Why Bother?

This was snipped from the Letters section of Newsday, and you have to admit, the guy has a point:

True lies

When the Bush administration was selling us the Iraq war, we were told that Iraq was a major terrorist base. It wasn't then; it is now. They told us that attacking Iraq was the same thing as attacking Islamic fundamentalists. It wasn't true under Saddam Hussein, but the most powerful political force in post-Hussein Iraq seems to be - you guessed it - Islamic fundamentalism.

Of course, they also told us that Iraq was threatening to attack Americans with weapons of mass destruction, and that wasn't true either. So what's happening now? A month or two ago there was a report that American soldiers had discovered a secret lab where the insurgents were trying to manufacture chemical weapons, presumably for use against American soldiers. Memo to the Bush administration: Be careful what you lie about. It just might come true.

Wayne Karol
Levittown

But for every letter-to-the-editor like the one above, there are those of opposing views. I suppose this has to do with newspapers attempting to justify the presentation of "balance" of opinion.

For example, a couple key paragraphs from a letter in the renowned Arizona Republic:

We can't stop fighting

Oct. 15, 2005 12:00 AM
So many letters "sing" the same sour note, tune varies, lyrics don't. "Bush lied, bring the troops home, stop sacrificing our soldiers, Iraq war is based on lies, let Iraq heal, let us live in peace." Distinctions without a difference. Quit, surrender, give up, peace.

Terrorists tested us with bombs and several attacks during Clinton's years in office with no response. The Twin Towers destruction would prove to them our lack of resolve prior to their totally wiping us out.

(snip)

Thomas Ward
Mesa

Gee, think much? Iraq was never involved in any attacks against us. That is, until we sent our own youth there to serve as target practice for their resistance to our war of aggression.

That letter writer concludes with an unfounded assertion that the terrorists have not attacked us again but they will as soon as we stop the Iraq fiasco (my words.) The old "we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here" fallacy.

Right. That'll work.

I have an immigration corollary for that: Let's send all of our Border Patrol agents to Acapulco so we can fight illegal immigration there instead of here.

Propaganda works... on stupid people, of which there are a great many, in my humble opinion. So many still believe the lies, probably because it is just too uncomfortable to face the god-awful truth.

We cannot continue to force our children to pay for the mistakes made by our generation. We must stop insisting that they die for Halliburton profits in a war initiated on lies.

We cannot continue to run up debt so vast that it will roll back the lifestyle advances made during the progressive years, causing our children to live with far less comfort than ourselves.

Well, we could, but that would be stupid.