The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Langley's Last Legs

5.2.06 @ 12:01AM

SHOOT FIRST
Re: Scotty Uhrich's letter (under "Hands On With Animals") in Reader Mail's Empty Tanks and R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s The American Circus:

PETA doesn't hesitate to roll up our sleeves and help animals in need, even when that means providing severely ill or injured animals, or those for whom no good home can be found, with a painless, peaceful death. When we discovered that certain pounds in northeastern North Carolina were cramming animals into a rusty, windowless box and gassing them, shooting animals, and injecting animals with a paralytic agent that slowly suffocated them, we worked with those localities to arrange for painless euthanasia by injection for those unwanted animals who were already slated to die. Our involvement spared those homeless animals untold suffering.

A loving home doesn't exist for every homeless animal. That is why PETA operates a spay/neuter clinic that recently performed its 30,000th surgery. But for those unwanted animals already discarded, euthanasia is a kindness. The same can't be said for factory farms' practice of cutting off animals' beaks, tails, and testicles without painkillers, or scalding and dismembering animals while they're still alive, as frequently happens in slaughterhouses, or beating, chaining, and shocking animals to force them to perform in circuses.

To learn more about PETA's work to help animals, visit HelpingAnimals.com.
-- Daphna Nachminovitch
Director, Domestic Animals and Wildlife Rescue & Information
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
Norfolk, Virginia

BABBINIZE THE CIA
Re: Jed Babbin's CIA's Castra Praetoria:

I am not sure that Jed Babbin isn't a bit too hard on the record of the CIA. My understanding is that it was the most right, or the least wrong, government agency on Vietnam and that it had considerable success in the early Reagan years pursuing the strategy of liberating eastern Europe and fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan (although the latter may have assisted in the creation of our current problems with Islamic radicalism).

That said, his main point is correct. It is a peculiarity of bureaucracies that they are invincibly obtuse about their failures. I think of this as the "French general staff effect."

After the failure of the French general staff in World War II, which didn't just result in defeat, but in the transfer of the country to one of history's more depraved regimes, was their a housecleaning? No. Was there an agonizing reappraisal on the part of leading French generals, such that they resigned due to their failure to their country? No. They all decamped to Vichy and the next thing on the agenda was lunch. In fact, they were affronted that de Gaulle wanted to continue the war and put a death sentence on his head.

So also with the CIA currently. George Bush did not want to cripple our government with finger pointing after 9/11. But he paid a high price for it because there is no such thing as becoming modesty on the part of bureaucrats for their failures. If they are not removed, they are just as arrogant after a failure of mission as they were before.

Anyone with a sense of propriety would not dream of complaining about Rumsfeld setting up an analysis section on intelligence in the Pentagon after the incredible nonfeasance of the CIA on 9/11. Since the CIA failed at its mission, it followed that leaders would want a second opinion. But noooo, as John Belushi used to say.

And now, without any embarrassment, the failures at the CIA are engaged in a campaign of malice against the Bush Administration and therefore against the country. The Bush Administration was reelected in an election that featured the Iraq War as a central argument. The people have spoken.

I cannot understand how an employee at the CIA, if fired for cause, gets to retain their pension, even if they are only one day away from qualifying for it. Out. And call the Justice Department.
-- Greg Richards

Wow! Jed Babbin's column about the Praetorians in the CIA is a frightening one. The merging of CIA anti-Americans with media anti-Americans sends shivers down my spine. Both groups' holier-than-thou attitudes, pretending that they know what's best for us and that they can do no wrong, puts our country at great risk. Of course, we must understand that they only define patriotism differently. Orwell must be rolling over in his grave. His definition of doublethink comes to mind: "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." How could one believe he is doing patriotic things when in actuality he is undermining the security of the nation? Orwell again: "(Doublethink) to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed."

Thus we get the media obsession with the "outing" of Valerie Plame at the same time they shrug their shoulders when the N.Y. Times and the Washington Post actually put the country and its heroes in grave danger.

We are in perilous times, and in times of peril we need clarity in our speaking and in our thinking. I'm grateful to find such clarity in Jed Babbin and The American Spectator.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Education, Trade, Islam, Law, Military, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Israel, Pakistan, NATO, Africa, Immigration, Nuclear Weapons, Energy, Oil