To the editor:

In the interest of brevity and accuracy we submit the following rewrite of the “Human Shield” Gulf War story on page two of your June 19 issue.

Saddam Hussein loots children’s chemotherapy machine fund and builds fifth palace.

Local Iraqi officials mishandle nuclear test waste thus contaminating water and soil.

Iraqi military leaders set fire to oil wells and pump oil into the sea causing widespread pollution and danger to the population.

Saddam Hussein orders biological weapons used on restless population members and poison gas used on Kurds in northern section and he initiates invasion of Kuwait.

Retreating military use chemical filled shells resulting in U.S. forces contracting Gulf War syndrome disease.

Farmers have given up planting and successfully implemented birth control due to widespread fears of pollution and water contamination.

Saddam Hussein uses money from oil sales to build sixth palace, expand military and establishes personal fortune in foreign banks.

Saddam Hussein and family control press allowing only their viewpoint to be reported.

Saddam Hussein submits multi-page list of chemical and biological weapons he has developed to the UN and then refuses to account for their disposal, or present location.

Flash—speaker Benjamin Joffe-Walt blames the U.S. for the problems in Iraq at a meeting at St. Francis Xavier Parish Hall where the welcome mat is always out for the Wayne Peace group.

Comment—such negative propaganda does a terrible disservice to America and to those needy civilians that Joffe-Walt “just wanted to help.”

John A Lloyd
Rose E. Lloyd
Narrowsburg, NY

To the editor:

I send in this response to Stephen Stuart’s visioning article about alternative energy.

I have lived with solar power for the past 18 years without land-based lines. Several facts that he mentions are not accurate. The incentives are not there for the average person to install the alternative power of solar. Only those who like to keep up with the Jones or want to go back to Manhattan and say I have solar home, when they have a land line outside is a mockery of the objective of creating useful alternative energy. Even Congressman Hinchey agrees with me. I have met him several times in his office in Binghamton about these issues and also email his office regularly about the incentives for solar power for the average or low class homeowners. The state programs are for $20,000 to $30,000 for the average house. How many people can afford that?

I have lived with the trials and tribulations of learning from experience, since no one has the knowledge out there for our area.

I also use solar for my satellite Internet and satellite phone and satellite TV and water pumping. I have propane, 12-volt, 110-volt lights and I use all three to satisfy my lighting needs. I think having solar panels on a flat roof is not applicable in the snow climate for obvious reasons. I need to generate 30 to 40 amps/100-200 watts for about five average hours per day to satisfy my needs, without having refrigeration, dishwasher, washing machines, power tools, etc.

Think about that for awhile.

David Sauro
Hancock, NY

To the editor:

In the past few weeks, I have heard a lot of bashing about the yellow ribbons. I have heard, “the war is over,” let’s take them down. They are faded, torn and don’t look good anymore.

Those yellow ribbons are a symbol for our soldiers to return home safe. Whether or not the war is over, our soldiers are dying by the week. I’m sure they are tired, worn and faded and would give anything to be home with their loved ones.

Have we all forgotten that not only in Afghanistan and in Iraq, we have soldiers all over the world fighting and dying for our country’s freedom? Should we remove the ribbons and forget them all? Not me!

Those brave men and women need our support and prayers now more than ever.

Please don’t forget them and what they continue to do. Pray for them and hang more yellow ribbons, so that those that return know they have and never will be forgotten.

Judy Melchick
Livingston Manor, NY

To the editor:

The following letter was sent to President George Bush and submitted for publication.

Dear Mr. Bush:

On Friday, our son Daniel Kennedy graduated from eight grade. At his awards assembly, he received the “President’s Education Award” for academic achievement. With this award came a letter from you in which you state the following: “My Administration is working to make every public school in our country a place of high expectations and achievement.” Our son requested that we throw the letter out. Instead, we decided on recycling it as a testament to his youth’s awareness of your administration’s all out attack on intelligent environmental policies.

