About the war on terror: Osama bin Laden is in Afghanistan. Why are Americans sent to die in Iraq? How come Bush and all Republicans feel admitting fault is a show of weakness?

Bush made a wrong decision based on faulty intelligence. Why should Republicans support sending more Americans to die to cover up a mistake? To show strength?

Has anyone thought that perhaps a withdrawal would show greater strength through intellect? ' Thomas Beatty, Central Point

Vote them all out

I have an idea why the traffic is so bad here; currently, there is approximately one car dealership for every three people living in the Rogue Valley.

Another theory is, why would you spend millions of dollars to make it easier to exit Interstate 5 onto Crater Lake Highway, a main traffic artery that is already gridlocked, and not widen this traffic bottleneck past Poplar Street to accommodate it?

To all the engineers who went to school to learn that you can't shove mass into a finite space that can't handle it without an explosion, I salute you.

— Why is it that there are millions of dollars to spend on the Bear Creek hobo highway/dog poop parade route, but the funds do not exist to improve a highway that carries three times the vehicular traffic of Interstate 5?

What is the current answer? Signs telling you to turn your lights on for safety.

To all voters voting in the next primary, vote all the people in office now ' out! It can't get any worse. ' G. Cullins, Medford

Classes are important

It's ironic that the teacher's union wants to cut days and the school district wants to cut teachers. If both groups would take a hard look at the problem, they would both realize they would discover what's really important.

Schools are supposed to be used to guide their students to learn to think. Computers, sports, music and any other extracurricular activities are fine in their place, but they shouldn't be deemed as important as classes that develop their minds. When a student graduates from school and is unable to read, write or think, and some do, the teachers, not the students, have failed. ' William B. Carnegie, Central Point

Atrocities happened

It's apparent John O'Neal is under great delusion considering John Kerry's statement to Congress about atrocities which took place in Vietnam. John O'Neal states that John Kerry lies. Atrocities never happened, O'Neal states.

The Republican newscasters tried to have a field day with this. A radio (Republican) newscaster states she's had hundreds of calls by Vietnam vets calling John Kerry a liar.

March 16, 1968: U.S. troops kill hundreds of South Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai. Mothers, babies, old folks, anything that was alive in that village, was slaughtered.

One officer, Lt. William L. Calley Jr., was found guilty (of murder) by a U.S. court martial. Lt. Calley served 18 months in-house arrest. President Nixon set Calley free. It's also on file that Mr. Nixon also asked John O'Neal to make John Kerry look like a liar. Because John Kerry told the truth.

John O'Neal and the rest of his Republican friends need to come out of their comas and stop lying to the American people. If My Lai wasn't an atrocity, what is — ' Michael Long, Trail, former Sgt., USMC, 3rd Marine Division, Republic of Vietnam

Right-wing criminals

For over a century, right-wing criminals in America have always tried to shift the blame for their actions onto someone ' or something ' else. Their favorite excuses seem to be that their crimes were caused by: (a) the liberal media, (b) integration, (c) a Jewish-dominated government or (4) race mixing.

Much like O.J. Simpson blaming racist policemen or the Menendez brothers blaming child abuse, the common theme is simple: Cowards always need a scapegoat.

From the Ku Klux Klan to the Idaho Aryan gangs to sociopaths murdering abortion doctors and dynamiting gay nightclubs, we see a pattern here: These sociopaths, much like Osama bin Laden, want the world to believe that God commanded us to do this.

Do these men accept responsibility for their action? Hardly. Race-hating Klansmen, like the Olympic bomber and the Oklahoma City bomber, always had a handy scapegoat to blame their crimes on.

Timothy McVeigh blamed the law-abiding cops who confronted 82 armed psychopaths at Waco. Oliver North blamed Reagan (who promptly blamed North) and Gen. Secord and Adm. Poindexter place the blame on a dead man (CIA director William Casey).

It would be nice if right-wing criminals simply took responsibility for their actions. ' James Snyder, Central Point