"Tommi Boy, Obama, Spiderman and Bush..."Jan. 05‚ 2007I realize that in a website like yours (which I have valued and relied upon) you don't necessarily have full control over every contributor. But my God, did you have to let that sloppy-minded, self-righteous, self-indulgent hippy from Southern Italy whitewash and generally fuzz up Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship? It won't take many more articles like that one to lose all but the most irrational of your readers. Was covering up the Watergate burglary as bad as gassing 140,000 Kurds? Not hardly! Was bombing Cambodia in a last ditch effort to salvage an American disaster created by the previous Democratic Administration tantamount to unleashing the Kymer Rouge? No it was not. (The Kymer Rouge was a largely self-generated and generally unanticipated phenomenon.) Did ousting Allende cause "the slaughter of millions"? In a word: No. Did Nixon leave the world a hero? Possibly to some, but certainly not to most. Were there no weapons of mass destruction? If so, then what was the UN referring to in 1991 when it documented the existence in that year of thousands of tons of chemical weapons, a large biological warfare capability and an active and growing nuclear weapon research program? Exactly what happened to all that stuff? And how did the intelligence services of France, Russia, Israel, England, Germany and the United States all get it wrong? For that matter, how did the Senate Intelligence Committee, which it had its own direct ties into the CIA and National Security Agency, also get it wrong? How did the United States Congress overwhelmingly get it wrong? Was it Bush that caused Hussein's death? Maybe the Iraqis had nothing to do with it. No doubt all those Shiites around the country and in this country who were cheering at the news were being paid by the CIA to behave the way they did. The Iraq war is tragic and complicated enough without Beyond Chron making things worse by letting childish egotists like Tommi boy play with the subject. Dick Best, San Francisco Hi Paul. I am from Australia and like many people around the world have an interest in US politics. I read your article...bashing of barack obama begins...and enjoyed it. Why is it that conservatives always claiming that there is a liberal media bias? The reportings on obama have lacked substance in attacking his name and ethnicity and even verge on malicious with the osama "mistake". It is frustrating to hear people continually claim there is a liberal media bias. Anyway the reason I am writing is to say that I would vote for obama if I could cause the whole world needs someone intelligent, thoughtful, and wise like him. Thanks for your work and have a good day. Daniel Kapitzke The School of Pharmacy The University of Queensland, Australia Editor, It's hard not to think of the Bush administration when thumbing through the latest "The Amazing Spider-Man" comic (#536). First, some background (and you probably don't need to be a rocket scientist to see the parallels): In Marvel Comics' * ahem * "Civil War" story arc, the U.S. government passes the "Superhuman Registration Act" after hundreds of innocent American men, women and children become collateral damage in a superhero-related tragedy (the president of the United States even swings by the disaster site to assess the damage). The act mandates registration of all superheroes with the government. Spider-Man initially supports the act but then grows suspicious after discovering that unregistered captives are being held without civil rights at an off-shore prison called "the Negative Zone" (oh, and the prison was built with a no-bid contract). Detainees will remain there for life if they don't register. Now, to the present: In this latest Spider-Man comic, America's favorite swinging web-slinger takes to New York City's airwaves to publicly denounce the act. "I've seen the very concept of justice destroyed," Spidey begins (as written by J. Michael Straczynski). "I've seen heroes and bad guys alike * dangerous guys, no mistake, but still born in this country for the most part, denied due process, and imprisoned, potentially for the rest of their lives. * But there's a point where the ends don't justify the means, if the means require us to give up not just our identities, but who and what we are as a country." David Cassel, a Spider-Man fan and editor of 10zenmonkeys.com, said in response, "In thirty years of reading Spider-Man, I've never seen an attack so direct." No word yet if the Bush administration is actively courting the Batman vote in response. From a reader... You can submit letters to the editor by clicking on this link: rshaw@beyondchron.org or by writing to: Beyond Chron 126 Hyde Street San Francisco, CA 94102 415-771-9850 (phone) 415-771-1287 (fax) |