Letters

Editor,

It seems that Desmond Tuck has quite an imagination. In his latest letter he says I illustrated "how bad the Israelis are.” And then he goes on to say that I blame the Israelis killed by Arabs "in each and every case...for their own misfortune.”

I did not make any such statement nor use any such words and intended no such inference.

Tuck then goes on to illustrate state sponsored examples of terrorism. He points out very correctly, the atrocities committed by the United States against Japan in World War II, but he neglected to mention the worst: The fire bombing of the major Japanese population centers.

It may come as a surprise to Tuck, but I think that was wrong, too.

I have to ask Tuck one question: How many of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese women and children killed in the fire bombings were sheltering murderers? Again, according to Tuck, its okay to kill kids in what he describes as a crossfire. Don’t even think twice about it.

Tuck totally ignores the example that I made of the Israeli tank shooting into the apartment building where children were sleeping. He speaks of the Israeli Army’s pinpoint accuracy and then says it was not deliberate. Does anyone not remember the sight of the Palestinian man trying to shelter his 9-year-old son with his body from the continuous rifle fire of Israeli troops?

Another innocent child killed in plain view. An accident.

Can anyone see how this breeds hatred?

Tuck minimizes the seizure of tens of thousands of acres of the best farmland in Palestine and all of its aquifers, 57 of them, as being irrelevant. I doubt that the families kicked off of their land think so. And I doubt that the farmers who remain think so either. How can you farm if you have no water?

He closes by saying "this is about the survival of a country in a very dangerous part of the world.” I wonder, was he speaking about Palestine?

David Kensinger

San Mateo

Debunking global warming

Editor,

It is amazing that so many people believe global warming is real and is caused by humans. This myth has been largely promoted by the major media that gives much attention to those who support it and very little to those who debunk it.

For example, in December, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma chaired a "Climate Change and the Media” meeting. He said that global warming is a hoax. The meeting received almost no major media attention.

At this meeting, Dr. David Deming, a geophysicist at the University of Oklahoma, stated, "I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.”

Deming also said that he received an astonishing e-mail from a major researcher in climate change that read, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” From about 800 A.D. to 1300 A.D. we had the Medieval Warm Period where the world was as warm or warmer than it is today. But, it is an obstacle to those maintaining that the current warming is abnormal.

People who want to hear the other side can go to www.oism.org/pproject for a scientific debunking of global warming. Also, listed are the names of more than 17,000 scientists, meteorologists and other technical people who have signed a petition stating that there is no convincing scientific evidence to support global warming.

Robert W. Van de Walle

Granada Hills

Iraq war unlike WWII

Editor,

"As a final thought, I would like Mr. Rudow to compare the way WWII was waged from Dec. 9. 1941 to Sept. 2, 1945 to the way the war in Iraq has been fought.”

The United States has committed its armed forces to action more than 200 times, but Congress has declared war only five times. Only five times has it declared war legally: The War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War and World Wars I and II. The administration’s lies about its rationales for attacking Iraq fit a pattern of deceit that has dragged America into other unjust and catastrophic wars. Conscious, manipulative lies were also at the root of US intervention in Vietnam. Hysterical cold warriors portrayed Vietnam as the key domino in a global struggle against communism. The U.S. had canceled 1956 elections, which would have given Ho Chi Minh control of a unified Vietnam. But nationalist guerrillas were clearly on the brink of wrestling South Vietnam from western control.

In 1964 North Vietnamese allegedly fired on two US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. While campaigning as a peace candidate, Lyndon Johnson used the incident to win congressional approval for unlimited intervention. By 1967 he’d sent some 550,000 US troops into Southeast Asia.

As the old saying goes, about the only thing we ever learn from history is that we never learn from history. One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, and what some governments consider potential terrorists are simply those who don’t agree with government policies. We know what reasons they’ll use now for the war: To ensure Israel’s security, probably give it more territory, grab off the Arab oil countries to be sure of their supply of oil. All in the name of freedom. But from whence wars? Blessed are the peacemakers for the meek shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5).

Ted Rudow III

Menlo Park