Letters to the Editor: Nov. 19, 2003

The Naples Daily News welcomes letters of up to 250 words. We reserve the right to reject letters or edit for clarity, brevity, good taste and accuracy, and to prevent libel. No poetry, attacks on private individuals, or letter-writing campaigns, please. Writers should limit submissions to one letter every two weeks. Include a phone number and make certain you have signed your letter.

Letter of the Day — Over here

Editor, Naples Daily News:

As a service member stationed in the Middle East on a one-year remote assignment, I read the Naples Daily News online as often as possible, mission permitting. I always read the letters section to see what the people back home are thinking.

Like your typical reader, there are many letters I agree with, and many I do not.

Some writers are simply venting their frustrations, and other letter writers are harmless, like Eddie Filer.

Many other writers, however, scare the heck out of me. Their hatred and rage directed towards other writers, governmental bodies and elected leaders are extremely disturbing. It is safer living in the Middle East than it is writing a letter to this newspaper!

About Iraq and President Bush, the letter published on Nov. 14 by Robert L. Ferguson says it best when referring to troops on active duty: "They take the crying of civilians -- with an ax to grind, to withdraw the forces -- as a criticism of the troops."

Intended or not, attacks directed at the commander in chief and secretary of Defense are attacks against us too. The Iraqis, al-Qaida and other foreign fighters aren't turning this into another Vietnam; the American public is turning this into another Vietnam.

I am an intelligence officer in the Combined Air Operations Center. I was originally in Saudi Arabia but was moved over to Qatar when we shut down operations at Prince Sultan Air Base. I look at both Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is extremely disturbing and disheartening to see the huge divide in the country I have sworn to defend like my father and uncles before me.

Ultimately, to paraphrase Voltaire, I may disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Wings

Editor, Naples Daily News:

With Aviation Day taking place this past Saturday at the Naples Municipal Airport, it is a good time to reflect on one of its participants: Civil Air Patrol (CAP) and its importance to our country.

Founded days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, CAP has protected America as the official U.S. Air Force Auxiliary through its missions: emergency services, aerospace education and the cadet program. CAP is a nationwide nonprofit organization headquartered at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., consisting of 52 wings, one in each state plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. CAP currently has over 64,000 all-volunteer members, including 27,000 cadets ages 12 to 21.

During World War II, CAP performed coastal patrols, sinking German U-boats off the U.S. shore. Today we perform homeland security, disaster relief, and counter-drug missions. CAP flies 95 percent of all U.S. inland search and rescue missions and has America's most extensive communication network.

Located at the Naples Airport, Naples CAP Cadet and Senior Squadrons have been protecting us for decades. Through nightly coastal patrols along the Gulf looking for those in distress, to homeland defense and disaster relief, we provide a valuable service to the community. Due to our efforts, this year our Cadet and Senior Squadrons won the Best Squadrons Award in the entire state!

Civil Air Patrol volunteers are ready to fly in a minute's notice to help their fellow Americans! So look to the skies for that red, white and blue CAP plane! /CAP Cadet Lt. Col. Shawn Roser/Naples

That sinking feeling

Editor, Naples Daily News:

The education of our children is crumbling and the administration is still packing our children into tin cans. The administration keeps defending balanced literacy, even though it has failed throughout the country.

The administration keeps turning its back on phonics and as a result we are producing generations of children who will be lost forever.

The incompetence of our Collier County School Board is at fault. School Board members have openly admitted to the world to hear that they are confused. Pat Carroll always wants to delay making a decision.

Kathleen Curatolo needs workshops and Dick Bruce is never prepared and is asleep at the wheel, but wakes up long enough to profoundly say, "We must move on." Move on from where to what?

They have accomplished nothing.

The board members have permitted the staff to totally compromise them.

The school budget is nothing more than a computer readout. The builders are making windfall profits while the support-service people and the teachers aren't being paid a living wage. All of these things mean nothing compared to the fact that our children cannot read. Without the ability to read, math, history and science are all lost to them.

Reading will open a life of joy for our children. When our kids learn to read, they will gain knowledge and, with this knowledge, they will be able to touch the face of God.

Just calm down

Editor, Naples Daily News:

We readers of the editorial pages sure hit the jackpot of the absurd recently.

First, Ben Bova in his Nov. 9 column responds to writers by repeating long-discredited neocon fictions regarding 9-11 and terrorists, the United Nations, the U.N. inspectors and the imminence of a mushroom cloud.

The same day, letter-writer Tarik Ayasun rants that the Democratic candidates ("midgets") have caused the deaths of GIs in Iraq. He further states that opponents of the war in Iraq are despicable, selfish and just living off the freedoms provided by our brave soldiers. Forget that among the Democratic Party candidates are two Vietnam veterans with Purple Hearts and Silver Stars.

