PUBLIC FORUM.

Bush validation

Re ``Iraqi P.M. confirms death of al-Zarqawi'' (June 8):

Wait a minute! Did the U.S. troops kill al-Zarqawi, a known terrorist, on Wednesday? Wasn't he the current leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network? Was he killed in Iraq?

Does that mean President George Bush was right in fighting the War on Terrorism in Iraq? Does this mean he is validated in his decision to go into Iraq? Wait a minute. Do the liberals, anti-war protesters and Democrats know about this?

-- Michael Duarte

San Fernando 

Big payday

Re ``City OKs Devin Brown payout'' (June 8):

I see where our illustrious City Council has voted to award $1.5 million to the mother of a young car thief. An example of where bad parenting results in a monetary windfall.

It's getting scarier every day what this society is coming to.

-- George Gawlik

Van Nuys

Career criminals

Re ```Miracle' credited for saving officer'' (June 7):

Police Chief William Bratton speaks of the miracle officers and paramedics performed in saving the life of a police officer who was shot by a robbery suspect, but he says absolutely nothing about the system that allowed the suspect to be free to rob and shoot innocent people.

The shooting of Officer Kristina Ripatti is another glaring example of our pathetic justice system. The suspect, James McNeal, has been labeled a ``career criminal.'' How is a career criminal created? By repeatedly arresting, convicting, imprisoning and paroling repeat offenders who have made it clear that they have no intention of altering the course of their lives.

-- Tony Nathanson

Encino

Not a government job

Re ``FDA urges eateries to slim down'' (June 3):

When I first started reading this article, my thought was Big Brother, otherwise known as our government, is trying to help me fight obesity. You know what? It is not our government's job. I am a fat person. Why? I eat too much. Who is responsible for that? Me.

We, the people, don't like others telling us what to do. But we don't want to take responsibility for our own bad habits. In the last paragraph is a quote from a man lunching on a sausage/pepperoni pizza. He says ``OK, I am going to eat junk food regardless, but let me eat junk food that's going to cause me less damage.'' He has that choice already. The government doesn't have to make it for him.

-- Joy Stoval

Woodland Hills

Young on the bus

Re ``Just get on the bus!'' (May 30):

I read with great interest your article ``Just get on the bus!'' since I have been using that mode of transportation for the last nine years. I could no longer own and maintain an automobile and I can honestly attest to the ``luxury'' of not having one.

I have the ``luxury'' of a good deal of waiting, or downtime, and can either read something like my newspaper or a book. Conversing with someone who is also waiting for a bus has enlightened me on many subjects and ideas. People I meet can hardly believe my age (67) when it comes up in conversation. I attribute a lot of the lack of lines in my face to the fact I no longer have to deal with traffic and the many other stress-related facets of owning and maintaining an automobile.

-- Jacqueline Callan

Tarzana

The result

Here am I speaking about our own troops losing their minds, when articles written about the atrocities in Iraq blare out on the front page. Evil incarnate pulls out 20 people and kills the Shiites, leaving the Sunnis alive. They kill in the name of Islam, which becomes the cry of the psychopaths, sociopaths and lunatics already on the edge. The more I read, the less likely I think ... our decision to go in Iraq was a good one.

We've opened the door for a holocaust to happen, and we can't shut it. We have no clue how to stop this, except for the most massive murder of them all, genocide, and we can't allow that, either. We, as humans, allowed evil to take control of our actions, our words, our thoughts. And this is the result. God help us.

-- John C. Weaver

Palmdale

Doped-up rage

Re ``Road rage more than rudeness'' (June 6):

I don't agree with road rage being more than rudeness. I think rudeness is actually what it is and cannot be treated as a disease and given anti-depressants. I think the drivers with this so-called ``disease'' is just a matter of them thinking that their time is more important than anyone else's and the world revolves around them and want us to move out of their way.

I hate the fact that we live in a world where the answer to all our problems is in a little pill that is being handed out like candy. Is it that these so-called mental health pros just don't know what is causing the negative human behavior so they classify everything as a disease and we get a lifelong prescription for anti-depressants. Do they think the roads will be safer if all the raged drivers are doped up on anti-depressants?

-- Christina Hackett

West Hollywood 

Short-circuiting rage

Re ``Road rage disease'' (Our Opinions, June 8):

Many years ago, I learned that anger and rage are not feelings, but reactions to feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, not being heard, being discounted, used, abused, etc. There may or may not be a validity to those feelings.

When starting to react with anger or rage, one should consciously ask oneself, ``What are the feelings I am reacting to and is there a validity to the feelings e.g., of being used or abused?'' Most of the time, there will not be a validity to those feelings so that one does not have to act out with destructive anger or rage. If children were taught, perhaps in school, to analyze their reaction of destructive anger and rage to their feelings, on a conscious level, it would perhaps make the world a lot more civilized and less dangerous.

-- David Hertz, M.D.

Tarzana

Trash fee increase

I am writing as a livid homeowner who just received the proposed Solid Resources Fee schedule for the next four years. The audacity to even consider that amount of an increase for waste pickup is staggering to my husband and me. If our honorable mayor (the person behind this fee) would consider a $10 increase per month for the next five years, it would seem feasible, but this increase of $17 per month after four years is far too much for the average homeowner, to say nothing of the multiple-unit dwellings' expenses.

We constituents are hit with high gas prices, enormous medical costs, drug expenses that turn out to be exorbitant after a senior reaches their first plateau within five months, increases in our property taxes, which seem to sneak upward every year from additional assessments, and now this malarkey to reduce the amount subsidized by the city's general fund. There's money in the fund ... Use it wisely.

-- Evelyn Aaronson

Woodland Hills

Motes and beams

In all the furor over same-sex marriages, no one has ever been able to adequately explain to me how Betty and Jim's relationship would be threatened by Bob and Paul's relationship or June and Lydia's relationship. ``They'' say that same-sex marriage is necessary to ``save the children.'' But considering the high divorce rate, it seems that the children aren't being ``saved'' all that well by ... married couples, does it?

And when ``they'' refer to biblical/religious notions regarding the ``proper'' kind of relationship between men and women, why don't ``they'' criticize the millions (tens of millions?) of men and women who live together without the marriage sanction? And why don't ``they'' criticize the tens of millions of men and women who have sex before marriage? Why? Because ``they'' are guilty of those ``sins'' themselves.

-- David M. Galfond

Palmdale