Posted 5:41 PM by Floyd

The Arsenic Pen Award -- Letters from the San Jose Mercury News

Feel free to compare and contrast with Bill Quick's Letters from My Hometown feature

Beautiful sentiment from Khaled El-Bizri (he's not an anti-semite!):

MICHAEL O'Hanlon (Opinion, Nov. 26) describes the impending war against Iraq as if it is a life-saving surgery.

The ``skillful'' Secretary of Defense William Rumsfeld and his cabal are developing war plans behind our backs. They are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into an adventure that no one can explain except in terms of oil and securing the hegemony of Israel over other nations of the Middle East. How many Americans are prepared to spend a nickel for that?

History will not remember public relations odes written about the administration. It will more likely remember the millions of dead Iraqis, including the hundreds of thousands of children (according to the United Nations) who have died because of the U.S.-supported sanctions on Iraq.

The future of the Iraqi people lies between the bombs of Rumsfeld and tyranny. O'Hanlon made the choice for them. It is bombs. I wonder what he would he say if they included a sister, a son or a daughter of his.

It's wonderful when anti-war activists say that a Mideast war is only about oil; you have to have your fingers stuck pretty tight in your ears to fail to hear all the other arguments relating to terrorism, security, and oppression by dictators. Khaled El-Bizri (he's not an anti-semite!) adds to the winning formula: The US is motivated by oil and Israeli hegemony.

By the way, Khaled (and you're not an anti-semite!), I doubt if US war plans involve a personal bombing for every single Iraqi citizen.