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Letters

Dear Editor,

Is anyone besides me appalled at the money wasted by our “not-for-profit community hospital” on a nearly daily display of full-color, full-page advertisements on the question of vacating “those portions of 19th Street and Palmer Avenue where the Hospital and medical facilities and parking are currently located”?

In following weeks of stories and what seems like months of full-page color ads, I’ve seen only one short letter take even mild exception to the question of permitting the expansion project to go forward. Did this ballot question really require a “special election” and such extravagant promotional expenditures? To convince us of … what?



I do hope some members of the hospital’s Board of Directors review what is clearly an absurd over-promotion of this slam-dunk project. Certainly whatever portion of the $32 million expansion project was wasted on all of these over-done full-color advertisements could have been much better allocated elsewhere among the hospital’s services.

I have always been inclined to cast my vote in favor of this project, but this ridiculous promotional campaign makes me question the overall management of the hospital’s finances. What are they so concerned about? What makes them feel a need to pummel the citizenry with their viewpoint in such an overwrought and expensive manner?



Ronald E. Limoges

Glenwood Springs

Dear Editor,

I take great exception to Lynn Burton’s column on the execution of skunks. Skunks have a right to live without some trigger-happy dodo doing them in. Skunks eat insects, mice, squirrels; they are the farmer’s friend.

As far as “experts say you shouldn’t let them go” – may I ask what experts?

I found the column on the execution of skunks totally distasteful.

Dorothy M. Simmons

Glenwood Springs

Dear Editor,

This is a response to Mr. Doug Meyers’ letter concerning the conflict in Iraq. In this letter, Mr. Meyers mentioned men and women in Iraq being decapitated right in front of their family members. He then went on to make the statement, “Who cares if the victim’s heads were displayed in front of their homes for several days? We don’t have to look at it; we don’t have to deal with it.” This is the typical attitude of many pompous Americans who think we are the only people in the world that matter. To these people, I exercise my freedom of speech to say this: Shame on you. Have a little compassion.

Danielle Stone

Glenwood Springs

Dear Editor,

If Doug Meyers’ sardonic letter was intended to make an anti-war reader like me feel guilty for not being eager to avenge all of Mr. Hussein’s misdeeds, he has totally missed his mark, at least with me.

Despite all the tragic injustices in this world, we can not avenge all of them. For us, avenging 9/11 is more than enough – and to be just and moral, any revenge should be limited only to the actual perpetrators, not people who look like, sound like, or share the same religion.

Doug, there is a helluva lot more barbarism that deserves our attention in Africa, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Somalia – yes, even in Palestine and Israel.

We need to control the Bush-driven hysteria. Clearly, Iraq oil – redemption for George, the Father’s, mistakes, election victory and of course, Iraqi oil – but not Iraqi malfeasance – is Bush’s true target.

Joe Kaplan

Glenwood Springs

Dear Editor,

From 1945 to 2000, the U.S. government tried to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments and crush more than 30 populist movements struggling against oppressive regimes. In recent decades, the United States has repeatedly waged devastatingly one-sided aerial wars against small, weak and impoverished nations.

The killing of more than 3 million people in Vietnam has been matched by the continuing American genocide of more than 2.5 million people in Iraq, including at least 600,000 children. The U.S. government has supported death squads and dictatorships in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile, and many other nations. The people of Panama, Haiti, Laos, Angola, and Mozambique have been subjected to massive terrorist attacks by the United States. In 1979, the U.S. military committed the most ferocious, sustained aerial bombardment of a nation in the history of the world, and called this 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia “humanitarian intervention.”

CIA intervention in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1999 created a war that destroyed a popular reformist government, killed more than a million Afghans, and trained an army of terrorists, including Osama bin Laden. In its recent attacks on Afghanistan, the United States killed more than 3,000 civilians.

The United States has a half-million soldiers stationed in at least 395 major bases and hundreds of smaller installations in 35 foreign countries, more than 8,000 strategic nuclear weapons, and 22,000 tactical nuclear weapons, more than enough to destroy all life on Earth.

Global U.S. arms sales rose to $36.9 billion in 2000. The United States has given $240 billion in military aid to train, equip, and subsidize 2.3 million troops in more than 80 countries, including many military autocracies. The current military budget is $437 billion, more than the rest of the industrial nations combined.

We must end the American politics of brutality. We need a revolution in moral values to create a political culture in which Americans respect the value of human life, including the lives of nonAmericans.

A reporter once asked Mohandas Gandhi what he thought of western civilization. Gandhi replied that he thought “it would be a good idea.”

As a Natural Law Party candidate for Congressional District 3, I am making a stand to create a civilized society, to offer political opposition to war and genocide, and to declare that the natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness belong to people everywhere in the world.

For more information about my campaign, see my website at http://www.geocities.com/gwswing.

Gary Swing

Denver


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