Show V ' ewMeiSe V ‘ : ' U ( i ' ’ - VttW'1’1 ' i :r' ' - ! ’ ty 'Y - t & Vv ' is y I ' ' v 31 '“ ’ ? b1? h"' Sft ty ! - protests used as weapons To the editor: A patriot is defined in the World Book Dictionary as “a person who loves hisher countryand gives it loyal support” Peaceful public protesting of war before it happens or after it is over may be a rational and appropriate thing to do and could he construed as “patriotic” like many war protesters have claimed However once the bullets start flying and the bombs begin to drop the time for open public discussion has passed During war any public protest peace inarch or candlelight vigil can be used as propaganda by the enemy to demoralize our troops and bolster the enemy's cause and moral Such protests now that we ate actually at ' w ur cannot and should not be thought of as “patriotic” At best they aic only a demonstration of our First Amendment right which was pur-chased with the spilt blood and death of many true patriots during war At worst such pdblic demonstrations can indirectly place our troops in harms way and can appropriately be percei ved by our soldiers and their families as traitorous However we still have the right to be verbal traitors in this country and no one will eut out our tongues if we speak out public!) against this war or our lead‘ ers If you am feeling traitorous and w int to holster the cause of Saddam prolong this war and increase casu- allies on Kith sides of this battle just go ahead and keep holding your “peace” marches and protests The media who is historically biased towaid your side will cover your protest get the message out and' unuittingl) magnify your efforts to help Saddam in his cause If you consider yourself a patriot but oppose this particular war for whatever reason exercise your First Amendment right by writing letters to your congressmen and your president Your voice will still be heard hut Saddain won't be able to use it as a weapon For those of you who believe that this war is about purchasing oil with American and Iraqi blood do something productive: decommission your SUV park your car use public transportation walk or ride your hike Your actions will - —5 - - f " - : - 5'S ! ’ ?v 'i''! "' N v i 'V T ©TttEctuoMAKnftisriaa was prescience He grasped trends almost before they emerged and quickly saw their implications In the mid-196he foresaw the danger to Mack progress in die increasing num0s ber of African-Americ- single-pare- nt an families While he was reviled by liberals then time has proved him right — the problem has grown and spread to whites A fierce anticommunist in the 1970s he was among the first to predict the Soviet Union’s collapse As ambassador to die UN he was quick to defend the US and Israel against frequent General Assembly hypocrisy Most recently he saw the vulnerability of the Social Security system and argued well for its reform Senator Moynihan didn’t always share what some thought to be die logical conclusions of his positions For example he deeply opposed die GOP version of welfare reform His passing is a reminder that political discourse needs more of the elointellectual quence and down-to-eardie table to Moynihan rigor brought th US troops set for urban fight By Jamas B laker For The Christian Science Monitor speak much louder than any words spoken at a “peace” rally Nc Edward Redd Logan Enough proof to justify war To the editor: Though some people say there is not sufficient evident to invade Iraq I beg to differ Saddam Hussein is the definition of evil He fits the mold of Hitler Just the images of UN inspectors finding empty warheads that could carry a chemical weapon are enough proof for me to justify attacking Imq After Desert Storm Iraq had chemical weapons left do you assume that they disappeared? No they were either sold on the black market or are being hid throughout Iraq Saddam Hussein needs to be taken out of power The US needs to invade Iraq The first and one of the most important reasons to go into Iraq is that once we take them out we eliminate another threat of chemical or even nuclear warfare That should be plenty of reason to attack right now Reason number two is that when we invade and defeat the Iraqi’s we wifi push Saddam Hussein out of power Then we can restructure the government and hopefully become allies The third reason we need to go in and disarm Iraq with force is because there are other growing threats throughout the world We can't spend so much time focusing solely on one country North Korea is growing more and more of a threat to American society We have to remember that they have officially declared nuclear war-heads Even though they might not have oil we still need to be concerned about the threat of an attack People are scared that we would lose many lives if we go into Iraq The one thing I can say to defend this is that the longer that Hussein in allowed to sit there and plan the more lives wifi be lost when we do attack And if we don't attack then Hussein could very easily launch a weapon of mass destruction at America and then we would lose civilian lives along with soldiers Making the total number of lives lost a lot higher than we could ever imagine ‘ Devin Reeder Newton as the main battle in Iraq moves toward a conclusion near or in Baghdad the specter that concerned Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and his generals before the war — a bloody fight between US troops and die remnants of the Iraqi forces inside an urban battlefield — emerges more prominently It is a scary prospect to US military professionals who pride themselves rightfully on never again having to engage in a “fair fight” in which an enemy’s capabilities will match theirs' And to ah American public that expects ami demands low al friendly casualties and minimal tunnels bunkers twists and turns Some believe the Iraqis’ street smarts give them the edge Interestingly dot is where die military pundits could be wrong Cities like Baghdad are fundamentally human not natural — artifacts As such there is more information about a given city block of Baghdad than for almost any other similar-size- d area of nonurban terrain The locations of buildings sewers and telephone lines that have made urban terrain so formidable are recorded in blueprints maps maintenance records photographs directories and scale models And the US Geographical Information Systems that combine traditional location information of recorded plans with highly precise digital ter- -' data and other measurements have grown dramatically over the past decade Combining it into something intelligible is terribly difficult Getting it