Posted by A Disgusted Teacher and OVER THE WALL Devotee on June 19, 2003 at 12:51:19:
Dear John,
I am so disgusted with the lies coming from our president I could spit. He is far worse than Clinton-Bush's lies killed thousands of innocent Iraqi children and civilians and our soldiers too.
John, I have just read Over the Wall for the sixth time since 2001-to my sixth grade students this time. Every pass through your courageous, detailed novel about war gives me more to see. I wish our president could read it, but seriously, I doubt he could.
Now I read that a dozen US servicemen have been killed in Iraq since Bush declared major combat over on May 1, and Mr Rumsfeld called the dead soldiers "militarily insignificant."
Those are OUR young people dying-and for nothing. Iraq was not a threat to US, it is now clear. Only a typical dictatorship that we once supported and now are tired of. Even Sen Kerry said that Bush broke his promise to build an international coalition against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and then waged a war based on lies. ''He misled every one of us,'' Kerry said on the news this morning, that Bush made his case for war based on US intelligence that now appears to be phony, saying that Iraq sought nuclear material from Africa and that Saddam's regime had weapons capable of attacking the United States with biological material. All lies.
No wonder the Iraqi people are killing our soldiers. If they had attacked my town, Omaha, Nebraska, for the same phony reasons, I would be shooting at them, too!
Thank you for writing books that make our children see the world for what it is. I cannot wait to read your new one. Madeline S., Omaha, NE
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