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As I See It . . .
The following letters were recently published in the "Letters to
the Editor" section of the Albuquerque Journal. They are
being republished here with the authors' consent.
Troops Need Surge To Come Home Again
As a constituent and veteran, I urge Sen. Pete Domenici to act
on his recently expressed reservations about the conduct of the
war in Iraq and to reject any further White House spin and
rewrite of the so-called David Petraeus Report.
The lives and safety of our young servicemen and servicewomen in
harm's way depend on his conviction, conscience and integrity.
My son is one of them.
The administration's public relations that violence in Iraq is
in decline is as transparent as it is tawdry, especially in
light of the irrefutable fact that that sad, suffering nation
has experienced its bloodiest and deadliest days during this
much vaunted surge.
Where now are the president's repeated assurances prior to his
re-election that our troops would be "standing down" as the
Iraqis "stood up" to take their place?
They ring as hollow now as the lies that precipitated this
endless ungodly bloodbath in the first place— as do the cherry
picked factoids and statistics manufactured by Dick Cheney's
office, which omit such inconvenient yet all too lethal
realities as the proliferating Iraqi deaths from car bombs and
Shi'a on Shi'a and Sunni on Sunni as opposed to "intersectarian"
violence, or, for that matter, deaths by gunshot wounds to the
front rather than the back of the head. ...
A young junior officer who has already served two tours in Iraq
told me that the war as he's known it consists entirely of
"kicking down doors and babysitting contractors while waiting to
get your ass blown off." Our valiant young men and women deserve
something better than being reduced to security guards for a
gang of war profiteers who go by names of infamy like
Halliburton and Blackwater and DynCorp and CACI.
The president's cynical game plan has already been exposed by
his own words. He's playing for time and gaming the system
again. We don't need any more bait and switch or "sell and
surge." We need men and women of conscience and integrity, such
as we have always hoped Domenici was, to act on the convictions
that he has already expressed. That's all we ask— start bringing
the troops home now.
BRUCE R. CLARK
Albuquerque
Study Kills Brain Cells
THE JOURNAL carried an article about another study. This one
claims to show that liberals are more "flexible in their
thinking" than conservatives. The research by psychologist David
Amodio found "that conservatives tend to be more rigid and
closed minded, less tolerant."
Well, duh? He could have looked in the dictionary to find the
definitions of liberal and conservative to learn that. How much
time and money was wasted on this silly research?
Another recently reported study showed that males tend to be
more superficial in picking partners than females. Did someone
really think otherwise? Men like pretty blonds and women look
for deeper traits in a man. Is this news to anyone?
What sort of study should we spend money on next? Perhaps one
could explore black and white to see which one is lighter?
According to Amodio's EEG readings, his study claims more
neurons were firing in the liberals "anterior cingulated cortex"
portion of the brain. As a diehard liberal, I'm sure that is
correct. But I also think the researcher should connect himself
up to an electroencephalograph to find out why so many of his
own neurons are misfiring.
WOODY DUNCAN
Albuquerque
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