Ashcroft Gives Warning on Further Attack Risk

Re “Attorney General Stresses the Risk of More Attacks,” Oct. 1: Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft has been stirring the ashes of fear regarding more attacks. Now, what would be gained from keeping us afraid? We’d buy more gas masks, water, Cipro, tetracycline, food, guns? Or is it to pass Ashcroft’s anti-terrorism package? When people are afraid, we give up liberties in exchange for a false sense of security. Beware.

Libby Breen

Altadena

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Of course more attacks are planned. A group of allied nations has openly declared war on the greatest nation on Earth and our only response is to declare war on an individual and talk about fighting a Special Forces-type war against him. We all know how we did with fighting a guerrilla war in Vietnam.

We don’t do small well in this country and we should stop trying to. Countries dominated by fundamentalist Muslim clerics are orchestrating these attacks. Those governments (not the religion) need to be eliminated, just as we eliminated Nazism. If we need to draft an army of 10 million and occupy these aggressors for generations, so be it. This needs to be a large, conventional war on these barbarians, not a dogfight with their lap dog.

Gary Hall

San Diego

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Michael Ramirez (editorial cartoon, Commentary, Oct. 4) thinks that losing civil liberties is a small price to pay to feel safe (not be safe--just feel safe). I wonder what the women in Afghanistan would think; they are prevented from having any civil liberties whatsoever so they can be kept safe from rapists. We can’t ask them, because they aren’t allowed to speak. I wonder about the thousands of Americans who gave their lives to preserve our civil liberties. What would they think? We can’t ask them because they’re dead, but if you visit a national cemetery, you can hear the spinning.

Fran Longmire

Los Angeles