Letters to the Editor/<br>  Free Press Forum

I'm writing regarding Rhonda Lokeman's article, assumingly about Mitt Romney, titled "Big Love's Big Problem".  Although, I'm somewhat confused.  Governor Romney's name is mentioned a total of six times in the article, while the name of "Big Love" is mentioned eleven times.  Is Big Love a nickname for Romney? 

Dear Harvey:  You flight of imagination is only matched by those who said that the price of gasoline would be manipulated downwards to re-elect George Bush in the last election or that Osama Bin Laden would be “captured” just before the last election.  Good try, but you are just flapping your pen and lips.

Dear All,

As a resident of Kent and citizen of Ohio I find this whole incident troubling.

A ticket for advertising on public property? How many tickets have been issued for people advertising yard/garage sales? signs posted for the monthly PWP Dance? signs for the Car Show? The Kent Harvest Festival? Art in the Park?

Just today I "witnessed" two grown males (yes, it took two of them- one to pound the stake and the other to attach the sign) place a sign at the corner of Stow and West Main Street that says "Car Show". Of course, they parked their vehicle at Logo's Bookstore so I was unable to get a license plate and contact the police to arrest these criminals. I feel bad for the city of Kent that these two men are at large, possibly posting more signs elsewhere.

I hope that I am not viewed as an accomplice to the crime since I merely witnessed it. In any event, I wanted to bring it to someones attention.

Ahmad Al-Akhras is the Vice Chair of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.  He resides in Columbus, Ohio and can be reached at ahmad@alakhras.org

It was shocking to hear presidential candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) call for the bombing of Muslim holy sites as a deterrent to terrorist attacks on our nation and that is part of his “presidential anti-terror package.”  When reported overseas, such bigoted words can contribute to anti-Americanism, endangering American’s and providing Al-Qaeda and its ilk with a tool to recruit support and raise funds.

Last week Tancredo told an audience, "If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina."  The Congressman, two years ago, engaged in similar rhetoric during a radio interview in Florida. 

In your article "Will Bush Cancel the 2008 Election?" you call for "every possible scenario to be discussed" that can stop the theft of the 2008 election by Bush.   This is indeed an urgent call, as the Bushes have stolen not only the 2000 and 2004 elections, as are well known, but also the 1980 election, as detailed in my book  October Surprise (Tudor, 1989) subsequently confirmed by a book of the same title three years later by Gary Sick,  and others (Robert Parry, Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery; and Ari ben Menasche, Profits of War).  

There is an answer to stopping the obvious plans for  'a new 9/11' or some other pretext to 'suspending'  the 2008 election and/or declaring martial law under  the new Directive 51:   

To the editor:

President Bush and many Republicans in Congress would still like to privatize Social Security. If even 1/3rd of the Withholding Tax is diverted to personal retirement accounts, the current Social Security Fund will be out of money within a decade and the promised disability and retirement benefits will have to be reduced drastically. If 1/3rd of the Withholding Tax of the low paid workers goes to private accounts, they will be destitute when they retire because they will have been unable contribute much to the accounts. This is what happened in Chile and Great Britain when such a scheme was tried. A welfare system had to be instituted to save the poor. Privatizing a significant portion of the Withholding Funds will destroy our current Social Security System, the only safety net many of our citizens have. Fortunately, a recent survey of voters showed that  60% know that privatization will destroy Social Security.     

The first awful, horrendous truth is we don’t know our own real enemy.  It’s not Al Qaeda, it’s not Saddam Hussein, and it’s not terror.  None of these pose a threat to the existence of our democracy.  Properly managed, Al Qaeda has far less ability to inflict physical injury on Americans than do Americans who misuse hand guns and automatic weapons.  In 2005, handguns killed over 30,000 people in America.  Even with these deaths, we do not feel our democracy is in danger.

The second awful, horrendous truth is that almost all our elected Democratic and Republican leaders incorrectly believe there is no enemy.  They do correctly understand that we are not fighting the war in Iraq against an enemy, but rather for a reason—a strategic objective: the control of Middle Eastern oil.  But our elected leaders are wrong in thinking there is no enemy.

America has played the role of the bull in the Iraqi china shop. It was inarguably not the most peaceful establishment in town to begin with; its “employees” have fought amongst themselves since the dawn of recorded history. But Iraq is their shop, and had no part in viciously assaulting our own on September 11, 2001. There is no credible evidence it has ever planned to do so.

The United States still plays the rampaging bull to the people of Iraq, swinging its horns wildly and destroying everything in sight. A bull is incapable of picking up the broken pieces, of walking cautiously and gently between the aisles. It has only two courses of action: to stay and continue to lay waste to the shop, or walk out the front door. As long as the bull stays, the Iraqi people will escalate their assaults to induce it to leave. But a bull is stubborn, and stubbornly believes it can kill all its enemies; such is the nature of bulls. But the rare smart and moral bull decides to walk out of the shop on its own, because it knows it cannot destroy all its enemies in the shop, and because it knows it has no business being in someone else’s shop in the first place.

The Republican defense of President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence in the main has been based on “Clinton did it first”, focusing specifically on President Clinton’s pardon of his friend, financier Mark Rich, and secondarily on the 140-odd other individuals pardoned in the last hours of the first Clinton presidency.

All of these strident voices are ignoring the vital difference between the two presidents. Unlike Bush, President Clinton did not pardon anyone who was accused of covering up his own, Clinton’s, crimes in taking this country into an unnecessary and unjust war based upon a great lie. The reason President Clinton did not is because he did not commit such crimes in the first place, and consequently had nothing to hide.

President Bush, who has committed and continues to commit these crimes to this day, is still in need of protection from the consequences of his actions. That is why Scooter Libby is free today, and was in fact never in any real danger of incarceration.

Dear Editor,

Have you ever wondered why Big and Brutal Tobacco companies are so aggressive to own and control people with influence by bartering tickets, trips, and tips to them for their silence and support? How could you take a free trip to Aruba knowing you had sold out the health of humanity?

Reported in The Virginia Business in June of 2003, “Philip Morris’ relocation means that scores of highly paid mid- and high-level managers, with salaries averaging about $130,000 a year, will be looking for houses, schools and amenities. ( Ref: http://www.virginiaclassifieds.com/biz/virginiabusiness/magazine/yr2003… )

Paying $130k would attract the beautiful and brilliant even today.