Letter to the Editor

[NOTE: This is a much more concise version of the thoughts in my previous post, which I submitted to the Valley News (www.vnews.com) two days ago as a Letter to the Editor, and which should be printed sometime this week.]

Earlier this week, President Bush labeled a newspaper advertisement purchased by MoveOn.org "disgusting", and he should know. This is the same man who has sat happily by while his campaign or his supporters have run ads falsely implying that Ann Richards (then his opponent in the Texas gubernatorial race) was a lesbian or that John McCain (then his opponent for the 2000 Republican Presidential nomination) had an illicit black baby.

This was the man who managed to skip out on all but the most cursory of military experience while many of those of his generation were dying overseas, and then was all too happy to malign (or have maligned on his behalf) the records of true military heroes such as John McCain, Max Cleland and John Kerry.

This was the man who, while trying desperately to hold on to a do-nothing rubber-stamp majority in Congress, allowed with nary a comment ads equating a Democratic win with support for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and who, after failing for 6 years to catch Osama bin Laden while distracting us from that true goal with irrelevant quagmires in Iraq still has the temerity to tell us that his party is the only one that can keep us safe from terrorism.

President Bush knows disgusting. I guess MoveOn should be ashamed.

Liam Johnson