Letters

[Read "Karl Rove Is a Liar," by Joe Conason.]

Thank you, Joe Conason, for the hard-charging editorial. I have felt that Rove and this White House crossed a line a long time ago. Karl Rove's speech on Monday was the last straw and what you wrote needed to be said in the national media.

After Dick Durbin was forced to apologize for stating his opinion about the severity of the Gitmo situation, I can't believe that the Republican Party turns right around with this continued assault on liberals and Democrats. Enough!

-- Bryan Samolinski

God bless Karl Rove for tellin' it like it is. Liberals are a bunch of whiny terrorist coddlers. That's why I was so inspired after that dark day in September when Mr. Rove enlisted in the Marines and went to Iraq, personally bringing the fight to the terrorists who attacked us. He didn't just talk tough, he put his money, and his life, where his mouth is. Unlike those cowardly liberals, Mr. Rove is a true American hero!

-- Alfredo Tryferis

The next day, after the horror of 9/11 subsided, I thought about the many Republicans and right-wing talk show hosts who attacked Bill Clinton for bombing the Taliban in 1998. All we heard for weeks was "wag the dog" from the same people who later criticized President Clinton for not wiping out the Taliban during his term. The fact is, while Clinton may not have wanted to launch a war against the Taliban, it was not politically possible, with Republicans more interested in impeachment than in protecting America from terrorism. I really find it hard to believe that the Republicans can use protecting America from terror as an issue when in all likelihood we would not have been attacked if the Republicans were as interested in our national security as they were in a bogus impeachment trial.

-- Brad McGrew

Dear Mr. Rove: Since you feel the need to attack liberals so treacherously it appears you may be in need of therapy yourself. Your tendency for spreading malicious lies for political gain could so easily be treated with a good dose of "liberal" couch therapy.

We liberals are a lot more secure than you are and our patriotism cannot be undermined by the likes of someone who is in such obvious need of psychological counseling. In fact, most liberals are probably feeling sorry for you and hoping that you seek help, because we hate to see people in so much pain.

-- Harriet Scureman

Rove is a bit confused -- it was conservatives that offered understanding to murderers, terrorists and lawbreakers. Indeed, it was Rove's supervisor, President Bush, who received a clear warning about hijacked airplanes as suicide weapons -- and did nothing about it. Our problem wasn't 9/11, it was 8/6: the day Bush was warned about the attack.

-- David Joyce

[Read "The Outrage of Karl Rove," in War Room.]

Enough with the Nazi comparisons. Salon, like Dick Durbin, should stop being so eager to compare misconduct on the part of U.S. soldiers, particularly those at Guantanamo Bay, with the genocide and atrocities committed by the Nazis. It truly does demean the victims' memory by comparing abuses at Guantanamo with the systematic torture and murder at Auschwitz and the other concentration camps.

Granted, the conduct of our government in its running of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is not in keeping with our high ideals as Americans. and serves as an al-Qaida recruiting tool. However, we can state our disgust for how the facility is run without making inflammatory comparisons to SS soldiers or Nazi doctors. Comparing someone's behavior to the Nazis or Hitler is obviously meant to create an unfavorable impression of the subject -- but almost without fail that comparison falls far short of what the Nazis did to earn their notorious place in history.

I still remember watching videos as a 7th grader of the Nazis shooting hundreds of Jews at a time and then pulling out their gold fillings, along with other images that were far worse. Can the abusive treatment that prisoners have received at Guantanamo really be fairly compared to the atrocities committed by the Nazis? When you stop and think about how the Nazis murdered 6,000,000 Jews and millions of others systematically and without remorse, the answer is, clearly, no.

-- Jacob Rome