Later, letter-writers Mitzi Francis and Georgine H. Mendillo commingle the unrelated events of 9-11 and Iraq. Mitzi, attacking the war haters, says the Iraqis just know that a Democratic president will pull the troops out. Georgine wonders what those of our ilk would have done against Adolf Hitler.

Well, guess what? Many of the letter writers that they are disparaging include well-decorated Marine and Army combat veterans of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, as well as combat veterans with children who are now serving. These patriots, real patriots, Democratic and Republican, are all trying to sway those begin ning to question this administration's continuing blunders.

While the disparagers may continue to choose to be misled by the fantasies of the neocons, these veterans, indeed, all writers, deserve respect, not vitriolic hyperbole.

Along the Trail

Editor, Naples Daily News:

A special "thank you" to your feature writer Lisa Fleming, of the In The Know column, for the fabulous concert we attended last week!

The special tribute to veterans, the music, the singing, hearing the "Tamiami Trail" song for the first time, the slide show, getting to meet Doc Johnson, one of the road's surveyors, everyone standing at the close of the event singing "God Bless America" ...

It was all enjoyed by everyone!

Now, whenever we travel down the Tamiami Trail we will have fond memories!

It was obvious how much you put into this to make it the success it was. Our hats are off to you, Lisa, and everyone involved!

What the ban allows

Editor, Naples Daily News:

The president has signed the partial-birth abortion ban. Just what does this mean? It means only one type of abortion is banned.

This abortion is usually done in the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy. This is defined as any abortion in which the live baby is partially delivered past his/her navel outside the body of the mother before being killed.

No other abortion method is described this way.

The bill would allow this procedure if it were necessary to save the mother's life.

However, if the health exception were allowed, the ban would have no meaning. Health, as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973, can mean the mother decides in the sixth month she does not want this baby -- too much stress. Health can mean that a teen at 5½ months, who has been hiding her pregnancy, now wants an abortion.

Dr. James McMahon, the inventor of the partial-birth abortion method, has said: "After 20 weeks where it frankly is a child to me, I really agonize over it. ... On the other hand, I have another position, which I think is superior in the hierarchy of questions, and that is: 'Who owns the child?' It's got to be the mother."

With this kind of thinking, no wonder that some babies are not safe with their own mother. A lawsuit against the ban has been filed by the National Abortion Federation, a coalition of independent abortion facilities.

Isn't that interesting? Talk about following the money!

Inside job

Editor, Naples Daily News:

The loaning of a deputy's uniform for use as a costume is just business as usual at the Lee County Sheriff's Office if you happen to belong to one of its private, politically favored little kingdoms.

The procedures of the Sheriff's Office are arbitrary and capricious. What's good for one does not apply to others. Decisions are based upon collective ideology or according to a desired and predetermined result. Facts are irrelevant; they simply twist the facts in line with a predetermined outcome or they simply fail to acknowledge facts' existence.

In my opinion the people running the Sheriff's Office have all the credibility of carnival sideshow barkers.

Command staff personnel prefer to sit back with their mouths fastened upon the public teats of taxpayers and nurse the system for what they can milk from it.

How much longer will the rank and file of the department, the taxpayers and the county commissioners, allow the Sheriff's Office to continue and conceal its misfeasance?

Probably everything is fine

Editor, Naples Daily News:

Just to put to rest the mind of the gentleman who wrote about the perceived traffic problems at the left-turn lane at Airport-Pulling Road and Golden Gate Parkway: Although it appeared that nine cars continued to turn left after the light turned red, it probably was not so.

Many of the lights in Naples are set up in a way that allows them to sense the number of cars in the lane turning left.

Those lanes with fewer cars will have a green left-turn light for a shorter period than a lane opposite them with more cars.

This allows the traffic in the straight lanes to start going from that direction sooner than the cars coming from the other direction with the greater number of cars needing to turn left.

It works very well and gets traffic going as soon as possible for all concerned.

It's better inside the Beltway

Editor, Naples Daily News:

I have been back in my home in Bonita Springs for about a month now. Soon after restarting my subscription to your paper, I reached the conclusion that the quality of the letters printed seems to have declined. I have been really taken aback by some of them.

My complaint is not with your letter writers, but with the person making the selections for your paper. For example, the "Violence, violence, etc." letter by Robbins Winslow deserves to be trashed, not printed. The points attempted by Winslow warrant attention, but the ugly tone and style of the letter do not. The letter does not represent a reasonable, thoughtful writer, but someone hugely unhappy with his or her world.

Another example was the letter whose writer blamed the trash on Interstate 75 on the interlopers from the North. There were others but I have not kept track.

My northern home is inside the Washington, D.C., Beltway. I am no stranger to tough political discourse. But you will not find letters such as the Winslow letter in The Washington Post or The Washington Times. It is time to review your standards.

