Letters

Fighting for Every Last Vote
Re “Crunch Time,” your report on the final days of the U.S. presidential campaign [Oct. 18]: Not once during the debates or political rallies did any candidate seriously scrutinize the subject of space travel and exploration. Let’s face it: space is a lost cause these days. Science in general is hurting. We know the geography of Iraq better than we know the ocean depths. Back in the cold war era, science blossomed because of funding provided for nuclear-weapons research. In ancient times, scientific ideas prospered as people discovered and explored the new out of sheer curiosity. Imagine a universe just 50 years in the future in which a summer house on Mars is perfectly affordable to the lower middle class, ordinary travelers take sightseeing tours of the moons of Jupiter and starships sail majestically through the soundless void. But in this U.S. election season, science has been completely bypassed.
Tanjim Hossain
Orlando, U.S.

I am troubled by people who say, “I never vote for the party. I vote for the man.” You can’t have one without the other. The candidate belongs to the party, and what you see is what you get. The party declares its stands on the issues, and its candidates had better stick to those positions or they won’t get financing from the party. Politicians will always side with the majority of their party on any issue, whether it be abortion, Iraq, the Patriot Act, or raising or lowering income taxes.
Gordon Levy
Coarsegold, U.S.

The ability to vote freely is under attack. Registration forms have been torn up and discarded, minorities and college students have been intimidated and registrations have been disallowed for the slightest imperfection. Am I alone in feeling outraged, appalled, terrified? The right to vote is the very core of democracy. We cannot allow public apathy and political manipulation to undermine it.
Ken Keaton
Lauderhill, U.S.

Though the political parties have collected vast amounts of voter information in their secret databases, as your article pointed out, sometimes they don’t realize that a person has died. My mother continues to receive her Republican Party membership card and pleas for donations, even though she died almost two years ago. I returned several pieces of mail and wrote deceased across the face of the envelope. I finally sent one back with the message “She’s dead. Do you get it?” Still, her mail from the G.O.P. continues to arrive almost weekly. Maybe, since deceased voters have been known to cast ballots, it’s in the party’s interest to keep sending mail.
Jane Koch
Montclair, U.S.

Strategic Miscalculations
Your article “What Saddam Was Really Thinking” described disclosures made in Charles Duelfer’s CIA report on Iraq’s alleged weapons arsenal [Oct. 18]. The greatest mystery is not why Saddam Hussein let the world assume he had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) but why, with the best intelligence our hard-earned tax money could buy, the U.S. was totally fooledand as a result has lost more than 1,100 precious American lives. I shudder to think what other surprises await us.
J. Connor Boggs
Kaneohe, U.S.

For young Americans and young Iraqis to kill each other in a continuing cycle of violence in no way furthers the antiterrorism cause. Getting rid of Saddam was a good idea. But replacing his secular dictatorship with a fundamentalist theocracy would not be so good. Iraq will probably have a civil war that will eclipse and consume any puppet democracy that the U.S. creates. Stay the course? That was our motto in Vietnam.
Daniel T. Arcieri
Blue Point, U.S.

Saddam denied having WMD all along. He did not mislead anyone. We just did not believe him. The media failed to ask probing questions about the alleged WMD that would have triggered a debate about the Bush Administration’s case for going to war. I blame the media for the mistakes about Saddam’s WMD, not the Republicans in Washington.
Nixon Benoit
Malden, U.S.

The U.S. and Britain may have gone into Iraq under false pretenses. But had we not taken the action we did, we probably would seriously regret it in the long run. Saddam certainly had ambitions that, given time to mature, would have affected all the world, greatly to our detriment. Now that we have taken steps to set things right in Iraq, we need to pray for wisdom for our leaders so they will see this through to a just end for the Iraqis.
Iain Railton
Exeter, England

A Lesson Learned
Joe Klein, in his “No Pain? No Gain For Either Candidate” column [Oct. 18], bemoaned the candidates’ lack of honesty about tax policy during the presidential debates. But remember the 1984 debate between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale, when the latter infamously predicted that the next President, whoever he might be, would definitely raise taxes? At the same time, Reagan said he would not increase taxes. Two things happened after that: Mondale lost 49 out of 50 states, and Reagan raised taxes. Want honesty in debates? Forget about it!
Doug Weiskopf
Cincinnati, U.S.