As far as your administration’s commitment to public schools, the hypocrisy is blatant, even to a fourteen-year-old boy. It becomes increasingly clear that the nation was prodded into a war, which will cost billions of dollars, dollars much needed for the crumbling infrastructure of America’s public schools. The intelligence with which you rationalized death and destruction is either patently bad or you and your cohorts lied. Neither option—stupidity and carelessness or intentional misrepresentation—are qualities to which we expect our son to aspire. In addition, the tax policies of your administration border on criminal, where public schools, public programs, and support for the common citizen is concerned. As yesterday’s New York Times states, college educations become more expensive, even as federal support for students is decreased in record levels.

My husband and I are intelligent and hard working people. I am a school teacher; my husband is an environmental consultant. We have seen first hand the effects your policies have had on the world our children live in. As you attempt to terrify our children with your rhetoric of fear, you pull apart the social and community system which educates our children and keeps the land they live on clean and healthy.  In addition, you label those who would argue and debate your wrongheaded endeavors as “unpatriotic.” “Unpatriotic” is how you have defined for my son his parents.

The complex history of this country and of the regions that we currently accost with our military might reveals that the reduction of poverty, the true quest for liberal education, and the sincere attempt at reducing exploitation by corporations of the resources of all the world’s populations are the only intelligent means to combat terrorism. These wars and our increasingly exploitive policies in the world are recruitment drives for Al Queda and other terrorist networks. You set no example for our children, and though we are immensely proud of our son’s achievements, we decline any recognition from you with regard to them.

Kevin and Virginia Kennedy
Milford, PA

To the editor:

Once again the nurses at Catskill Regional Medical Center (CRMC) have been forced to take a strike vote as a last resort to reach an agreement on our expired contract.

As professionals, we realize the impact of the strike on our community, the hospitals and our families.

We are writing this letter to the public to inform all concerned, the reasons why we must take this action.

The reasons go deeper than our health care benefits, salaries and pensions. We are also concerned with the quality of care we provide to our patients. A quality that can sharply decline when an already exhausted R.N. is mandated or forced to float to another unit, due to inadequate staffing.

There is also a matter of respect, or lack of respect. We are expected to give all and get none in return.

So to our community, we are sorry we had to take this measure. We only hope that you will support us in our decision to provide a better quality of life to our families and to our patients.

Katherine Hahn, RN, Jeffersonville
Patty Paige Cannonier, RN, Wurtsboro, NY
Donna Scuderi, Loch Sheldrake, NY
Judey Bernstein, RN, Cochecton, NY
Kathy Ellison, RN, Livingston Manor, NY

To the editor:

If our culture as a whole is to be protected from the depredations of criminals within its subcultures, such as the preying upon the vulnerable by some criminal priests for example, a call for the ending denial on the part of the Bishops is hardly an answer. It may be, at best, a step in the direction of effective change. And it may well be out of sequence. It is about as effective as a therapist telling a patient to simply give up self-destructive behavior. In the absence of further intervention, it just doesn’t work—certainly not in the long run, as experience clearly shows.

Recognition that many such problems are endemic to our larger culture is a necessary first step in rooting out these problems effectively. It did not require a gifted diagnostician to identify pervasive problems within the Catholic Church nor has it required one to identify comparable problems within the armed services, medicine, the police and school boards, to cite but a few other examples.

In order to do something effective about these destructive, sometimes criminal, behaviors and their equally destructive cover-ups, rather than simply to engage in the usual fitful, temporary fixes we witness with gruesome regularity, the common elements of these subcultures must be identified, the causes and cover ups rigorously studied, and on the basis of the findings, sophisticated interventions must be devised.

To offer simple-minded solutions or to treat them as individual problems is to ignore reality, vitiate our resources, offer ourselves a false sense of security and of having done something about the problem, and insure that the problems, or ones very much like them, will, with predictable certainty, soon cycle in again.

Lee Karr
Forestburgh, NY