WAR ON OURSELVES

U.S. becoming another Vietnam

As I read the story, I could imagine the terror that must have been going
through that 11-year-old boy's mind when he saw a bunch of masked men with
machine guns smashing through the front door. All I could visualize was the
picture of Elian Gonzalez's face that was in all the newspapers when he saw
a group of storm troopers coming at him in Miami. Worse yet, the 11-year-old
kid was shot in the back!

To hell with Colombia turning in to a Vietnam. The United States has turned
in to a Vietnam. The U.S. government trained me, before I went to 'Nam, that
everyone was the enemy there. The U.S. government has been so successful at
militarizing our police forces here that law officers consider every
American citizen ( including kids) the enemy.

Why did it take five minutes to call for an ambulance? Did the officers need
time to corroborate their stories of an accidental shooting? Will the SWAT
team plant drugs to verify the shooting? Maybe I shouldn't be saying this,
but I bet million of Americans are thinking it. I feel that it is time for
people to stand up and say, "We've had enough."

Barry McCaffrey of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (who is at the
Olympic Games right now with 4 million of our tax dollars to push for more
drug testing there) said, "The drug war is not a war."

Law enforcement officers are gunning down people all over the United States.
He has sent U.S. troops to Colombia. It sure sounds like a war to me.

If all illegal drugs were put in to a regulated market like alcohol, the
black market would disappear overnight and we would no longer have to worry
about guns. I think one of the factors behind the drug war is to push gun
control - not to mention our criminal justice industry and prison industry
expansion. Does anybody get the feeling that the government has a lot to
lose if the drug war was to end?

LARRY SEGUIN, Lisbon