Among The Clueless And Deluded

To the Editor:

A correspondent in last week’s Letter Hive insisted that pro-invasion hawks have been duped by the “propagandized slant” of our corporate-owned, Republication-influenced media.

“Most people,” she wrote, “don’t even have a clue what the real facts are. We aren’t suppose to know.”

In her opinion, the real facts are that this media conspiracy veils our president’s intention to “Destroy countries…so that this administration’s corporate friends can line their pockets with taxpayer dollars.”

Since my pro-invasion viewpoint is informed by the news pages of The New York Times (but not by its editorials), I fall amongst the ranks of the clueless and deluded. But I must ask our letter writer: If you don’t rely upon television and newspapers, just how do you obtain your information? To secret briefings? Pure intuition?

As for the readers of this letter, if you’re interested in looking over a nuanced treatment of the Iraqi issue, you can go online to read “the Liberal Quandary Over Iraq” by George Packer (New York Times Magazine 12/8/02, NYTimes.com). At the end of this piece, Mr Packer bestows grudging approval on the words of an Iraqi dissident, who concludes and address on his dreams of imposing secular democracy in postwar Iraq with the following words: “…if there’s a sliver of a chance of it happening, a five to ten percent chance, you have a moral obligation, I say, to do it.”

Sincerely,

Josh Hull

6 Fern Lane, Newtown                                                April 23, 2003