2004 LETTERS TO EDITORS PAGE
Page developed and maintained by Alan Journet

If you have submitted a Letter-to-the-Editor of your local newspaper arguing an environmental position, please allow us to print it here also.  Please send a copy to me (as e-mail, Word
2000 attachment, or WordPerfect (Corel 2002) attachment.

Submitted January 22nd SMRLOP
Published January 26th

War Is Not Trivial

Editor:

        The Iraq War is not trivial! In recognition of this the Southeast Missouri Coalition for Peace and Justice has held weekly protest vigils for some fifteen months.  As Thursday evening travelers near the corner of Broadway and West End  know, we are opposed to the pattern of lies that took this nation into an illegal and immoral war even as we are supportive of and sympathetic to the military personnel serving their country in Iraq and the loved ones left behind.

        The constancy and legitimacy of this protest are, we infer, why the Coalition received the Martin Luther King Jr Community Service Award.  Passers by might wonder, then, why we were absent this week.

        The reason is no diminished opposition to the war. Indeed, as casualties on both sides mount, and chaos increasingly grips Iraq, our concerns are heightened. Rather, our absence this week was because a local TV station sought to trivialize the Iraq war and our opposition to it by running a humorous feature on the honking by passing supporters of our opposition. By inviting motorists to honk for peace, they suggested, we were asking motorists to break a law that states honking without just cause is illegal. Although we argue that peace is surely as just a cause as can be imagined, we chose not to provide the TV station with an opportunity to trivialize either us or the Iraq War.

        Rest assured, however, that our vigils and protests will continue.

Sincerely

Alan R.P. Journet

Submitted February 19th 2004

Sound Science in the White House

Editor

Making a call that resonates with a public wanting decisions to be informed by the best data and evidence available, politicians and commentators frequently urge the use of sound science in decision-making. 

From the Bush White House, however, the call is different; instead we repeatedly see the stacking of expert panels with corporate representatives at the expense of scientific expertise and the suppression of scientific evidence and conclusions if these fail to serve the Bush political agenda. 

As an example, the White House stacked a panel on the health effects of lead with representatives of the lead industry rather than with health scientists.  In another case, the White House insisted that a report be modified, at the request of the energy industry, to expunge current scientific understanding of climate change research.  This political interference with independent scientific inquiry has occurred at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Interior and Defense.  Human health is being sacrificed for corporate profit.

Politics should not interfere with the interpretation of scientific evidence; rather, the time for politics is after the scientific evidence has been presented. 

The White House seems to view science the same way it views military intelligence; they want to cherry pick the data that suites their agenda and suppress the rest, rather than allow the experts to evaluate the data available and provide the best and most informed conclusions that an evaluation of all the available evidence indicates.