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The energy mess and fascist gays

Readers respond to Camille Paglia's latest column.

June 1, 2001

On Timothy McVeigh, the real question is, do not let him die before he gives up his associates. McVeigh was a private in the military! What is his knowledge of demolitions or explosives? His caddy, Nichols, would be capable of exactly what? How could they have destroyed that massive building with a truckful of hay and manure? My understanding is that you would have to get this mixture to about 7,200 degrees to make it a potential explosive. Did Nichols do that with his cigarette lighter? Something is dramatically wrong if the FBI and Department of Justice want to close this down with once again the lone maniac theory. What has McVeigh -- the Manchurian candidate -- been offered to say nothing?
-- Donna Joyce


I'm a little puzzled by your abrupt dismissal of the McVeigh execution issue: "Kill the mass murderer." We took a nice "normal" boy, put him through the dual meat grinder of a dysfunctional family upbringing where he learned not to show or express feelings and a public school education that taught him to obey and not to think. Then we sucked him into the military. When they were finished with him, he knew how to be commended and decorated for killing or maiming human beings.



He and many others were perplexed over why Americans did not wail and moan when their government killed innocent people at Waco and Ruby Ridge or the innocent people (women and children) that are being killed and maimed in places where we are interjecting our interests (political, economic, etc.) around the globe, as in the bogus Desert Storm "war" in which he served. Children died horribly and needlessly in a daycare center in Oklahoma City, and children died horribly and needlessly in hospitals and their own homes when we carried out our relentless bombing in cities like Belgrade and Baghdad. McVeigh's deed sickens me, but then so do the actions of our own government. Violence begets violence. Period.

-- Diane Bernish, Kent, Ohio

I believe we have another Lee Harvey Oswald here. The story we all now believe and the story that was played out on our TVs that terrible week in 1995 are two unrelated events. The trial evidence and the visual evidence would make you wonder if we're talking about the same bombing. Our wonderful FBI is so revered that the media follows them like a puppy dog and gradually pulled the wool over their own eyes in the ensuing years. As a libertarian, I'm surprised that you don't question how the government investigated this event. Take a look at www.devvy.com -- a lawyer who has virtually given up her career to find the truth and hold it up for all to see. Devvy, like you, believes that our personal freedoms come before government interference.

-- Paul Whealy, Canada

You are the captain of said spy plane, the plane is carrying highly secret spy stuff equipment, the plane is "damaged" and falling out of the sky; where is the last place you land the plane? On enemy territory? Couldn't the crew parachute out of the plane and blow it up? Why, if in international airspace, didn't the plane have fighter escort? At least the plane must have been shadowed by U.S. Navy vessels. Why didn't they ditch it and wait to be rescued? So I have to ask the question -- is the U.S. military totally incompetent?

-- Ed McPhillips

I, too, was dismayed at the pressure that Bush succumbed to by issuing that ghastly letter to China. Like you, I didn't understand the hurry to bring them home. They were treated like war heroes, which I still don't understand. That plane should not still be there. And what an embarrassment to this country for that whining, sniveling Commander Waddle to broadcast all over the public airways the pathetic moanings of his conscience. I was disgusted. All that was missing was some mud to grovel in.

-- Cynthia Pentino

As a consequence of China's one-child policy, now about a generation in effect, their male birth rate has outpaced their female birthrate by as much as 17 percent, according to some estimates. Out of a population of more than a billion, how many horny adolescent young men with no possibility of getting married does that make?

Historically, famine in China [historically] led to mass infanticides of girl babies which resulted in massive instability when the excess males grew up and hit puberty. One such time was the Tai Ping rebellion, which set records for casualties that stood until well into the 20th century.

Is anybody thinking about China's problem, which may all-too-soon become our problem?

-- Stephen Browne, Warsaw, Poland

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