The Letters Not Published

Below are the letters submitted to the Boston Globe since about March 30, 2006 that have not been published (the first one submitted today, but I wasn't going to wait to share it with you guys); this is also a cheap way to produce a post without any additional thinking and writing:


Kent State, Iraq parallels? Mr. Michael Corcoran was described as a journalism major.

Editor,

The evidence that Mr. Michael Corcoran is a journalism major and not a journalism graduate of Emerson College was crystal clear from the distortion of context and misinterpretation and mischaracterization of facts in his essay, "Why Kent State is important today (May 4, A11)".

I'm not researching exactly how popular President Richard Nixon was in 1970 to ascertain the meaning of Mr. Corcoran's comment that, "just as today, we had an unpopular President . . . ", but I think it is important for Boston Globe readers and Mr. Corcoran to know that President Nixon was re-elected President in 1972 with 60.67% of the popular vote and 96.65% of the electoral vote. That Mr. Nixon lost only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia in 1972 is meaningful as to why the Boston Globe thought Mr. Corcoran's essay bashing President Bush was worthy of publishing.

Continuing, Mr. Corcoran mentions many times in his essay how unpopular the war in Iraq is, how ever he never shares with the readers that 77% of U.S. Senators voted for the war. Mr. Corcoran never shares with the readers that on August 9, 2004, seventeen months after the beginning of ground operations in Iraq, the Democratic Presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry, said that knowing what he knew then, he would have still voted for the war. Mr. Corcoran never shares with the readers that as late as October 7, 2005, that the U.S. Senate voted 97 - 0 for additional funding for the war in Iraq (all 44 Democrats except Sen. Patrick Leahy, VT).

The November 2005 vote in the U.S. House of Representatives for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq failed by 403 - 3! Even Rep. Jack Murtha (D, PA) voted with the President.

Mr. Corcoran makes veiled references to the President's assault on civil liberties but he doesn't mention that the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 was passed by the U.S. Senate by a 98 - 1 vote. The vote to cut-off a Democratic filibuster for renewal of the Act was 97 - 3 The vote for renewal was 89 - 10. That's a combined 284 - 14 in support of the "our civil liberties being threatened." Maybe the United States Senate, with 44 Democrats, needs to see the information that Mr. Corcoran has access to.

Mr. Corcoran's anecdotal use of offensive and hateful letters to the parents of the students killed at Kent State is pathetic and obscene. Like the person that Mr. Corcoran holds out for special abuse, Mr. Bill O'Reilly, has never received a death threat?

Finally, the juxtaposition of the sentence, "Today antiwar protesters are unfairly discredited by the administration as they were in 1970," with the name Ms. Cindy Sheehan following in the next sentence is a clever but grotesque insinuation. There is not a single statement by anyone in the Bush Administration about Ms. Cindy Sheehan that says anything other than "we feel for her loss, she's entitled to her opinion, we disagree with her opinion (as does Rep. Jack Murtha as I note above)."


Only Democrats Dissenting is Noble, I guess.

Editor,

On the Sunday after a week-long love-fest between the Boston Globe and the Great Equivocator, Sen. John F. Kerry, and the Senator's promotion of dissent, I was surprised that the headline of the Sunday Boston Globe from April 30 was not "Bush dissents on hundreds of laws" (Bush challenges hundreds of laws, April 30, A1). And, the Boston Globe could not have gotten one quote from the Senator praising the President for his courage?


18/13 is better than 17/12!?

Editor,

I encourage the United Nations Security Counsel to get on with passing a resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter demanding Iran suspend with its nuclear weapons program even though Iranian President Mahmoud Amadinejad scoffs, "The Iranian nation won't give a damn about such useless resolutions (US, allies vow more heat on Iran, April 29, A6)."

Noting that the Hate-America First crowd still thinks 12 years and 17 such resolutions against Iraq was not enough diplomacy, I suspect it will take some time to pass the magic number of 18 resolutions . . . maybe even 13 years! I say, let's at least start the clock.

Of course, Iran's ability to put a nuclear weapon on the head of a delivery vehicle that can reach Berlin, Madrid, and Paris may spur our "friends" in Europe to actually cooperate this time.


Repeating Lies Don't Make Them Facts

Editor,

Obviously, the Boston Globe editorial page fact checker was asleep when he or she allowed the following question to slip through in a letter published on March 30 (2006), "Can it be true that the American President . . . who announced to the Iraqi people, 'bring it on', and to the world, 'mission accomplished' nearly three years ago . . . that we are mired in a war that another President will have to resolve?"

The President of the United States, the global leader of the war on terror, George W. Bush, never said 'bring it on' to the Iraqi people and he most definitely did not ever say 'mission accomplished'.

What's next, a claim that he called Iraq an "imminent threat" (which he also never said)?

I appreciate the left-leaning slant of the editorial page, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but we should not confuse what people want to believe with the facts.