Judith-
Though it’s off topic, I was very glad up brought up the matter of Howard Dean. It gives me an opportunity to try to correct the record. I am bypassing the humor group because, as you note, this is not funny.
We are all victims when corporate media slurs the tellers of truth.
As a former Peace Corps Volunteer whose service to his country did not involve a uniform, I think Dean’s response was well within the province of supplying potentially useful information to the poll taker - going beyond what was asked for. Howard Dean makes it very clear in his auto-biography that neither he nor his family know why his brother was listed by the American military forces as MIA-POW. His brother and a friend were taken prisoner and, according to witnesses, executed a few months later. Howard says they have speculated that his brother could have been doing work for the CIA, but that they have no specific knowledge about it. The military has kept a close eye on the effort to find the brother and also kept the Dean family informed of developments, which I presume has been the case of MIA-POW persons in whom our government has had more than casual interest. It is the Pentagon who implied Howard’s brother was serving by its assignment of the military-like status to a person, certainly not in uniform and certainly not "a living relative".
As a political candidate, Howard Dean stands head and shoulders above any we have been used to. He is truthful and he does what he says he will do. He would make an excellent President. Our country desperately needs leaders who use thought rather than ideology and put the interests of the citizens above those of their crony’s portfolios. It is a little hard to criticize Bush, since he seems to believe the lies he parrots. Bush is a "born-again" former drunk and, some say, coke-head. One can appreciate his achievement of staying off the booze and away from the dope, but his sense of reality is clearly far from intact.
Saddam Hussein, a former American CIA beneficiary, was unappreciative when he rejected the Cheney-Rumsfeld proposal of a pipeline deal about 15 years ago, during the time he was gassing the Kurds with American supplied chemicals. Neither Cheney or Rumsfeld have forgotten the snub. Later he invaded Kuwait AFTER getting a tacit go-ahead from the American State Department. The invasion gave the USA an anticipated excuse to start the long planned invasion. Saddam was left in place, since he kept the lid on the animosity between the Sunnis and the Shiites. Saddam’s unrealistic dreams of leading the Moslem world into modern importance led him to continued defiance of what he foolishly expected to be an honorable American administration. His first mistake was turning down the pipeline deal. His second was supposing the CIA wouldn’t figure out he had no WMD. Perhaps they did.
Howard Dean, whose record for good government as a Governor, has been well supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, was one of many reasonably informed Americans who have not been fooled. He is one of the few in public life who has presented the facts, available to anyone who cares to check them out.
I truly hope you will devote some of your own time to discovering the truth and, only on having done so, become politically active in a helpful way.
Sincerely,
Tobey
