Posted 6:05 PM by Floyd

I feel lazy today. Did anyone write a dumb letter to the San Jose Mercury News?

Why yes they did.

Fear triggered attacks by U.S., Al-Qaida

Despite what you may have thought anyone connected with the Bush administration may have said, there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no links to Al-Qaida.

We invade Iraq just because we decided that Saddam Hussein was a really bad man who might, someday, somehow, be a threat to us.

Funny . . . that is the same reason that Al-Qaida gave for attacking the United States.

David Porter
Mountain View

I frequently mock Merc letters to the editor. But this letter must set some kind of record for idiocy per word:

• Horrible rambling diction. "Despite what you may have thought anyone connected with the Bush administration may have said"? This is the writing of a man whose backspace key is broken.
  
• Borderline falsehoods. There were links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. One may not view the links as significant, but they exist.
  
• Strained analogy. Bin Laden did not claim that the US was a future threat. His litany of complaints about America, and the West in general, focussed on the past and the present.
  
• Use of psychopaths as a club to beat people. Even if Bin Laden and America shared motives, so what? Shall we ban choreographed dance routines in stadiums because the North Korean regime likes them?
  

The Merc is obliged to print the letters it receives, you say. But the paper did not put this drivel in its own special place on the editorial page, as if it were some nugget of wisdom.

Why yes they did.