Bush’s Secret Aid for Iraq

Although you are indeed correct in maintaining that the point of holding hearings is to discover and expose policy errors so as to know better how to avoid similar errors in the future (editorial, “The Cost of Good Intentions,” Feb. 26), conceding this much almost reduces the whole exercise of holding hearings to futility since 1) nobody in the Bush Administration is going to learn anything from such hearings that was not already known but simply and deliberately disregarded, especially in an election year, and 2) those who are in a position to teach a valuable lesson in governance (viz, the Democratic-controlled Senate) may choose instead to teach a rather sordid lesson in election-year politics.

I would have been much happier if the editorial had instead mentioned the North Korean shipment of Scuds to our latest fellow champion of democracy and stability in the world today, Syria, in the hopes that an Administration, which generally knows no shame, might at least find it expedient to appear to do something and, perhaps, achieve some good effect.

G. (ZAL) ZALKOVIA

Los Angeles