LETTERS IN THE EDITOR'S MAILBAG.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Remember other 'team' in Iraq

Ah, football season! The night air is crisp, the leaves are falling, and colorful flags are popping up on car windows announcing to anyone who cares to notice which team the driver is rooting for.

I'd like to remind everyone of another local team that needs your support. Their uniforms have changed from shades of green to shades of tan in recent months. They are Oregon National Guardsmen from the Eugene-Springfield area.

About 40 of them left their families behind seven months ago to begin their training as desert warriors. Nine weeks later, thousands of miles from everyone and everything dear to them, the Kuwaiti desert welcomed these patriots with scorching heat and the promise to get hotter.

For the past month. our guard members have been in Iraq. Now, their families have found out that they may not make it home for Christmas after all. As the proud mother of Sgt. Dane Beck, I urge everyone not to forget these fine men and women in the months to come.

You can't exactly watch these men execute their duties by turning on the tube Saturday afternoon, or fill up the high school stadium on Friday night to cheer them on. But you can pray for them, and you can fly their flag from your car window. Just put it on the right side and the school flag on the left.

Whether you agree with their "coach" or not, members of this team are giving their all for you

ALMA BECK

Dexter

Dean's successes newsworthy

In his Sept. 8 letter, Tom Preuss claims that Howard Dean is receiving free political advertising from the "leftist" media. No reporter, editor or publisher - left or right - would ignore legitimate stories such as Dean's Internet fundraising successes and the Zogby poll showing Dean leading all Democratic presidential candidates by more than two-to-one in the critical primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Preuss says that Dean will "spend our money on more useless and failed social programs." I wonder if the conservatives who benefit from "socialist" programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start consider them useless. Dean has indeed attacked Bush for his misguided policies. No liberal or moderate president would be excused from criticism if his administration had lost 3 million jobs and created a war for partisan political and financial benefit. Does Bush walk on water?

The Register-Guard carries George Will, Debra Saunders, Charles Krauthamer and Paul Greenberg as columnists. I don't remember seeing any of them wearing hats with little red stars. Nor do Molly Ivins and Paul Krugman.

Preuss should look at the Georgia Senate race in 2002 if he wants to see a vicious slander campaign. Democratic Sen. Max Cleland was compared to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and called a traitor because he voted against a pork-laden defense bill that the Republicans wanted. Cleland left three limbs on a battlefield in Vietnam as a Marine. Vicious indeed.

RICK ALLEN HOUSE

Dexter

Hospital driving up premiums

How can one avoid relating the huge rise in health insurance premiums (Register-Guard, Sept. 10) with the PeaceHealth building project at RiverBend?

Where will the $350 million come from to erect that palace? From our community, of course. Can you imagine how much that represents for (or from) each one of us? How much better that money could be used for productive job creating or maintaining purposes instead of just shifting some buildings around.

Does anyone really think that patient care will be materially better or cost savings accrued by such an expensive move? I can't believe that local employers haven't raised a ruckus about something that was decided by a tiny group of insiders but which will profoundly and negatively affect virtually every person in the area, as was explained in the article.

This is a luxury we can no longer afford.

FRED FELTER

Springfield

Scale down recycling carts

Sanipac's plan to supply each Eugene customer with a 90-gallon receptacle for recyclables is a silly implementation of a good idea.

Currently, most households successfully recycle in a 12-gallon container each week, so what we need is a 30-gallon container for two weeks. Sanipac already has a 32-gallon container with a 20-inch by 22-inch footprint. That's only a little more space than the 12-inch by 14-inch blue box, and much easier to store than the monster 90-gallon cart. Instead of discouraging customers with a big, mostly empty cart to store, Sanipac should save money and buy blue 32-gallon containers.

Of course, I guess we can choose a competitor with a more customer-friendly offering.