Scare Tactics
On the surface, Charles Krauthammer’s Essay “The Case for Fearmongering” [Oct. 18] provides a counterintuitive yet compelling case for the strategic evocation of fear. The underlying assumptions are that being afraid is salutary and that awareness of the threat of terrorist attacks will motivate swift, effective action and ultimately result in a safer America. Unfortunately, the true motive for scaring the American people is to win the election. The U.S. is no safer than it was before 9/11, and the passionate rhetoric to do everything possible to defeat terrorism will largely fall by the wayside, along with the flotsam of other broken campaign promises. Superficial, symbolic bills may be passed, and empty new bureaucracies may be formed, but neither will truly protect America.
Ryan Sheehan
Chardon, U.S.

Krauthammer’s argument in favor of fear hit a home run. Although today’s urgent issues are the economy, unemployment, health insurance and education, tomorrow’s pressing issue will be nuclear warfare. We cannot uninvent nuclear fission and its terrifying consequences for the human race any more than we can uninvent gunpowder. Nuclear weapons in the hands of a responsible government can sit idle, serving only as a threat of retaliation against less responsible governments. Those same weapons in the hands of governments that care nothing for earthly survival can destroy the world.
Frances F. Mullon
Ripley, U.S.

A Victim Fights Back
Your report on “Asia’s Heroes” [Oct. 11] included a feature on Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani woman who successfully fought the injustice of local tribal law. After Mai was gang-raped on the orders of a self-appointed village council (to preserve the tribal honor of a local clan), she courageously pursued her case in the courts despite the threat of further violence. Mai won, and six men involved in her rape were punished; two of them were sentenced to death. That is a tremendous example for women across the world who are suffering from similar atrocities based on tribal “honor.” Mai bravely fought for justice and her rights. Women are frequent victims of a cruel society that stands by silently instead of helping them.
Rasmita Rath
Orissa, India

Candid Comparisons
It took only a few false reports about WMD for the Bush Administration to invade Iraq because of fears of an imminent threat. So why is nothing being done to resolve Sudan’s Darfur crisis [Oct. 4], a proven humanitarian catastrophe? Perhaps it is because that tragedy does not pose any immediate danger to the U.S. and the rest of the developed world. Peace negotiations, U.N. convoys and delegations to assess the nature of the genocide are not the solution for Sudan. What is the difference between the Iraqi insurgents and the government-backed Janjaweed militia in Sudan’s Darfur region? If billions of dollars can be spent and more than a thousand lives lost to remove one man from power, why can’t a few billion dollars be spent to save 50,000 innocent lives? How many more people have to be abused, raped and killed in Darfur before the Bush Administration realizes that now is the time to do something?
Shagun Mehandru
Arlington, U.S.

While tens of thousands of Darfurians are being systematically raped, murdered, tortured, starved and driven from their homes, the world community can only stand and watch, arguing about the correct technical term to use to describe the situation and appointing commissions to “investigate” this atrocity. The world is a despicable place. The U.S. has illegally marched into Iraq while defenseless human beings are being slaughtered in Sudan. I don’t care if you call it genocide, slaughter or a disasterthe Darfurian people need assistance.
Fern Smith
Johannesburg

Man On a Mission
Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr. was the sixth U.S. astronaut to travel into space, as part of a 1963 Project Mercury launch [MILESTONES, Oct. 18]. After overcoming technical troubles that threatened his Faith 7 spacecraft, Cooper was a national hero when he returned to Earth. TIME covered the mission and described the problems that Cooper overcame [May 24, 1963]:

“Over Zanzibar on his 22nd orbit, panel lights indicated that one of Cooper’s three inverters [which convert battery power to alternating current] had gone dead. He tried to start a second, but could not. Cooper’s sole remaining inverter was needed to power cabin-cooling gear on re-entry. Now Cooper would have no automatic aids at all in bringing his capsule down … It was up to Cooperwith some dramatic help from the calm, crisp voice of [ground liaison] John Glenn … Cooper and Glenn ran swiftly, surely down a check list of the operations Cooper must perform for re-entry. Cooper skillfully steadied his craft by a manual control stick … Like a rifleman with a cross-hair sight, he lined up a horizontal mark on his window with the horizon …

He lined up a vertical mark with predetermined stars to provide proper heading … As Faith 7 blasted into the atmosphere, friction set up a curtain of ionization that knocked out communications … [The astronaut] scored his bull’s-eye landing off the … carrier Kearsarge … He was safehe had done what his equipment could not do.”