Letters

Veterans air views on Bush and Kerry

Regarding your July 29 article "US veterans remain sharply divided": As a 30-year veteran of the US Navy, I supported Bush when he launched the war on Iraq because I believed his claims that we were in imminent danger from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as well as Bush's assertions that Iraq and Al Qaeda were in cahoots. After subsequent revelations, I feel terribly deceived and betrayed. I am anguished that young men and women have been and are being killed in an unnecessary war.
T.A. Tuazon
Cape Coral, Fla.

I am sorry to say that, once more, we vets are being used by our country. You imply that vets are evenly divided concerning support for John Kerry, but I believe that actually very few are for him. If Mr. Kerry was so grounded in his valor, there would be no need to continually drag it out. We vets know what war and the brotherhood of men are all about, and we have grave concerns about Kerry.
Stephen Morrison
Lakewood, Wash.

Regarding your July 21 article "The grunge generation grows up": Being at the younger end of the group (born in 1975), I have always felt distanced from the so-called Generation X. As a stay-at-home mother of four running an interior-design business out of my own home, and the wife of an enlisted sailor, I have never connected with the entertainment world's view of my generation.

Everyone I know is grounded in a family-first, self-second world, where helping each other is just as important as helping yourself. It's nice to be acknowledged as the unselfish nonslackers that many of us really are.
Michelle Bodine
Lemoore, Calif.

I am a member of Generation X, and the reality is that people ages 25 to 40 are getting divorced more and having more children out of wedlock, and the stay-at-home moms are living off welfare.

You say there are more business owners, but from what I have seen, the businesses do not last. Filing bankruptcy is very common. It is quite interesting to me that when articles such as these are written, the people they profile had money to start with.
Katie Hawes
Charles Town, W.Va.

I believe that Generation X should not be classified specifically by year. For instance, I was born out of the Gen-X time frame. However, my brother was born in 1975 and my sister in 1978. Growing up, I copied anything and everything they did; therefore I consider myself a Generation X'er. Also, you have to consider demographics. I live in the Northwest, where this mentality lives on even today. Generation X'ers aren't so much a generation as a state of mind.
Karolyn Forster
Portland, Ore.

Your July 21 editorial "Charging up the freeway" concludes with the usual mantra about the need to invest more money in mass transit. Mass transit is not the answer to the very diverse travel patterns in very dispersed American cities. With only a few routes and a few stations, mass transit can serve only a few locations, at tremendous cost.
Jerry Schneider
Corvallis, Ore.

A better public policy than highway-toll taxes would be to recognize that the automobile does not pay its way in our economy. It would more nearly pay its way if Congress imposed an import tax of $5 to $10 per barrel on all imported oil. Such a tax would reduce consumption, reduce dependence on foreign oil and its effects on international relations, and provide funds for highway and infrastructure creation and maintenance.
Lorin Pace
Salt Lake City

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