Conspiracy? Ha! (Letters to the Editor).

I am actually quite concerned about a couple of Matt Rothschild's comments in his "Editor's Note" (July issue). In particular: "The claim that Bush intentionally let it [September 11] happen for his own nefarious purposes is well beyond my significant skeptical powers," and, "I don't buy the notion that he was willing to sit idly by as 3,000 Americans were murdered at the hands of Al Qaeda." I am a sixty-year-old Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam, and to my ears your comments sound as though you have failed to learn the lessons that horrid war taught.

When the CIA wanted to recruit Montangard tribesmen in the Vietnam highlands to fight against the North Vietnamese who were funneling supplies to the south along the Ho Chi Minh trail, the tribesmen wanted nothing to do with the proposal. They were opium farmers who sold their crops at a good price each year to Laotian buyers from the Golden Triangle. "Who will tend our fields?" they asked. The CIA's response was to empty the Lon Binh jail in Saigon of able-bodied men and transfer them to the highlands to work the poppy fields in shackles while the tribesmen trained and fought, and then to purchase the yearly crop for twice what the Laotian buyers offered. They then proceeded to sell the opium to heroin refiners in Saigon to finance other covert operations, with the full knowledge that the refiners would be marketing the resulting heroin to American troops. The result? Thousands of U.S. troops addicted, hundreds dead of overdoses.

A more recent example: the release last year of the LBJ tapes which revealed telephone conversations in which Lyndon B. Johnson admitted that he didn't think the war was winnable. But that for political reasons he would continue to pursue it, subsequently sending additional thousands of young men to their deaths.

I, too, after September 11, wanted desperately to believe Bush and his cronies were not complicit. But the accumulating evidence becomes nearly overwhelming. One can only countenance so many "coincidences" before being forced to confront conspiracy.

Gordon Mustain Tucson, Arizona

I wish to take exception to Matt Rothschild's argument against the idea that the government might have had elements involved with, and with knowledge of, the events of September 11.

Bush sitting idly by while innocent people die is nothing new. We are talking about the man who, as the Governor of Texas, became this country's foremost serial killer by proxy.

It is sad to see the left-leaning press once again buy the lone gunman, magic bullet theory of how another of the horrors in our society was committed. By keeping the rest of us in line so the left doesn't lose "credibility," you demonstrate your own continuing gullibility.

Mary Currier Jerome, Arizona