Friday, June 29, 2007

Renowned Tennis Southpaw Chides Mayor


Again, Fresno makes headlines for all the wrong reasons. How sad that Mayor Alan Autry felt compelled to resign from the national organization of mayors because he was not given enough time to figure out how to vote on what should have been the easiest decision of his life -- a vote to support pulling troops out of Iraq.

How difficult is it to see the harm that the illegal and unjust invasion of Iraq is doing to communities like Fresno? Obviously there is the senseless loss of military lives from towns such as ours. Second, there is the depletion of funds that could have been used for so many productive purposes here at home, rather than to create death and misery abroad.

Perhaps we could be making real progress in repairing the Gulf Coast communities ravaged by Katrina instead of just putting lipstick on a pig. Perhaps we could be providing quality health care to our citizens, or cleaning our putrid air. The list could go on and on.

If the mayor truly had the interests of Fresnans at heart, voting to support troop pull-out should have been a no-brainer.

Jeffrey W. Eisinger

Fresno

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Local Mountain Dweller Lists Pro-Administration Boneheads


Don't we all wish we could have a job in which, no matter how much we screwed up, we continued to be recognized and rewarded? We would aspire to be William Kristol, Ken Adelman, David Frum, Douglas Feith, Ollie North, Victor Davis Hanson, the Weekly Standard, conservative talk show hosts and the Fox News Channel. They were effectively 100% wrong about Iraq and now they are brought in as authorities on Iran.

This same group also advocated the "surge." Now Gen. David Petraeus suggests it will take no less than 10 years to stop the violence. With 14 permanent bases being built in Iraq, it is safe to say that we intend to occupy Iraq for many years to come.

Let's look back to 2001 and examine why 9/11 occurred. Osama bin Laden clearly said that having exhausted all other means of trying to get 20,000-plus U.S. military personnel out of Saudi Arabia, he had no alternative but to attack America. With all that conservative brain power, don't they realize that occupying Iraq guarantees an attack deadlier than 9/11? Maybe they do, but sacrificing your children is a small price to pay for oil and world domination.

Alan Cheah

Oakhurst