Timely Books
To the editors:
Just discovered my first copy of the AGR at a business in Boone and
was very pleased with your efforts to make reliable information available
to the community.
I’d like to share a couple of book titles with readers which I
consider extremely relevant to these troubling times.
The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe is an interpretation
of our history in terms of identifiable cycles which correspond to seasons,
the ages of human beings, etc.
The “fourth” turning in this instance represents the concluding
winter phase in their analysis of history’s cycles. It always incorporates
upheaval and change on a previously unimaginable level. According to
their calculations, 2005-2006 is the approximate time change for the
next Fourth Turning. The last occurred between 1929 and 1945…
I am prompted to write regarding this book by a coincidental headline
which appeared in large letters across the front page of the Washington
Post’s editorial section for Sunday, May 16, 2004. It reads “Turning
Points: Will the Modern Era Come Undone in Iraq,” by Robin Wright.
History also holds the key to identifying real heroic qualities and
behaviors absolutely essential for a community’s continued survival.
A place to begin is with the amazing The Grimke Sisters From South
Carolina by Gerda Lerner. And closer to our time: Letters and
Dispatches 1924-1944 by Raoul Wallenburg.
Bill Butcher
Glendale Springs, NC
America Damaged
Editors, Asheville Global Report,
The disturbing events at Abu Gharib prison are not isolated incidents
— just grossly-underreported or ignored in our corporate-monopolized,
infotainment-oriented, mainstream media.
Thankfully, there are a few dedicated investigative journalists left
such as Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker, who are willing to put truth
above censorship or corporate-profits. A true American.
Hersh revealed last Saturday that Rumsfeld’s feigned “surprise”
at the atrocities committed by American personnel at Abu Gharib in Baghdad
were in fact a direct result of operations approved by Rumsfeld, himself.
They authorized the expansion of a secret program that encouraged physical
coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence.
These policies got approval from President Bush’s national security
adviser, Condoleeza Rice, and President Bush was informed of their existence,
current and former intelligence officials told Hersh. (AP story published
Sun., May 16, 2004.)
Amnesty International, has called for independent investigations after
uncovering a “pattern of torture” of Iraqi prisoners by coalition
troops that dates back to the 2003 invasion — including deaths
at the hands of US interrogators.
The shameful revelations of prisoner abuse by US military or civilian
intelligence officials at Abu Gharib prison, at Guantanamo and elsewhere,
are but other examples of the Bush Administration’s hypocrisy and
blatant disregard for Human Rights.
The Bush administration’s grossly-inadequate prewar planning and
the subsequent heavy reliance on private military contractors is also
partly to blame. These contractors fall outside the guidelines of the
Uniform Code of Military Justice and US law — a guaranteed prescription
for abuse.
Is it any wonder that 82percent of Iraqi’s recently-polled, and
much of the rest of the Arab world, have come to view America as unwelcome
invaders — there mainly for oil, global expansion and corporate
profits — not liberators bringing “freedom and democracy,”
especially with an estimated 17,000 innocent Iraqi civilians killed
by the Bush Administration’s violent “shock and awe”
approach.
Bush’s illegal (under international law), deceptive, and violent
invasion of Iraq and the subsequent, prolonged bloody occupation, that
has needlessly killed 783 US military personnel and wounded 5,492, has
damaged American credibility abroad and at home for years to come. It
has revealed the dark, Imperialistic underbelly of America that has
deep, historic roots and often goes ignored.
When will Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft be brought to justice
for crimes of intentional deceptions, fabrications, lies and disastrous
foreign and domestic policies that ignore the root causes of terrorism
and have quietly robbed Americans of many of our basic Civil Liberties
all in the name of “fighting terrorism?”
These lies, deceptions and actions of the Bush Administration are 1,000
times more relevant and damaging to America than any of the lies Bill
Clinton told concerning his personal involvement with intern Monica
Lewinsky. GOP fatcats get the big-bucks. Our troops get the shaft. Our
children get the awesome debt. Where is the outcry?
David Thundershield Queen
Jacksonville, FL