RICHARD TROMEL

Eugene

Dust sources are different

Gus McKeithen's question (letters, Sept. 10) about agricultural dust perfectly illustrates the need for The Register Guard to help educate its readership about agriculture and its role in our community.

The dust McKeithen referred to was created by grass seed farmers working up fields for fall planting. Most of the farms on River Road that opposed the gravel mining expansion are vegetable producers. These two types of operations are vastly different in the timing of activity and the amount of dust that is created.

It would have been more educational for the report on agricultural dust to have explored where the dust came from and why.

AARON SILVERMAN, Member

Creative Growers

Noti

Set record straight on Iraq

As a New York native who stood, awestruck, at the base of the newly-constructed twin towers, one might think that I would be gung ho about the war in Iraq. The opposite is true.

Speaking for myself and every current and former New Yorker I know, the war in Iraq has made us less safe, squandered billions of dollars, cost hundreds of lives and I don't think it's hyperbole to say it's cost us the sympathy of most of the world.

My jaw dropped about two weeks ago as I watched one of our generals say that we are now seeing cooperation between Saddam Hussein loyalists and al-Qaeda. He also said that has never happened before because they are historically mortal enemies. I thought reporters would pounce and ask, " But I thought Saddam and al-Qaeda were working together before the war? Wasn't that, along with weapons of mass destruction, the major pretext for invading Iraq?" I couldn't find a word in any local or national media.

Polls say 70 percent of the American public believes Saddam and al-Qaeda were partners in exporting terrorism. That belief is the result of a long-discredited story repeated by the media. No connection has been found, although the Bush administration still speaks as if there were one.

The Bush administration and the media owe it to all Americans, including those who watched the towers rise and fall, to tell the truth and set the record straight.

LESLIE WEINSTEIN

Eugene

Now it's 'In cash we trust'

You know the old saying "Swallow a camel and choke on a gnat." The removal of the Ten Commandments is a perfect application. People are upset about the removal of a piece of stone from a building and ignore the real damage that is being done to society.

No one seems to care that almost everything that our children see and hear is hell-bent on removing the Ten Commandments from their minds and hearts. Hope is becoming just another four-letter word. The role models that our kids are fashioning their lives after leave little doubt about the direction the world is heading. Family values are practically non-existent, and people only seem to call on God until the heat is off.

Two years ago, just after the Sept. 11 attacks, the nation felt the need for "God Bless America" to resound loudly, only to be muffled by recent attempts to replace "In God we Trust" with "In cash we Trust." A friend in need is a friend indeed -a frightening reality when it comes to our relationship with God. With all of the heartache and suffering we cause one another in the name of religion, I wonder if God's finger ever twitches towards the delete button.

MICHAEL H. WARREN Sr.

Eugene

Investment needed at home

While our president requests $87 billion in aid for Iraq (merely the first down payment to rebuild a country destroyed in part by our own bombs and years of CIA double-dealing and false promises), our own country, our children, our families, our states, our cities, our schools (the list goes on) are in dire need of $87 billion (and more). Shouldn't a government that is first and foremost beholden to its citizens seek a stable, equitable and democratic society that does not suffer from recession, unemployment, inflation, gross waste of natural resources, or the grinding misery of poverty within its own immediate ambit?

This country is experiencing the longest continuous stretch of job decline in more than 55 years. States are experiencing their biggest deficits in as many years, which has necessitated the painful cutting back of crucial services - services that have direct influence on poverty, health and crime. Forty-one million Americans have no health insurance.

This year's federal budget deficit will reach a record-breaking $455 billion! Who pays? Where does the money come from if not from hard-working, middle-class families and the poor? As for Iraq (not to mention the world), what is needed is a rebuilding of U.S. foreign policy.

Taking $87 billion out of our pockets and giving it to Iraq (read U.S. corporations) is nothing less than an act of thievery. So don't forget, while you're writing those checks to pay your federal taxes, there are two l's in Halliburton.

TUCKER TEAGUE

Eugene