NO UNPLEASANT AFTERTASTE!

BEFORE READING "Unquestioned Answers" (Cover Story, "Nonconspiracy theorist David Ray Griffin takes aim at the official 9/11 story," Sept. 6), I was blind, but now I ... Nope, still blind. Because, silly me, I still believe that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. What went down on Sept. 11, 2001 has been documented to a fair-thee-well, and I've drunk the Gov't/Media Kool-Aid- with no unpleasant aftertaste!

Osama and the boys had been hatching a plot to take down an American icon for years prior to 9/11, so incensed were they by our presence on Saudi soil and our shameless enabling of Israel. So lax security let a dozen disgruntled Arabs leak into the country, and because most Americans are practicing sleepwalkers, it was like butter getting apartments, flight school admissions, and directions to the nearest strip club.

And so the opening. A gorgeous day on the eastern seaboard. A beautiful day to fly. "Normalcy" the order of the day in Washington, N.Y., Pennsylvania. Then: Planes take off, get taken over, fly into buildings, all before Katie Couric can dissolve into tears.

A conspiracy? It's been better said by others, but for a conspiracy to come to fruition, every last evildoer has to rely on a thousand others to play their parts precisely, and then to shut the hell up about it until death do they part. That our government--distrusted and inept though it is--had a hand in creating the biggest crime scene in American history (pre-Katrina) just doesn't pass the smell test. Hell, Bush and Co. couldn't even keep quiet about their mission to defame Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame; pigs were squealing everywhere.

But you're telling me it's conceivable that a cabal of nincompoops (led by My Pet Goat) has stitched together Another Big Lie without it unraveling by now? Guess I'm not the only one swallowing the Kool-Aid.

Timothy Rudolph, Santa Cruz

PLEASANTLY SURPRISED!

I WOULD LIKE to applaud Steve Bhaerman who wrote the article "Unquestioned Answers." I am not from California and while visiting Santa Cruz and picking up Metro Santa Cruz, I was very pleasantly surprised to find an alternative viewpoint on the events of Sept. 11 in your newspaper. I wrote many letters to editors of mainstream newspapers urging them to cover the information provided and supported by the expanding 9/11 Truth Movement, but, not surprisingly, to no avail. I congratulate you your courage and I hope that people like you will force others to seriously question the official story of 9/11. I am not sure if you are familiar with him, but if not, you might be interested in Alex Jones: www.infowars.com and www.prisonplanet.com.

Urszula Trudnos, New York

RFO!

Re "Unquestioned Answers": Right fucking on!

Doug MacKenzie, Los Gatos

MAKE LOVE NOT WAR!

WE WORSHIP MEN with guns, so proud of sons who go off to war, where the whole point is to use violence as a means to an end, to destroy. Then we shun those men who openly choose to love other men, casting them out of everyday life as if they were the most evil thing on earth. What sense can be made to uphold the man who is bred to be violent, high on a pedestal of bravery, as we reject and punish the man who has the real courage to love and the dignity to please another man in every way, even sexually. Why is it erotic for two women to seduce each other but a sin against God for two mean to do the same? We encourage our young men to view becoming a soldier (a killing machine) as something heroic and go out of our way to discourage the possibility of love between two men. Could it be that there is a connection between the suppression of male homosexuality and the expression of male rage? Could it be that the men who become soldiers are the ones with the strongest urge to be homosexual--suffocated, over time, by a social system that teaches them to hate what is natural, they in turn become the perfect killing machines, the best American Soldiers.

Donald Scott Fendrick, Santa Cruz

DON'T STING SO CLOSE TO ME!

SINCE moving to the Santa Cruz area four years ago I have tolerated DeCinzo's cartoons, but mostly I have ignored them.

The last one in your Sept. 13 issue (print edition), however, is another matter. It is a display of hideous poor taste, and few people I have talked with find it funny. The comment I have heard most frequently is "juvenile." I was not a crazed Steve Irwin fan, but to make fun of the man's untimely death is really a new low. Yes, I know, the point of the cartoon in question is to point out that people have a fascination with violence, but there are plenty of other news events (both local and national) to use as social commentary.

I notice that you get quite a few letters to the editor complaining about DeCinzo, perhaps you should pay attention.

Brenda Collins, Boulder Creek

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