Online-only Letters

The scariest place in Seattle

Police need to get off horses and onto the street

Editor, The Times:

I work in the area of the recent downtown shooting, and I see drug deals and crime every day [ "Busy downtown corner is a 'hot spot' for crime," Times page one, Aug. 1].

I walk right through it all on the way from my bus stop to my workplace. I venture to say that I see at least three to four drug deals go down every day and I am not even trying to look for them. I walk through clouds of marijuana smoke in the morning and in the evening by the Pine and Third avenue bus stop. I am on the street an average of 20 minutes a day for my commute to and from the bus, and work an average of 281 days a year. If I see only two deals each way, well, you do the math. The Seattle Police Department reports 135 arrests a year. They proclaim the number like a badge.

Come on SPD. Step up to the plate and get off your high horses.

-- Shawn Huey, Seattle

Sobering thought

No drinking on the job

It was recently revealed that NASA astronauts were intoxicated at shuttle launchings [ "NASA to probe preflight drinking reports," News, July 27].

Charles Krauthammer, in "That's why they call it moonshine" [syndicated column, Aug. 6], defends these impaired astronauts. He says we have to "cut these cowboys some slack" because of the anxiety involved in their task.

So, they should be allowed to self-medicate their anxiety? Does Krauthammer condone marijuana or misuse of prescription drugs for assuaging fears?

He reasons that the alcohol use was acceptable because they didn't have any "real work" to do for three hours after takeoff. He says by that time "… they will long ago have peed the demon rum into their recycling units."

A National Transportation Safety Board's research and experimentation establishes hangovers produced significant performance impairment for pilots. FAA prohibits flying within eight hours of ingesting alcohol; some air carriers have set more-restrictive time limits, which vary between 12 and 24 hours. In addition, some impose "dry layovers," regardless of the length of time.

-- Terry Hanna, Everett

National tragedies

Inadequate response to war

It is always heartening to see our nation's collective, compassionate response to tragedies such as the recent Minneapolis bridge collapse or last spring's Virginia Tech shootings -- this is the U.S. I know and love, and of which I feel proud. This compassion is always followed, rightfully so, by an ongoing public analysis of what went wrong.

Where then, I wonder, is the compassion and resulting inquiry for the thousands of U.S. soldiers who have died or been maimed, or for the tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens killed or displaced by a war that the Bush administration began with deliberate misinformation? The level of misery in Iraq, every single day, is a hundred times the horrors of our bridge failures or campus shootings.

President Bush has said publicly that there was no link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, and the evidence proves that the reasons given by Vice President Cheney and others for invading Iraq were fabricated.

Meanwhile, 70 percent of U.S. citizens are dissatisfied with the current administration's performance and lack of accountability. To wait another 18 months is too long. If ever there were justification for the impeachment of a president and vice president, this is it. America, when will you speak up about this particular tragedy?

-- Donna Every, Hansville

Shaky foundation

Lacking moral stability

David Klinghoffer's "Hot lead, summer in the city," [guest commentary, Aug. 3] strikes a chord with me. I am not a particularly religious man, but I was raised with, and live by, moral Christian principles. But, as Klinghoffer points out, Seattle -- indeed, the entire Puget Sound region -- is so awash in self-absorbed, secular humanism that there seems little room for any moral code except greed, deceit and personal gratification.

This secular humanism -- the underpinning of so much of the liberal mindset -- basically disconnects people from responsibility for their actions, by allowing all things to be accepted, depending on circumstances, and all things to be tolerated, if they suit the progressive agenda.

We wonder why drug-dealing and assault and corruption are rampant. We wonder why mothers kill their children -- Hey, it's just a retroactive abortion, right? Don't I have the right to choose? -- or why our so-called leaders lie, cheat and steal.

Are Klinghoffer and the relative handful of like-minded people in this city the only ones who understand that without a solid moral foundation, without some guidance greater than the situational ethics of man, societies inevitably degenerate into chaos and decay? How far down that road has Seattle gone, and is it too late to reverse that trend?

Of course, as long as this region remains in the stranglehold of liberal humanists, there is no hope of repairing that foundation … and we might as well resign ourselves to living in a 21st-century Gomorrah.

