WHO DECEIVED WHOM?

Mary Anna Towler asks, “So did the Bush administration
deliberately mislead us?” (“Supporting the Troops,” November 23). I find
it difficult to understand why the press has backed off digging deeper into
this question. Instead, they are apparently conceding that Bush et al were
deceived by bad intelligence.

I suggest that one can find some insight into this from a
statement made by the then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice during an
interview by Tim Russert on Meet the Press, September 28, 2003; yes, 2003.

Russert wanted to discuss President Bush’s attempts to
convince the American public that Iraq had tried to obtain or develop “weapons
of mass destruction,” specifically the alleged attempt to purchase uranium from
Niger. Russert pointed out that Bush had wanted to make that assertion in a
speech he was to deliver in Cincinnati;
however, it was deleted.

Rice acknowledged that CIA Director George Tenet had argued
against including the assertion, and that it was appropriate for him to have
the final say on matters involving US
intelligence. In Russert’s follow-up question, he asked why, then, President
Bush’s State of the Union address to Congress, delivered only three months
later, contained that very assertion, when the administration already knew it
was highly questionable.

Incredibly, Rice said that they had simply forgotten it had
been deleted from the Cincinnati
speech. She added that Tenet did not raise an objection to it this time.

Was there new intelligence to buttress the assertion? I
don’t for a moment believe there was or that they simply forgot. What does
makes sense, however, is that the administration knew exactly what it was
doing, that Bush deliberately lied to Congress and the American people to get
us into a war with Iraq, and that Rice lied to Russert. (It is a mystery to me
how Russert let her explanation pass unchallenged.)

Now isn’t it about time someone from the press and/or
Congress insisted that Rice explain her statement and what actually transpired?

Stan Hattman, Dorchester Road, Rochester

CASH IN BLACK

In reviewing Walk the
Line (November 23), George Grella shows concern over life imitating art and
vice versa. What he should worry about, though, is the way an otherwise good
film shows itself guilty of art distorting
life.

Case in point: in the fictionalized script, Johnny Cash becomes
“the man in black” out of empathy for Americans in prison — a social position
I totally support. But in real life — no, make that in history — Johnny made that somber attire his nonverbal symbol of
protest against the USA’s
illegal, stage-managed, and bloody war in Vietnam.

It’s easy enough to see how a screenwriter might want to
skirt such a touchy subject as our country’s most unpopular war and sweep the
issue under his or her literary rug. What’s harder to understand is how Mr.
Grella could fail to draw attention to that omission in his review.

Salvatore J. Parlato,
Seville
Drive, Irondequoit

HISTORY BUFF

Thanks for that great article about Mary Jemison (“Frontier
Woman,” November 30). As a new resident of Rochester,
from the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
area, I remember seeing a roadside marker one day. It’s nice to find out the
rest of the story. Please keep the Rochester-history stories coming, and thanks
for a great paper.

John Hirschle, Wetmore Drive, Rochester

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This article appears in Dec 14-20, 2005.