Speak Out

Re "Still searching for answers" and "Somebody knows something" (News stories, April 27-28):

We're still searching for our loved ones, and we know that somebody knows something because a person doesn't go missing without someone knowing about it and being responsible. My son, Patrick Burrows, has been missing 18 years (Aug. 23, 1990). He wouldn't just leave his home and family without a word.

We want answers and justice for our loved ones, just as you would if you were in our place.

As for the remark made that the other family has "sympathy" and "they are good people," so are we good people. Sometimes things happen beyond the victim's and their family's control. That is what is sad about this and the way people in a town do not support crime victims, their families and law enforcement who work these cases.

Patrick was a young man, just 23 years old, with his whole life ahead of him. He's my only son whom I love very much. I miss him terribly. How will I ever know or imagine how his life would have turned out? Or who his wife or children would have been?

I don't know how anyone could live with themselves, go about their daily lives and sleep at night if they are responsible for this disappearance or know about this case and remain quiet.

They will not get away forever because there is a judgment day when they will pay and justice will come. "Vengeance is mine saith the Lord."

The "bad image" Piedmont has will heal when these missing people are found, justice is served and the truth known.

The ones responsible and who are involved know who they are. So does God. They can't run or hide from him.

Imogene Burrows
Piedmont

What is amazing

Re "What makes a lie a lie" (Speak Out, May 27), and "Consequences of lies" (Speak Out, May 28):

Letter writers Don Thornton and Jamie Watts have done what has become typical among the extreme right. They hurl insults, repeat the same tired right-wing talking points and invoke 9/11.

After President Bush's "mission accomplished" speech, $160 billion was airlifted into Iraq on cargo planes and the cash quickly disappeared into Iraq. According to L. Paul Bremer, head of the Iraqi Provisional Authority, pallet loads of U.S. currency weighing several tons were loaded into planes and airlifted into a war zone. And every single dollar of that money disappeared without a trace. Unfortunately, the incompetence of this administration does not stop there.

Halliburton received billions of dollars in federal contracts either for services that it did not render or for services that were inadequate. And, to date, the most egregious act committed by Blackwater would have to be their security guards gunning down innocent men, women and children. And now we have the revelations from the book of former White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

What is equally amazing, if not damning, about the Bush administration scandals isn't the scandals themselves. It's the fact that they are not being related by the so-called "liberal media" but by former officials and surrogates of this administration, sometimes by mistake and sometimes not by mistake.

Freddie L. Hinton
Oxford

Simplifying my point

My previous letter posed the challenge for someone to please provide irrefutable proof that the Bush administration lied in order to justify an invasion of Iraq. Maybe I can simplify my point now.

Many people think that Bush stole the election in 2000, when all Al Gore had to do was win his home state. Had Tennessee gone to Gore, then Florida would've been a moot point. Many folks also think that the Bush administration was directly involved in, or allowed to happen, the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

My question was meant to be that if the Bushies could pull off those two conspiracies, and if they were lying about the conditions in Iraq, then why wouldn't they simply make WMDs appear somewhere in Iraq to support their lie?

Remember the movie, Wag The Dog?

Jamie Watts
Brandon, Fla.