To the editor:

I’d like to think the results of a TRR Online Poll, published in your December 12-16 edition, are not representative of your readership! When asked to name the “greatest U.S. disaster of all time” the second and third most votes (after a more-understandable “September 11”) went to “the Clinton Administration” and “the current Bush Administration.” I’d like to think such short-sighted politicization was meant as a joke (however disgruntled).

Though in his final year, Clinton brought out the worst in everybody, his administration had a commendable record of accomplishment. And yes, dreadful as much as Bush policy is, America will survive it.

But what is truly alarming is the fact that none of your poll respondents came up with the only obvious answer: our Civil War. Though it might be said to have been inevitable, this conflagration, pitting neighbor against neighbor and brother against brother, nearly tore this great nation asunder, and killed more Americans than any other conflict—including World War II! Perhaps your voters need a refresher course in U.S. history.

The vote confirms my view that the Internet rarely brings out the best in people; they seem more inclined to show themselves as idiots when all it involves is an on-line click. If they had to write or type their opinion, check it over for spelling, punctuation—and sense!—then commit it to the mails in an envelope to address and stamp, they’d be less like to voice such flippant, ridiculous views.

Alfred Lees
Callicoon, NY

To the editor:

Hey! Did you hear? President Pinocchio is immediately air lifting into Iraq “weapons of mass destruction” as the hysterical White House speech writers call the biological and chemical agents which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sold to Saddam Hussein in 1983. President Pinocchio is determined to find offensive weapons, as they used to be called, before moralists started to write presidential speeches. President Pinocchio is going to be very sad if he can’t bomb Iraq and kill 200,000 Iraqis as his daddy used to do.

Unlike his wife, President Pinocchio hasn’t killed anyone yet, although the clone president did order the execution of Timothy James McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. By order of President Pinocchio and Attorney General Ashcroft who lost an election to a dead politician, Timothy James McVeigh was legally assassinated on June 11, 2001. This date was exactly three months to the day and hour before September 11, 2001. Do you think the “terrorists” knew this? Hmm. Brother self-sacrificing bombers.

President Pinocchio and his puppeteers are afraid they are going to lose the election of 2004. They need to get a war going somewhere soon. Did President Pinocchio provoke North Korea? Do politicians influence other nations to attack? If there wasn’t a U.S. naval base on Pearl Harbor, there wouldn’t have been December 7.

Joseph Edward Vallely
Washington Glen, CT

To the editor:

The pastor of the Calkins Baptist Church is a voice crying in the wilderness. Where are all the conservative Christians in this area that allow this nonsense (about Islam being a “peaceful religion”) to go undisputed? Jesus came to proclaim truth. Are we going to give up truth to be accepted in this “politically correct” community?

Paul Weyrich, a longtime conservative political force in Washington, has coauthored an essay called “Why Islam is a Threat to America and the West.” In it he quotes extensively from the Koran and rebuts the president’s contention that this “great religion” is mostly peaceful: “The real nature of Islam is a religion of war and conquest. Those who argue that the threat comes only from ‘Islamic Fundamentalism’ or ‘Islamic extremism’ misportray the nature of Islam itself. War against the unbeliever is as central a doctrine and practice of Islam as the Virgin Birth, the Trinity, and Christ’s resurrection are central to Christianity. Islam cannot abandon jihad and remain Islam. The word Islam, does not mean peace, it means submission.”

More Christians are being martyred today than at the height of the Roman persecutions, and “most of them are dying at the hands of Islam.”

One can sympathize with the dilemma faced by President Bush. He needs some cover in the Muslim world in order to prosecute the war on terrorism. But he also needs to forearm Americans by warning them about the intentions of our enemies. The president should consider calling for “moderate” Muslims to clean up their own house. Such demands are being made by Roman Catholic laity on their hierarchy in the wake of priests alleged to have sexually abused children. The president should ask Muslim political and theological leaders to go after their own, if they are, indeed, misrepresenting “true” Islam. Pressuring “responsible” Muslim leaders to police their own house will help in two ways. If they do it, it will demonstrate there are true moderates who believe in pluralism and tolerance. If they don’t, it will expose their real motives. Peaceful? Prove it!

Linda Hensz
Milanville, PA