Letters in the Editor's Mailbag.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Is free speech included?

Many letters to the editor say those who oppose the Bush administration's decision to pre-emptively and unilaterally attack another country should leave the United States.

They argue that we should support our troops because they are fighting for our freedom. What freedom? Apparently, these people do not include freedom of speech in the list of freedoms they say our troops are fighting for.

It's hypocritical to say the troops are fighting for our freedom in one breath, and in the next breath tell those who exercise their right to freedom of speech to leave our country just because they disagree with its war policy.

Those who make such claims endanger the very freedoms they say our troops are fighting for.

TINA STUPASKY

Eugene

Teachers' hours add up

Until my wife started teaching five years ago, I, too, thought teachers had a pretty sweet deal - full-time pay for part-time work! William Motter's commonly held belief (guest viewpoint, April 6) that teachers make too much money for the amount of work they do prompted me to compare her working hours to mine. It doesn't take his Ph.D. in engineering to follow the math.

I work a 40-hour week, get three weeks of vacation and eight paid holidays. That's 237 work days, or 1,896 hours.

Every school day, my wife is at her school for nine hours, takes a half-hour lunch and spends 1 1/2 hours grading homework and preparing for the next day's classes. That's 10 hours a day for 180 teaching days, or 1,800 hours. On top of that, she averages six hours on the 37 weekends during the school year, 10 hours over each of the winter and spring breaks, and at least 40 hours over the summer.

Her yearly total is 2,102 hours, or about five weeks more than me. Some sweet deal!

I imagine that Motter is the kind of manager who thinks that his employees who work four 10-hour shifts are slackers because they get a three-day weekend.

And when he is so woefully misinformed about one basic aspect of the teaching profession, it makes his other claims about the "good life" of teachers more than a little suspect.

PETER POWERS 

Eugene

Time for debate has passed

We're already at war! Yet even after the war with Iraq started, we have still found the time to criticize President Bush.

Whether the man has made the right decision about going to war is a moot point. We are at war!

The debate now should be about how to support our economy as well as the economy of liberated Iraq, or maybe, however insane it may seem, we could support our men and women in Iraq and stop blaming America.

I would like to just say to all the annoying protesters: We are at war!

Now, move out of the way of my favorite grocery store or restaurant, get out of the middle of the road and go home and educate yourself on the topic you wish to protest by watching the news.

President Bush may or may not have made the correct decision, but it does not matter; we are all part of a society that has chosen by an overwhelming majority to go to war. The way a democracy works is not whoever is the loudest, wins; it is the majority that rules.

Anyone who doesn't like it can leave.

TIM WOODRUFF

Springfield

Rebuild Oregon, too

Billions of our federal tax dollars have been spent to destroy Iraq, with billions more earmarked for its education and rebuilding.

I am reminded of the story of "The Mouse That Roared." Maybe if Oregonians did something outrageous enough to make the feds take over our land, we could get education funding, help the elderly pay for prescription drugs and obtain more jobs.

JENNIFER MELLONE

Eugene

LETTERS LOG

Letters received in past week: 211

Letters published: 67

What's on readers' minds: The war in Iraq continued as the dominant issue of concern to letter-writers. Close to half of the week's letters - 92 - related in some way to the war, and about 70 percent of those were critical of the Bush administration and its military policy toward Iraq. The changing military situation in Iraq is causing a shift in subjects, with many letter-writers starting to focus on the postwar period. We also received 13 letters, all but one of them critical, in response to an April 6 guest viewpoint by William Motter arguing that teachers' pay and benefits are the cause of the school system's financial problems