are not in Iraq
out of the goodness of their hearts, but as instruments of policy.
Therefore, the best way to support them is to ensure that the policy
that put them there is as sound as possible. If Congress allows the
Bush administration to remain totally in control of Iraq policy by
not attaching conditions to the $87 billion, it might well be
complicit in putting our troops even deeper into harm's way.
HERMAN M.
HEYN
Baltimore
Fighting
terrorism
Numerous articles
identifying possible security threats at the local level illustrate,
sadly, that terrorism is having an effect in terms of manpower and
costs for homeland defense. We're probably fooling ourselves if we
think that our nation can even remotely be defended against
terrorism through whatever efforts. In a free society, terrorist
targets are too numerous to be protected. Hopefully, we won't pursue
a homeland defense strategy in each town and county to a point that
it will bankrupt our nation.
Thankfully,
President Bush understands that the only strategy that will protect
our nation from terrorism is to attack, infiltrate and destroy
terrorist organizations. In that vein, money and manpower spent on
homeland defense would best be used to destroy the threat as opposed
to defend against it.
I feel sure that
Mr. Bush's aggressive strategy has protected our homefront to date,
but there is no guarantee of freedom from attack tomorrow. As bad as
it may sound, it just may be smart to accept occasional major
homeland disasters (yes, including another September 11) in the
short term, in order to expend all major resources necessary to
annihilate the source as soon as possible.
Hopefully, our nation will soon begin to
understand this point before misspent resources allow an onslaught
of terrorism to wreak havoc on our nation on the scale being
experienced by Israel.
ARMOND SIMMONS
Pell City, Ala.
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