WAYS TO FUND THIS WAR

I hear all the time how we should "support our troops" and as a
former air assault infantryman, I do.

Our leaders, on the other hand, have failed miserably. Our president
is the architect of a horribly flawed strategy based on rosy
scenarios. You plan for the worst and hope for the best, not the
other way around.

Our vice president has yet to be correct on hardly anything he has
said of the war. And our congressmen and women went along with the
whole thing for fear of being called unpatriotic.

That's not how you support our troops, that's not even how you do your job.

Let's start supporting our troops by funding them for this war of our
generation. I understand President Bush won't raise taxes but I have
four recommendations.

First, put funding in the actual budget, not a supplemental.

Second, issue war bonds so we can actively fund the war.

Next, put a box on our tax forms so we can forfeit any tax refund
towards the war effort.

Finally, tax and regulate marijuana as the late Nobel Prize winning
economist Milton Freidman suggested. We could raise billions of
dollars if this is proposed.

We hear that everything changed after 9/11, let's act like it.

Tim Hatfield

Vancouver