Posted 10:07 PM by Floyd

It's time for me to make fun of the San Jose Mercury News letters page some more. Sometimes I feel guilty about doing this, because it is pretty much shooting fish in a barrel. But I figure that there are lots of comedians paying good money for this kind of material. Who am I to turn it down when provided to me for free?

Here's asshat -- I mean constestant -- one:

Are we getting the full story on Iraq?

In the first two weeks of July, for the first time, the U.S. media focused closely on the terrible price that American soldiers are paying for the U.S. occupation of Iraq. American soldiers are being killed almost on a daily basis, and reports of these attacks have seriously eroded Americans' confidence in the Bush administration's Iraq strategy. They have also led to a significant drop in the president's approval rating.

In the last several weeks, however, despite the increase in attacks on American soldiers, the American media have significantly reduced coverage of these events. In fact, the number of American soldiers that have died has been vastly underreported (Opinion, Aug. 3). Could it be that the Bush administration is pressuring U.S. media not to report these attacks and the true number of casualties?

Chris Rauwendaal
Los Altos Hills

That's quite a provocative idea. The Pentagon is forcing U.S. media to ignore some casualties. Those soldiers' deaths are not reported to us. The Pentagon then hires actors to imitate those people, so that no one knows they are dead.

You'll notice that only U.S. media does not report attacks and casualties. Foreign news outlets like the BBC and Reuters report the truth, but fortunately for the Pentagon, Americans don't have access to those sources.

It kind of makes you wonder if we're getting the full story on other kinds of news. For instance, what if it turns out that Niobium, which as we all know is the 41st element, is really the 42nd? Just let me explain how this could happen: Everyone was all happy with the idea that element 41 is Niobium. Then somebody does an experiment and is like, "Woah! This is really the 42nd element. Niobium and Molybdenum got switched!"

Then all the chemists would hold like a big chemist meeting. Some people would say that the truth will come out. "The truth will set you free", even if it's about Niobium. But then one big Nobel Prize winner -- I mean a big chemist, not that the Nobel Prize for chemistry is any bigger than the prize for Medicine or Opthamalogy -- would say:

"Look, everyone is happy the way things are right now. It's not like we're talking about an important element like Iron or Florencium. Nobody gives a shit. There's no reason for us to reprint a million books and embarrass Mr. Niobe. Just let things be."

So thanks for writing in with your provocative thoughts, Mr. Rauwendaal. Thanks for writing to the San Jose Mercury News, which as we all know is extensively fact-checked.

----------

Voila letter two:

Powell sends a message to Bush

Though he denies it publicly (Page 7A, Aug. 5), Secretary of State Colin Powell has indicated through a confidant that he will not be part of a second George W. Bush administration, should a second term come to pass.

It is no surprise that Powell would prefer to play no part in the president's extremist cabal. What is surprising is the timing of his ``leaked'' intentions. It would be more conventional to wait until the election results were in and then, if Bush were to be re-elected, to publicly announce his non-availability.

By announcing at this early date, 16 months prior to the 2004 national elections, his unwillingness to continue in the president's service, Powell tells me that he is sick of the heavy-handed, extremist, unilateralist and me-first ``foreign policy'' he has been forced to promote and explain to our partners overseas.

Good for you, Secretary Powell.

Hal Beers
San Jose

That makes a lot of sense. Let's say it's 2003 and I take a job where I don't agree with my boss and I don't like what I'm doing. Obviously for the first two and a half years I'm going to do nothing about it. Then in 2005 I'm going to have a friend tell the newspapers that I plan to quit in two more years, in 2007. You can't control me. I am a stone bad motherfucker.

----------

I saved the best for last:

Imagination wanes when arts are cut

Every time there's a budget crisis, we cut what we consider to be the least important programs -- art, music and anything creative. And every time the arts are cut, the imagination of the nation is further reduced.

This can be seen by the way Americans are unable to empathize with people at war. We're unable to put ourselves in the place of people having no water, electricity or sewage facilities. We can't guess what it's like to live in a war-torn land.

Our president has led us down a path leading to the destruction of this republic -- with pre-emptive war, unbridled capitalism, wastefulness and intolerance as his guiding principles. But we go about our daily activities without giving it a second thought -- because we can't even imagine the consequences.

Joyce Blaskovich
Aptos

How long would the oxygen flow to your brain have to be interrupted before you got this dumb? My guess is four and a half days. Did Joyce ever try to imagine what it was like to be in one of the hijacked planes on September 11th? Or what it's like to live under a dictator who throws people feet-first into shredders and takes money for food and spends it on palaces?

Anyway, what the hell does art have to do with imagining suffering during war? I mean, there's Guernica, but then what? What Joyce really wants is government funding for war movies and the History Channel.