LETTER PRINTED, ETC.

My local paper finally printed my letter yesterday...then I got a call around 11:30 that morning from a gentleman who told me he appreciated the letter, thought it was well-written and so forth, but assured me he wasn't calling to "praise" me.

He said I should watch out for the editorial page editor because this gentleman said that some his letters to the editor have been changed and distorted by the editorial page editor...so far, all of mine have appeared exactly as I wrote them...

Comment

I received the following comment about my last post (I just want to address this because I don't get many comments that aren't from comment spammers)--in which I asked why we should care whether Iran has nuclear weapons or not because after all, the U.S. is the only country that has ever actually used them against an enemy:

the difference is that iran is headed by a nutcase who also wants to destroy israel, and denies the holocaust ever took place. with a guy like that holding a trigger to atommic weapons, no one can sleep easy. just because it isn't yr backyard doesn't mean it won't come bite you in the ass.

The thing is, what this commenter is saying works both ways. That's what I was trying to point out. You know that everywhere around the world people are saying "America is headed by a nutcase that wants to rule the world--he's invaded Iraq, propped up Israel and his country dropped two atomic bombs on Japan; with a guy like that holding a trigger to atomic weapons, no one can sleep easy."

What we must decide as American citizens is whether it is worth billions of dollars and thousands of lives (ours and theirs) to try to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of other countries because more than likely, they'll never be used except as a deterrent to us.

I mean, we invaded Iraq ostensibly to "disarm" Saddam, and by all Iraqi accounts, Iraq was still three years away from "the bomb" before the first Gulf war, and the U.S. took out Iraq's nuclear capabilities in that conflict--this according to James Risen's new book "State of War." In other words, Iraq not only didn't have nuclear weapons, they didn't even have the hope of getting them before the 2003 invasion. Contrary to Dick Cheney's fantasy, Iraq was nowhere near to "reconstituting" its nuclear program.

And frankly, Iran has every reason to be wary of and hostile toward the U.S. We installed the Shah, we sided with Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war, and Bush said that Iran was a member of the "axis of evil." We rattled our sabers in their general direction, and they're rattling right back.

All of this could be solved through diplomatic channels, regardless of whether the president of Iran hates Jews and denies the Holocaust or not. We don't have to like the policies of other countries and should condemn attitudes like those of Iran's president, but we also don't have to sacrifice our loved ones and billions of dollars just because one Iranian is anti-Semitic. If we invaded every country that had an anti-Semitic leader, we'd go broke quick fast in a hurry.

Car Fire

Here's a picture I took of a car on fire with my new Audiovox SMT 5600 phone. That thing rocks!!!