Attack on Obama totally dishonest

To the editor:

After following the editorial page of the Review-Journal for some time, I wasn't surprised when the anti-Obama editorial, "Barack Obama in his own words," was published on June 6. What did surprise me was the intellectual dishonesty and false conclusions your piece contained.

For example, when the presumptive Democratic nominee for president spoke in Oregon, you quoted him as saying: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. ... That's not going to happen." To paraphrase: When we give the perception that we are consuming more than our fair share of the world's resources, expecting other countries to say this is OK is "not going to happen." He's talking about how other countries react to us, an understanding vital to conducting foreign policy.

Yet the Investor's Business Daily and the Review-Journal lock onto the phrase "not going to happen" and try to persuade readers that Sen. Obama would impose some kind of police state, ascribing to this phrase "an ominous tone of authoritarianism."

The main thrust of your editorial was to put a negative spin on Sen. Obama's comments to new graduates of Wesleyan University, implying that he had somehow shown disregard and disrespect to America's capitalist system by encouraging the new graduates to pursue callings and values beyond the quest for money. To your credit, you allowed that maybe higher values than money exist, but your subsequent attack on Sen. Obama betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the values that Americans hold dear.

I could give you thousands of examples of holding other values higher than personal wealth (more than 4,000 extreme examples have occurred in recent years), but one really stands out. Will we be naming the new bridge across the Colorado at Hoover Dam after Kenneth Lay or Michael Milkin or a profit-above-all doctor named Dipak Desai? The bridge will honor a true American hero, Pat Tillman, who left his multimillion dollar career in the National Football League to defend our freedom in Afghanistan, and who paid the ultimate price. Here is a man who acted in complete opposition to your almighty quest for dollars to pursue a higher calling, dedication to country.

For you to attack Barack Obama for trying to inspire in young people this kind of dedication to country is over the line. You owe us all an apology.

B. Atwell

LAS VEGAS

Revisionist history

To the editor:

Richard Wassmuth's June 10 letter highlighted the revisionist history utilized by some Republicans at the expense of President Clinton. It is an article of fact amongst Clinton haters that he did nothing to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and "sat on his hands" when Americans were attacked during the early years of his administration. The actual facts tell us otherwise.

The terrorists who planned and carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center were caught, convicted and imprisoned. The increases in anti-terrorism funding and security measures that President Clinton demanded and pushed through Congress after the 1993 bombing were derided by Republicans as fear-mongering.

His attempts to kill Osama bin Laden were dismissed as "wag the dog" distractions during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. There were many other actions taken by President Clinton to kill or capture bin Laden and otherwise defend America from terrorist attacks, yet his critics seem to have short memories.

The same Clinton critics don't seem to be able to list the efforts of President Bush during his time in office prior to the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 commission report tells us that President Bush wanted to try a different approach to the terrorism problem, but his administration actually lowered the priority of anti-terrorism efforts. Vice President Dick Cheney was put in charge of an anti-terrorism task force, but he had nine meetings with his energy task force and didn't have a single meeting about anti-terrorism plans until the week prior to the attacks.

Unbiased history tells us that President Clinton tried and failed to kill bin Laden but President Bush did very little to protect America from the world's No. 1 terrorist threat prior to 9/11.

James N. Bragge

NORTH LAS VEGAS

Do-nothing Congress

To the editor:

The price of gasoline keeps going up, supposedly because the price of a barrel of oil that the gas companies have to buy for refining is going up. This causes household discretionary spending to go down.

This I can understand. What I can't understand is why, then, do the net profits of the large oil companies who are buying these "high-cost" barrels of oil keep going up to record levels?

Maybe if most of our politicians in Washington weren't super rich and had to live like we do out here, something might be done to resolve the dilemma.

Bruce N. Croft

HENDERSON