MB Civic

To the Editor:

Re “Quagmire of the Vanities” (column, Jan. 8):

Paul Krugman is right: gambling on the Iraq war is much easier “when the lives at stake are those of other people’s children.” Except that it is my son, a 20-year-old United States marine stationed in Falluja, whose life is being gambled with.

It is my son whose blood may yet protect the egos of men who won’t admit that they were wrong. And it is my son whose 3,000-plus comrades-in-service have already paid the ultimate price for fighting another nation’s civil war.

After four years of pointless, fruitless, uninstigated combat, if President Bush indeed escalates the “sacrifice” of other parents’ beloved children — against all reason, against the will of the electorate and without any personal sacrifice to call his own — it would not be vanity. It is called tyranny.

Donna J. Anton

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To the Editor:

“The Imperial Presidency 2.0” (editorial, Jan. 7) is right on target about urging the Democrats and moderate Republicans to re-amend the laws that Congress rushed into being before the election of 2006.

As you say, this is “not about the past.” We need to stop the continuing assault that the Bush administration has made on our civil liberties and constitutional principles; otherwise, we are down the road to our own demise as a democratic nation.

By not allowing detainees of any stripe the basic rights of arguing the basis of their detention; by allowing the president, at his discretion only, to look at first-class mail or e-mail or listen to phone conversations, we are opening the way toward unchecked presidential power that our Constitution was deliberately designed to protect us from.

The president’s use of “signing statements” extends his disregard for law. Congress should pass a new law specifically forbidding this practice.

The road toward dictatorship is begun with just such small “signing statements” and similar emasculations of our civil liberties as outlined in your editorial.

Deborah Goodell