Letter of the Year

boy, i should have probably waited before printing the other letters, but hell. it was a good day for LOT* today.

Watching President Bush’s press conference on March 21, a sense of shame overtook me. How is he able to laugh and joke when asked questions about war? And how can the reporters sit there and laugh along with his jokes during a time so many people are dying every day?

The only person in the press corps who seemed ready and willing to ask Bush a tough question was Helen Thomas. She asked Bush why we really went to war. No one came to her defense when Bush gave her an evasive answer, and TV newscasts later called her hostile.
How can those reporters sit there in silence and not scream out “liar” when Bush says he never linked 9/11 to Saddam Hussein?

I am embarrassed by this president every time he opens his mouth. I wonder, what happened to America? America doesn’t torture. America doesn’t let people rot in jail for years without due process. America doesn’t stifle science. America doesn’t conduct massive, secret spying on its own citizens. America doesn’t believe the individual is an annoyance, an impediment to supreme government power.

Has the American public become so isolated, ill-informed about the world and drugged by consumerism that it can’t be bothered to turn off its big-screen TVs and find out what has happened to their country?

They seem to care more about Tom Cruise, American Idol and Starbucks than about innocent civilians being killed in our name.

I hope that someday we will all wake up and find our missing America. If not, we are in for a rough ride ahead.

— William C. Stosine. Iowa City.

attribution