FACING OFF

Someone took issue with the report of an Iraqi Olympic soccer player's comments that if he weren't competing he would "for sure" be fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

Do you honestly believe American soldiers walked up to this guy's cousin, unprovoked, and shot him and his friends for no reason? The article says it itself:

To a man, members of the Iraqi Olympic delegation say they are glad that former Olympic committee head Uday Hussein, who was responsible for the serial torture of Iraqi athletes and was killed four months after the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, is no longer in power.

Let's see here ... he doesn't want the Americans to be in Iraq and try to restore peace in the Sunni Triangle but would he rather be tortured by Uday Hussein? He is looking for publicity, and the liberal mdeia publishes it every time. It is slander against America.

My response:

I don't have the slightest idea about the circumstances surrounding those deaths. I personally can't imaging shooting someone for no reason, but innocent Iraqis do get killed as a result of military actions — "collateral damage," it's called.

It's perfectly reasonable to be upset that people you care about were killed. As you're a believer in the death penalty, I don't think you have a problem with the idea that when someone commits a capital offense, they deserve to die. The problem appears to be when others apply that same idea under circumstances that you personally oppose.

Slander against America? Do you honestly believe that Sports Illustrated writer hates America? Reporting what people think and feel — as well as reporting facts and figures — is the idea our Founding Fathers had in mind when they established the First Amendment — the right to criticize the government is a liberty enjoyed first by us and at one time most extensively by us, too.

I have to say I find it a little bewildering that you find a criticism I forwarded you of Reagan's policies "disrespectful," while letting Rush Limbaugh's slander of President Clinton slide as "funny." (For the record, I can laugh at jokes about Clinton, as well as anyone who deserves lambasting.)