To the Editor,
Re: National media pay lip service, Letters, March 8.
As if another ludicrous and mendaciously named “Israeli Apartheid Week” wasn’t enough, we get some rancourous ranting from Bernie Smith.
He mentions an “alleged” Iranian nuclear program even though Iran admits having one but claims that it’s only for peaceful purposes.
So why will they not grant inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency access to their Parchin military facility, which satellite images have shown could well be a site for research and testing relevant to nuclear weapons?
By mocking Prime Minister Stephen Harper for using the term “leader of Iran” in lieu of a name, Smith seems to think that pugnacious President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the only dictator of policy in that country. How could any reader of international news miss the utterances of Iranian “supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or other Islamic Mullahs?
The reference to George W. Bush’s “drumbeat of war against Iraq” has some truth to it, but overlooks some good reasons other than “weapons of mass destruction” for taking down sadistic Saddam Hussein.
Thinking of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu … if any unhinged dictator with potential nuclear capabilities was telling the world that he wanted to “wipe my country off the map”, I’d definitely be considering a pre-emptive first strike as well.
Smith ends his rant by relating how “really tragic” it is that media people who he disagrees with must have low IQs and “are largely misinformed”.
How hubristic is that?
Jim Corder
Nanaimo
