Letters for January 11, 2007

Still celebrating
The election is over. The people have spoken. I can’t help but think that when President Bush gave “Rummy” the heave-ho the day after the election that Rumsfield and others close by finally got what the rest of us have for the past six years. Lies!

B. Nichols
Sparks

Barbarous execution
As opponents of the death penalty, we regret the execution of Saddam Hussein. Most “civilized” nations no longer practice this barbarism. Saddam was certainly a villainous leader, among many others in the world, including the Dick Cheney-George W. Bush administration, whose crimes include the genocide of over 650,000 Iraqis and the wounding and displacement of millions of others in Afghanistan. We basically destroyed two nations, making them almost uninhabitable due to the radioactive contamination from the illegal use of “depleted” uranium and other types of weapons of mass destruction. Leukemia, cancers, etc. are rampant in these areas. The killing of more than 3,000 and wounding of uncountable 10s of thousands of our finest young people is a crime. Our society has been damaged and impoverished. It should be common knowledge that the United States was complicit with Saddam in some of his heinous crimes, providing poison gas, technology, etc.

Walden and Betty Joura
Reno

We’re honored
Re “A nearby nut” (Editor’s note, Jan. 4):

Your column inspired me to reflect about the meaning of the RN&R in my life.

You mused, “I wonder how many of you regard the newspaper in the same way—more like family than a good friend or bitter enemy.”

Thank you for illuminating a reality: that I read the RN&R no matter where I am, which is often, nowadays, out of town. Sitting in Los Angeles this morning, I opened up your Web site and systematically made my way through every word of the news, features, calendar, editorials and letters. In your publication, I always find the words of friends and community leaders and interesting characters whom I’ve never met. In your pages, I always find much to smile about, much to holler about, and much to mull over.

The RN&R certainly is an album of our community’s landscape, and I thank you all for your stewardship.

Jeanmarie Simpson
Reno

Keep her safe
My only daughter wants to join the Air Force in the hopes of getting a college education. I am totally supportive of her decision, as the Air Force has a proud heritage, and I believe traveling opens a person’s eyes to our beautiful world. How do I tell her to stay away from the munitions that are coated with depleted uranium? It is radioactive, and I believe it lasts for over 1 billion years. I am told that a shell coated with DU goes through tank armor so fast that the people inside are sucked out like spaghetti, but I do not want her to contract radiation poisoning as it will also affect any children she may have and their children and so on. How does anyone know which munitions are coated with DU?

She is my only child, and I believe that she and hers are entitled to life, liberty and happiness.

Dan Williams
Sparks

My kinda Hook
Re “Reader wants his kind of conservative” (Right Hook, Dec. 28):

I, too, want my kind of conservative … and the good news is— you’re “it.”

Thought I’d send a note of thanks and appreciation for your column. It’s pretty much the only reason I pick up the RN&R.

Gary Foote
via e-mail

Frog’s in his heaven
The war in Iraq is nothing more than an ongoing religiously clueless fiasco. I’m sorry that Sen. Kerry’s comments weren’t analyzed in depth. It all boils down to one’s own personal economic reality. How soon we forget how bad the economy was at the start of this campaign.

This war and all the right-wing feedback on this issue is nothing more than promotional, stay-the-course, $400 billion-and-counting duty. It’s clueless of any high moral priority such as the sanctity of human life, arrogantly sending forth our troops into this kind of a chaotic environment. Three years of Iraqi military basic training without any stability tells you that the real societal basic training they need to attain over there is in the god-loving, brotherhood of man.

Living in a country, the United States, that has so much emphasis on the quality of an education, the educational priority here is obviously one you can’t cheat your way through school on. Therefore, even if your god is a frog, the frog wants you to behave yourself. “Frog has spoken; I toad you so.”

Larry Michael Torrez
Reno