Dear Editor,

Is there anyone with the fund-raising and organizational skills out there who thinks as I do that this most sacred building, St. Stephen’s Catholic Church in Glenwood Springs, would be a suitable home for the often-mentioned homeless shelter and workshop?

What an inspiring place to assist those in trouble in their journey back into a life of normal, productive living.

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Mary Lou Zordel

Basalt

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Dear Editor,

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently appointed Omar Mohammedi, general counsel to the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), to his city’s Human Rights Commission.

CAIR is a direct outgrowth of the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP). The IAP is an organization that has directly supported the Palestinian terror group Hamas’ military goals. It is a front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic militants.

CAIR chairman Omar M. Ahmad, who in July 1998 told a crowd of California Muslims, “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran … should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

In a similar vein, CAIR board member Imam Siraj Wahaj calls for replacing the American government with a caliphate, and warns that America will crumble unless it “accepts the Islamic agenda.”

The Web site for CAIR’s New York chapter – with which Mayor Bloomberg’s appointee Omar Mohammedi has been affiliated – openly doubted that Islamic hijackers were responsible for the attacks on Sept. 11, speculating that either the Bush administration or Israel orchestrated the nightmare.

All in all, CAIR’s dual agenda is abundantly clear:

1. To depict the United States as a snake pit of “Islamophobes,” wherein Muslims must fend for their very lives at every moment.

2. To promote the hateful aspirations of our nation’s deadliest enemies, radical Islamic terrorists.

The list goes on. Americans need to know.

Bob Anderson

Glenwood Springs

Dear Editor,

Responding to the column by John Weisheit regarding Lake Powell. First of all, the lake isn’t 50 percent full! Of course to the “doom and gloomists,” you might expect them to refer to it as 50 percent empty.

Sure the lake is 87 feet below normal levels and we are not out of the drought yet, but rest assured there is still a lot of water in that pond. How do I know this? I went there last weekend. The workers down there say the lake is more like 60 to 65 percent full. And with normal runoff conditions it could be back to normal levels within three to five years.

Can you imagine the consequences if Lake Powell or Lake Mead were to be drained?

Millions of acres of crops would cease to grow. Millions of homes would be without power. Millions of Californians would move to Colorado.

Now I will admit that, given the chance, I would have voted against damming the mighty Colorado at that particular point, thus saving the canyon for all its beauty.

But that canyon was flooded, and for a reason. And that reason was for the mass migration to the West in the 1950s and 1960s. It now provides water and power for millions of people. And generates millions of dollars in revenue.

Draining Lake Powell, expecting to see it return to its unspoiled natural state, is like asking the people of Moab to tear down all the hotels in town to return the area back to happy hunting grounds. It ain’t gonna happen!

Dwight Juhl

Glenwood Springs

Dear Editor,

It has recently come to my attention that efforts are being made to close the Glenwood Springs Airport. This is a sad tragedy for aviation enthusiasts. The airport was and is a stepping-stone into the world of aviation for hundreds, myself included.

I earned my pilot’s license while attending high school in Glenwood. I worked after school in order to earn money to fly. The small-town prices and closeness of Glenwood made flying an affordable hobby. I could fly once or twice a week after work and still make it home in time to finish homework.

Glenwood’s airport truly makes aviation accessible to everyone. I also learned a number of skills in Glenwood’s tough environment, such as low-level flying or flying in the swirling winds of the valley. These skills have given me a competitive edge in my career today.

I am now a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. I’m stationed at Laughlin Air Force Base where I am a student in joint specialized undergraduate pilot training, arguably the most difficult school in the U.S. Armed Forces.

By this summer I plan to be flying the C-5, the largest aircraft in any of the world’s air forces. By next Thanksgiving I will likely be delivering troops or goods to a hot desert half a world away – and I’m only 22.

None of this would be possible if I had not been able to realize my dreams as a 16-year-old girl at a small-town airport – just like most of the pilots I know. If we watch these strips disappear for the sake of new housing developments, then the world of aviation will be in a world of hurt as it loses its very foundation.

Very respectfully,

Nichelle Brokering

Del Rio, Texas

Dear Editor,

The one question that isn’t being asked in the polls is the one that really matters: “Do you believe that the United States should invade, bomb, or otherwise punish any country that potentially threatens American economic and political self-interest, without regard to international law, treaty or opinion?”

This is the one that matters because this is the global policy behind George Bush’s mano-a-mano confrontation with Saddam Hussein. It is the position clearly stated in his own National Security Policy, issued after bin Laden’s aerial raping of New York but conceived well before that terrible act.

The moment the first bomb is dropped, everyone, everywhere, will know that no one, anywhere, is safe from the United States of America. And if we do succeed against all odds in raising a stable “democratic” state out of the rubble of Hussein’s rule, the world will know that their economic future is in our hands as well.

No one deserves this kind of power over humanity, nor is anyone wise enough to wield it well – least of all a gang of America Firsters whose operating principle is “if you’re not with us, you’re against us.”

There are many dangerous -isms in the world, but none more than nationalism, which takes honest love for one’s place and people and twists it into fear and hatred of everything foreign.

Nothing could be more foreign to our experience than the bloody deeds of Sept. 11, and our president has seized this opportunity to whip up blind nationalistic support for an unjust war. Unjust not because its nominal end – the removal of a festering tyrant – is unjust, but because the means – one nation acting alone, unprovoked, and for itself – are themselves unjust.

We cannot let our country do this. That is our patriotic duty.

Richard Compton

Carbondale