Letters to the Editor

Double standard on CBS

To the Editor:

Michelle Dubert ("CBS's truly incompetent journalism," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 9/23/04) quotes The Wall Street Journal to argue that CBS's gaffe over forged National Guard records "reminds us of the dangers of arrogance and complacency -- temptations from which none of us, regardless of ideology, is immune." Really?

Ms. Dubert writes as if Dan Rather is the only one to have erred in recent memory. How easily she forgets our maliciously maligned president. I know it's not de rigueur these days to tell the truth on Iraq, but the fact is we got it wrong. Committee after committee, commission after commission, has said that not only did Iraq have no weapons of mass destruction, as the president claimed, but also that it had no connection to al-Qaeda.

The administration has said it was given faulty information. Fine. So was CBS. But Dan Rather and the network's leadership didn't pass the buck to their sources; they apologized. I submit it is high time for President Bush to do the same and accept responsibility for this war and its costs. We can no longer afford a commander-in-chief who waxes patriotic about our duty to fight terror while shirking his own to tell us the truth.

Justin Raphael

College '06

Supporting Lambda Law

To the Editor:

Jennifer Weiss brings up some very interesting points in her Sept. 22 column ("Military recruitment beneficial to students," DP, 9/22/04). However, there is a crucial error that undercuts her conclusion.

If the U.S. Armed Forces were kept off campus, it would not prevent law students from getting jobs with the Judge Advocate General's Corps, as she suggests. In fact, the University has successfully banned JAG from campus in the past; JAG simply set up shop somewhere close to campus, and the students were told where to find them. Penn Law School students have had no problems getting jobs in the JAG Corps, even when they were not permitted to participate in the on-campus program.

The Solomon Amendment causes real harm to students at Penn Law. By contrast, keeping JAG off campus causes no real harm at all. Hence, I support Lambda Law's protest.

Adam Cohen

Law '07

The writer is a member of the Penn Law Council of Student Representatives.

Putting the past behind us

To the Editor:

While I recognize Mr. Tazi's opinion regarding the Campus Crusade for Christ banner ("Connotations of "crusade,'" DP, 9/23/04), it nevertheless represents a naive view of the issue. If Mercy Crusade -- "an animal welfare organization" by its own description -- had a college chapter here at Penn, would we also request that its members remove any banner which they might place over Locust Walk?

If our goal is "to better the situation of the world," and yet we are caught up on words with connotations a millenium old, then we are far removed from our goal. Part of healing the wounds of the past, while never forgetting them, is to acknowledge and repudiate them and put them behind us. Distinguishing between The Crusades and the simple word "crusade" is one small means of moving in that direction.

Steven Mitchell

College '06

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