Unnecessary deaths
Vice President Dick Cheney went to Iraq to tout the success of the troop surge that was initiated last summer, and we’ve heard and read similar assertions from the president and others that the surge is working and that deaths and injuries are down. It is interesting, then, to recall that as early as 2002 the military commanders, the people who were the professionals and the experts, were arguing in the strongest terms the need to go into Iraq with a large contingent of troops. But President Bush and his coterie of war-hawks — Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, etc., the people who were the amateurs and the novices — refused to listen, and in their arrogant, self-serving wisdom chose to invade with a much smaller force than was called for.
So if the much-vaunted surge is working, doesn’t this tell us that if the Bush gang had listened to the generals in the first place, then it is highly likely the death toll of American lives over the last five years would be far less today, and the number of wounded soldiers would be lower by many thousands?
— Ronald C. Brown, Rolling Meadows
Economic woes
The list of challenges that most of us face today in this country is quite formidable. Energy prices are skyrocketing. The dollar is at an all-time low. Wages are slow to grow. Jobs keep disappearing. Taxes keep multiplying. And, among other things, the budget deficit is beyond belief. Even though some products are priced accordingly when taking into account inflation, what sustains Middle America is costing more that ever. It appears that the recent surge in oil prices was not as much a supply issue but a result of speculators buying it up as a hedge against our plummeting currency. Years of greed and selfishness have created this monster. And quite an appetite it has. Now it has begun to eat its own tail. I can only hope that it can be slowed down before it gets to the vital organs.
— Thomas Maru, Lemont