Let us see those views

Editor, Naples Daily News:

A really funny letter was published Nov. 12. Robbins Winslow wrote about violence, going on to condemn President Bush and the Republican Congress. I say funny because Winslow is claiming as violence "the right of women to control their private bodies," obviously referring to the recently signed federal law banning partial-birth abortion.

Wow, is somebody screwed up here?

Partial-birth abortion is where a doctor crushes the head of a baby about to be born. Now that is violence!

Winslow also claims as violence the "obscene tax cuts for the rich." Well, will you please back up this statement by sending the Naples Daily News verifiable facts that spell out exactly what these "obscene cuts" are. I am sure that I am not alone in anxiously awaiting this information so that I can take advantage of it; please send it ASAP!

Winslow's letter is only more left-wing, slavering rhetoric that most Americans have come to associate with the goofy far left. Is it any wonder that recent elections are showing that folks with half a brain are turning away from this brand of politics?

I hope that the Naples Daily News keeps printing letters from people like Winslow so that sensible people know what we can expect if we elect politicians who harbor or express these kind of views.

Skip rants; let's rally!

Editor, Naples Daily News:

The Bush haters are at it again. Several letter writers criticize him for the failure to produce jobs. Now that the economy is on an upswing and employment is im proving, they are after him for not foreseeing everything that might happen in the Iraqi war.

Of course we all regret the casualties of that conflict, but this is no time to be a "sunshine patriot." Our young men and women over there are certainly continuing to do their duty with courage and honor.

Is their mission a success? We need only recall that our homeland has not been attacked by terrorists since Sep. 11, 2001, to conclude that they're obviously doing something right.

And since when is President Bush wrong to suggest democracy is just what is needed in the Middle East?

In short, to all those Bush haters, I suggest it's time to rally 'round the flag.

Let's add it up

Editor, Naples Daily News:

I won't interfere with the discussion about Naples Municipal Airport but I disagree with the comments made in John Summer's "Time is distance" letter on Nov. 13.

All major capitals of Europe are linked with direct flights to Atlanta. It takes only one flight change to get to Fort Myers.

Travel time is 10 hours to Atlanta; clearing immigration and customs, two hours; 90 minutes' flight to Fort Myers; picking up luggage, rental car and driving to Naples, another 90 minutes.

A total of 15 hours -- not 25 hours as mentioned by John Summer.

We did it Nov. 1 in 17 hours -- door-to-door -- and we had a good first night's sleep.

And frankly, European tourists who go to Turkey instead are not to ones you want to see here.

We need a new approach

Editor, Naples Daily News:

I have heard many reasons we should have gone to war but I have a different view of this waste of life and resources.

The "War on Terrorism" -- like all the other wars America wages, such as the war against drugs and poverty -- has proved impossible. Sure it looks impressive on TV to blow things up, but are we actually getting anything accomplished or are we just making more enemies?

This job was more suited for law enforcement. Not the Marines.

Terrorists are criminals. So why do we attack whole countries looking for the few bad apples in them? Other countries use their police forces to track down terror cells and arrest them.

Not us; we send an entire army halfway around the globe to remove these barbarians, be it Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. Not the best and most cost-effective way to achieve our objective. If we had sent in a CIA special operations force, they could have much more easily found Osama without being detected.

But that doesn't make for good television and it doesn't let us vent our anger at the moment we wish to do so. So we just charge in without thinking out the ramifications of our actions and they are becoming painfully clear. People always say, quit whining about what went wrong and offer a solution, so here it is: Let law enforcement go after the world's criminals so we can free our military to do what it does best -- protect America.

To go

Editor, Naples Daily News:

Friday night. The end of a perfect week.

The question comes up: "What do you want for dinner?"

Let's order out for our favorite -- linguine with clam sauce and a wonderful salad.

So I call the restaurant.

"I want to order for pick up."

The reply: "We do not take 'to go' orders until after 8 o'clock.

"Why not?" I ask.

"We are too busy with season starting up."

We live here full time. We have ordered our favorite dinner many times during the summer, rain or shine.

The restaurant was very happy to take our order then -- before all of the part-timers came back.

Once again the full-timers are pushed aside and forgotten.

What would the restaurants do without us in the summer?

Maybe we need a system that allows full-timers to have priority and enjoy Naples in the winter, not just the summertime when the restaurants are falling all over us to get our business.

Chicken?

Editors, Naples Daily News

The headline read "Tampa-Cuba trade: Chicken shipment is viewed as restart."

Have we gone mad! Don't we recognize that any trade with Cuba will automatically turn us all into communists? (Look what happened when we started trading with Vietnam -- four Democrats registered in Naples). It will prolong Fidel Castro's reign and all the chickens will go to the party faithful, with none for the average Cuban (who somehow gets lost in this struggle.)

This is not supposition. Ask any Cuban in Miami; after all, that's where our foreign policy is made.

I will be trying to figure out what remedy we can take individually to keep from being instant reds. Oh, the pain of it all.