in usable form to those who may use it is challenging But the US Department of Defense has done all this The reason cities have been so militarily formidable has been that it has been so hard to know where things are In the absence of knowing where things are — and are not — it’s difficult to know where people in the city are and are not In a battle the side that knows the most about where filings are has a huge advantage — particularly if that knowledge is comprehensive That’s because of the other characteristic of this human artifact — the fact that cities are systems The buildings streets sewers water lilies gas lines telephone lines and electricity lines — all the things that distinguish a city — are all tied together And that means with comprehensive knowledge of a city you can influence if not control almost anything that occurs within a local part of that city That’s what offsets the street of someone who has intimate knowledge of a room building or neighborhood If the last battle is in Baghdad the US wifi niter it know- Honorable John Doe Idaho House of Representatives Statehouse Boise ID 83720 IDAHO HOUSE House District 31a — Larry Bradford 3208 E Cub River -- up-to-d- radar-generat- col-later- damage ed rain-elevati- on But it may not be as scary as military pundits proclaim Let’s be clear Urban conflict as the US military refers to combat operations in relatively built-u- p and populated arenas has always been dangerous destructive and bloody The battles for Stalingrad Berlin and Manila during World War IL for Hue in Vietnam and in Mogadishu were the deadliest of the conflicts in which they ' occurred It would be ridiculous to dismiss the concern with urban conflict as overblown But if you balance rea-sons urban conflict is a “worst case” against what the US military would have going for it the historical precedents have less bearing Concern with urban conflict stems from the terrain there It is highly complex and as military trainers say “very Upper stories of buildings may be enemy observation and sniper posts Sewers may be enemy communications tunnels and ambush bunkers Buildings block sight and communications laser designators and direct-fir- e weapons It is a terrain of line-of-sig- ht ' smarts ing more about the terrain than file Iraqis do The significance of that kind of knowledge of course depends on being able to use it And the US military has the ability to take advantage of its knowledge edge with precision and speed The US clearly possesses file ability to destroy Baghdad But it won’t fra both strategic and moral reasons — and because it has other means of coping through new capabilities: An unprecedented knowledge of the urban terrain in Iraq (that is intelligible transmittable to its forces and readily useable by them) An unprecedented understanding of the systemic character of the urban terrain in Iraq —including precise knowledge about the location of all the potential choke points and nodes in those systems An unprecedented capacity to apply violence with precision and speed where it will have the greatest effect None of this makes the prospect of a fight in Baghdad anything other than a worst case And it doesn’t change the potential of such a fight to be very ugly But it does perhaps alter presumptions some Iraqi mili- tary leaders may have If the conflict goes into Baghdad it still won’t be a “fair fight” If remnants of the Iraqi military try to make a last stand there they will lose and possibly die — but they won’t take many Americans with them James Btaker an employee of a defense consulting firm served as a deputy assistant secretary of Defense and deputy undersecretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration and as the senior adviser to the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffin the Clinton administration Lawmakers IDAHO To call your Idaho senator at the Senate or your representative at the ' House: call and ask for the person by name To write your senator The Honorable John Doe Idaho Senate Statehouse Boise ID 83720 To write your representative: The : Road Preston IDAHO SENATE Senate District 32 (includes Franklin County) — Robert L Geddes 370 Mountain View Drive Soda Springs ID 83276 Springs ID 83263 (208) 646-240- 9 House District 31b— Eulalie LangLake PO Box 386 Mont-ID 2 83254 (208) pelier ford ar 847-173- da Non Sequitur VU gyawwr HOW Ts CWVCVJ-- V Herald Journal - The Opinion page tslntsndsd to acquaint readers with a variety of viewpoints on matters of public importance and provide members of the community wilh a forum for their views Personal columns cartoons and totters from NSMCtoNED'ftKV of n 3 Editorial policy EWfcFOLME THE arc momreiramopinmofiYWvmmara Editorials under the ‘Our creator hearing Vler represent the views of the Hanud Journal stftorinl board- - Members of the editorial board' DARRELL EHflUCKfcityedlor CINDY YURTHteatures edHor BRUCE SMTHpuHsher CHARLES MoCOLLUMAnanaging edtor tut h ' m 310t t Your view Anti-w- ar if tj ' ' 2003 r v-‘W- -- Moynihan’s intellectual rigor will be missed bservers have compared him to Jefferson Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson Former Sen Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D) of New York who died on Wednesday was one of the ' country's best thinkers After starting as an aide to New York Gov Averell Haniman he served as assistant secretary of Labor for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson chief domestic adviser and ambassador to India under President Nixon and as President Ford’s UN ambassador In 1976 he ran for the Senate from New York and went on to serve four terms retiring in 2000 He served in the Navy in World War II and as a Harvard professor He wrote 18 books nine while a senator He was the Republicans’ favorite Democrat and was widely viewed as the Democrats' best intellect One of his outstanding qualities -- V-: Jvil KHw'iniv ' t r Herald Journal National view 0 - — v i: - f 4 Monday March c "The The Christian Science Monitor :': ''' iT " ' ' V : J ' ''' - ww0- f ' AV!' r : The Herald Journal weiootftes letters to the editor Potentially Ifcetous or offensive letters wi not be pubWwd however and lha edtor reserves the right to edit al totters to conform to the length and style requirements of the Letter should be: typewritten snd double-space- d No more than 450 words in length Addressed and indude daytime phone number for purposes of vettHcaSon Signed by the author Indviduals are Imiled to one pubfshad tetter within any 30-da-y period Address al Mere to hjMterOhjnewsxom Gueet commentaries are also welcome end are run at the edtor (Secretion 1 |