OUT OF BOUNDS
Re: Virginia Rose's letter ("Out of Left Field") in Reader Mail's
Continuing
Education:
It's hard to cram so many incorrect statements into a single
short letter. Ms. Rose confuses the Mariel Boatlift with the Boat
People. The former did come from Cuba; the latter -- in
overwhelmingly larger numbers, and the group which created the
phrase -- from Vietnam after 1975, fleeing the Communist government
which had come to power. The Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia,
not Laos, in 1975. The U.S. had done everything in its power to
prevent their triumph until Cooper-Church and similar follies
perpetrated by the Left cut off our aid to the opposing forces. (I
spent six years in Cambodia doing development work in 1995-2001 and
my wife is from there). The U.S. did, for a while commencing in
1979, refuse to recognize the Vietnamese puppet government that
threw the Khmer Rouge out for strategic reasons arguably valid at
the time. I am 59, a Vietnam veteran and proud to have served. My
friends from those days are equally proud. One hard lesson we
learned is that some of the Americans whose freedoms we defended
were ingrates, or ignorant, or both. Ms. Rose's letter just goes to
show...
-- David Clayton Carrad
Augusta, GA
Well, Virginia loves America? I think Virginia went to too many
Peace Marches in the seventies. Vietnamese Communists were more
honorable than the American soldier? She probably thinks the Black
Panthers were a bunch of cuddly, lovable teddy bears. I am sure the
7, 000 or so people in the Vietnamese village of Hue who were
SLAUGHTERED by the Vietcong for no apparent reason, except they
were South Vietnamese, might disagree with Virginia's apparent love
relationship with the Vietcong. As for "hurting people for private
gain and not sticking around to rebuild and only loot," as an Air
Force veteran I can personally tell you that I spent my career
"staying around" in countries defending their sovereignty. Japan,
Germany, and South Korea also come to mind as a matter of fact.
Last I checked we were "sticking around" there pretty good too.
Republicans, like me, live in the real-world. And Virginia, in the
real-world there are a lot of nasty people who do a lot of nasty
things. I would love to live in the sixties-Liberal version of what
the real world should be like, but that has already been tried --
in Russia. P.S. It didn't work, just ask the many million Stalin
SLAUGHTERED during his tenure.
-- Andrea Wolfe
Virginia Rose is wrong. I once had the pleasure of counting as my
next-door neighbors a family of "boat people." They were proud
Vietnamese who vowed never to call Saigon "Ho Chi Minh City."
-- Kevin McGehee
Coweta County, GA
IF IT QUACKS LIKE A DOC
Re: Lawrence Henry's Calling
Doctor X:
One of the medical practices that have allowed quacks like Doctor X to continue to kill and maim their patients is a practice enshrined in federal law and lobbied for by Doctors and Hospitals that prohibits release of "after-action reports" to the public or other Doctors. These "after-action reports" are reviews by Hospitals and Doctors of a botched procedure which include recommendations on how to avoid repeats. Hospitals and Doctors have brought the Doctor X problem on themselves. If some injured patient of Doctor X is able somehow to find out the identity of one or more of the sniveling cowards who covered up Doctor X's malpractice by omission, the patient should be able to sue the coward for allowing Doctor X to continue his butchery.
The patient is hurt in body and mind. Doctor X might be hurt in
reputation. Who would the cowards rather face? Their cowardice is
not about lawsuits, it is about the good-old-boy "protection"
Doctors provide each other. Until "after-action reports" on botched
procedures are required by law to be released to the public, the
good-old-boy protection racket will continue and patients will
continue to be butchered and maimed by quacks and frauds like
Doctor X.
-- John Gridley
EXTRA CREDIT
Re: Reader Mail's Continuing
Education and John R. Dunlap's Tuition
Delusion:
The point about college costs has been missed entirely. The
reason costs are out of control is that the universities are
controlled by socialists. History has proven that everything
socialists do costs 3 to 9 times as much as it would if capitalists
were controlling it.
-- Steve Nikitas
Pittsfield, MA
BURY BUSY
Re: The Washington Prowler's Production
Value:
The Democrats found out that it cost them more than $16,000 to have their sexually deviant ex-President appear in public at the Wellstone "love in." Mondale can testify to that fact as pal Clinton "buried" him along with Paul Wellstone come election day.
The GOP might consider contributing money to Bill's travel
budget to help him do the same for Gore et al.
-- Ken Wyman
Huntsville, AL
BREAKING UP ISN'T HARD TO DO
Re: John Corry's After
the Inevitable War:
You ARE a genius! I say this because you agree with me. I was advocating dismembering Iraq back in 1990, and everybody thought I was nuts. But really, WHY NOT? It isn't like it's a real country or anything. It's just a chunk of the Ottoman Empire that was a convenient size for the British to run after WWI. It kept the Arabs paid off and mostly quiet. Nobody cared much about how rough it might be on the Assyrians, Kurds, Sh'ia's and even the Sunnis.
I say, rip it apart. Ain't no one gonna miss it.
-- Harry Haley
( A faithful subscriber for most of the last 10 years.)
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