-- Winston Rockwell, Kirkland

The importance of Hospice

Bringing comfort at the end

Thank you for "Hospice programs open arms wider to help the dying," [Local News, July 30]. My father-in-law entered Northwest Hospital on Jan. 31 and died there on Jun. 27. He was never offered hospice care, even after our family repeatedly inquired about it. He was a strong believer in the no-resuscitation order he had legally drawn up years before his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was diagnosed. However, he panicked and rescinded the DNR order when the pulmonary doctor told him one evening that his lungs wouldn't last 48 hours.

He was never adequately prepared for his impending death, and lived a miserable, drugged week on a respirator before he indicated to us that he would like to be removed from the respirator; he died moments after we did so. I only wish my father-in-law had been offered the same invaluable hospice care my mother received from Group Health as she succumbed to ovarian cancer five years earlier.

-- Sharon Schierle, Lynnwood

A good fight

To talk or not to talk

I gather from the press that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama finally have an issue to debate: to talk or not to talk with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela [ "Obama's rookie mistakes,"" syndicated column, July 30].

Maybe we will now have a real debate! Here is a significant issue they can chew on and analyze from several angles: to talk, or not to talk, with a head of state who is critical of the U.S.

Clinton seems to follow Bush, who feels that if we ignore people who don't like us, they will dry up and go away. Obama, hopefully, will stand firm in the optimistic belief that to get along, we need at least to try to be a friend.

Sure, it's not easy, but isn't that what we pay presidents for?

-- Jeff Douthwaite, Seattle

Saudi arms sale

Stoking the fire

The Times' reported that the Bush administration has negotiated a $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia [ "Mideast allies to receive advanced U.S. weapons," News, July 28]. Among the weapons will be our most advanced air-fighter technology and munitions upgrades of various types.

As many of us will remember, Saudi Arabia was incapable of defending itself during the '90s conflict with Iraq, despite our enthusiastic sale of weaponry to them in the past. Instead, we found it necessary to establish military bases there, which eventually led to al-Qaida's attacks on 9/11.

Among the 19,000 insurgent prisoners we hold in Iraq, half the foreign insurgents are Saudi, none are Iranian. Close to 100 percent of funding for al-Qaida prior to 9/11 came from Saudi sources. Saudi Arabia is close to 100 percent Sunni, and 80 percent of attacks against Americans in Iraq are instigated by Sunni insurgents. Osama bin Laden is a naturalized Saudi, and his family continues to live in Saudi Arabia.

Do we honestly think that absolutely none of those arms will fall into insurgent hands? Can someone please explain the logic of selling arms to Sunnis while we continue to demonize Shiites? Isn't this a matter of throwing a whole lot of gasoline onto the fire that the middle east has become?

-- Greg Thomsen, Seattle

Found: soul of Federal Way

Look to the people

After having lived Federal Way for 45 years, I would like to respond to John Moe's "Where's the soul?" [Northwest Life, July 22].

I would say the soul of Federal Way is in the people who give their time and service to the city, not in the strip malls.

Did Moe take the time to look up some of our history on our Web site, www.federalwayhistory.org? He would have learned it took from almost 20 years and four elections before we became a city, so Federal Way is a much younger city than the other cities he compared it to.

The QFC business he mentions has actually been gone for several years, and is now a vibrant Korean H-Mart store. We have several Korean stores, as well as our mayor, who is Korean.

There were no interviews with elected officials, City Council members, School Board members, or even the PTA. We have volunteers at our churches, schools and service clubs. Many of these folks put their whole heart and soul into Federal Way.

The soul of Federal Way is in it's people.

-- Lynda L. Jenkins, Federal Way

At least they're doing something right

Passports, pronto

Planning ahead for a trip out of the country in November, I mailed my passport-renewal application on July 18. Well, I received my passport Saturday, Aug. 4 -- just 18 days total, sent regular mail, no rush, standard renewal and payment.

I figure the passport agency turned it around in less than nine business days [ "Congress attempts to ease passport crunch," News, July 17]. The additional employees must be working or I was incredibly lucky. Thank you, U.S. government -- great job!

-- Robin Russell, Seattle