E-mail to talk show host Dennis Prager

Here's an email I sent to conservative talk show host Dennis Prager shortly after the election. No response yet...

Dennis:

I am a Kerry voter who listened to a few hours of your show this week on the recommendation of a Republican friend of mine. I hope you will find this message to be intelligent rather than an irrational rant.

First, answers to some of the questions you've asked some Kerry-supporting callers: I consider myself a political independent. I vote according to the merits of each separate person and issue, not according to which party sponsors them. I did vote for two Republicans this week running for offices in Washington State because I thought they were better qualified than their opponents. I may have voted for George HW Bush in 1988, although I may have voted for the Libertarian. I know I did not vote for Dukakis.

This week I am finding it fascinating that different groups of people can view the same situations 180 degrees opposite. I found that I agreed with much of what you said, but the names of the candidates were reversed. As I see it, this DOES represent the triumph or lies & irrationality over reason. But you seem to be logical in your thought processes, so I will address you in the same manner.

By the emotions I heard in your voice November 3rd, one might think it was the Nazi party that was narrowly defeated rather than the Democrats. I am completely baffled about how Bush can be seen as the candidate of moral reason, and that Kerry was the opposite. My biggest objection to the Bush record is the deception surrounding the Iraq war. I feel that Bush violated the trust of the nation and the world by painting a fictional picture of a threatening Iraq by overstating weak, exaggerated and false information.

I just read your response to "Things you have to believe to vote Republican" and I have never been comfortable with the accusation that Bush lied about Iraq. That would mean that Bush new the statements about Iraqi WMD were false when he said them, and I cannot be certain that he did not believe them to be true. However by prefacing these statements with "We are certain that..." or "We know for a fact that.." he was at best, deceptively overstating his confidence in this information.

As an intelligent person such as yourself knows, the data intelligence people work with is often not clear. Some is inconclusive, such as satellite images of manufacturing plants that don't real what is being manufactured. Some can be interpreted a number of ways. Some information is just false, fed to intelligence organizations in an attempt to influence the policy of the nation that makes decisions with it.

All of the specific claims about Iraqi WMD proved to be in the categories described above. The stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons didn't exist. The unmanned planes capable of spreading these agents over the US didn't exist. The mobile WMD weapons labs didn't exist. The attempt to buy uranium from Niger never happen.

Of course, if Bush believed these to be true when he said them, that's not technically lying. But he prefaced these claims with "We are certain that/We know for a fact that." If I tell you, as I sit here in Seattle, that I believe it is now raining in Denver based on weather forecast I saw yesterday, that is no lie. But if I say that "I know for a fact that it is now raining in Denver" when my only information is yesterday's weather forecast, that would not be ethical, even if it is in fact raining in Denver. I don't consider it ethical to ask people to make a decision potentially affecting thousands of lives based on rumor, conjecture and speculation described as confirmed facts. I don't understand why Bush supporters consider this deceptive behavior to be moral.

Once the UN weapons inspectors re-entered Iraq the opportunity existed to settle the WMD question without putting the lives of American servicemen and women at risk. But tragically, this opportunity was cut short when Bush decided to invade before the inspections could be completed. I don't understand why Bush supporters consider this to be moral.

Further, although Bush and his senior officials never explicitly said that Saddam was partially responsible for the 9/11 attacks, the implication was repeatedly made. I know this point is debatable, but by constantly talking about 9/11 and Iraq in the same breath, many people who do not listen too closely connect the two in their minds. I see the Administration's talk about the War on Terror, Iraqi WMD and 9/11 as being remarkably similar to Michael Moore's speculations about Halliburton, Carlson and the Saudis.

Also, Bush in fact DID lie following the first debate with Kerry when he described Kerry's concept of the "global test." Bush has no excuse for describing Kerry's words as the exact opposite of what he really said. How can anyone who listened to the debate view this as anything other than a lie?

Regarding Kerry's use of the F-word in Rolling Stone. Is using that term in the sense of "bungle" or "mismanage" worse than Cheney's use of the same word in the context of verbal abuse aimed at a member of Congress?

During the next four years I will judge Bush on an action-by-action basis. I expect he will do some things I agree with as he did in the first four years. But if should propose a new military operation based on intelligence, I don't know how I could trust him.