FOX News ran the story once, then pulled it from their website at the urging of AIPAC, which is itself at the heart of the more recent Israeli spy scandal.

It's decisions like this that have lost Fox News half of its viewers in the last 6 months. - M. R.

Each and every one of you needs to CALL their congresscritters and tell them that anyone associating with foreign spies will not get your vote next election. Phone numbers are at www.congress.org. I will remind you after the holiday.

Someone better tell Nancy Pelosi that saluting the flag of the spies doesn;t look good. - M. R.

Hint: The ones wearing the splatter are NOT. - M. R.

Please write and support their efforts to set an end to this war in Iraq, because you KNOW they are getting a lot of abusive emails right now from people who think it's really cool for other people's kids to die in a war based on lies. - M. R.

Well ... - M. R.

One purpose of a single villain to focus on is to sucker the American people into believing that if we can "get" than one man, the war will be over. Of course, that is a lie, or the war would have ended when word got out Osama had died. The other purpose of a single villain is to obfuscate the fact that the US is dealing with a popular rebellion and is fighting the whole Iraqi people. Having a Zarqawi as the purported figurehead makes it look like the US is fighting only a few people following the "bad guy". But rest assured, if Zarqawi dies (by some reports this will be the second time) there will be another super-villain who will be manufactured to take his place to keep the charade going. - M. R.

However, I think this letter is a waste of time.

In a nation with accurate and honest elections, politicians would pay attention to petitions and protests, because each signature and each demonstrator represents a vote for the opposing candidate in the next election.

But, the US no longer has accurate and honest elections. And as we have seen, politicians no longer show any concern about petitions or protests. A million people marched through the nation's capitol opposedto the invasion of Iraq, yet Iraq was invaded.

We are last the point in our nation's history where protests and petitions have any meaning at all. - M. R.

Now, I am not going to say the movie was wonderful. Personally, I think another round of edits to tighten it up would have helped the film's focus, and I find Ridley Scott's blowing of white fluffy things in front of the camera lens a little tiresome, having been repeated so often it has gone from trademark to cliche'.

But, overall the film seemed accurate to me in terms of the history of the crusades. The Europeans had invaded Muslim lands in a most bloody fashion.

"Entering the city [Jerusalem, July 15, 1099], our pilgrims pursued and killed Saracens up to the Temple of Solomon, in which they had assembled and where they gave battle to us furiously for the whole day so that their blood flowed throughout the whole temple. Finally, having overcome the pagans, our knights seized a great number of men and women, and the killed whom they wished and whom they wished they let live.... Then, rejoicing and weeping from extreme joy, our men went to worship at the sepulchre of jour Saviour Jesus and thus fulfilled their pledge to Him.... They also ordered that all the Saracen dead should be thrown out of the city because of the extreme stench, for the city was almost full of their cadavers. The live Saracens dragged the dead out before the gates and made piles of them, like houses. No one has ever heard of or seen such a slaughter of pagan peoples since pyres were made of them like boundary marks, and no one except God knows their number." -- [Histoire anonyme de la premiere croisade, L. Brehier, ed. Paris: Champion, 1924 (From The Portable Medieval Reader, Ed. James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin)]

When Saladin retook the city, he was driving a foreign invader out. There is nothing inaccurate about that; it did happen just that way.

Maybe that is a message that the current media critics want buried in this age where white people are once again stealing Muslim lands, but the film is worth seeing for that very reason. - M. R.

Back when computers were a new business, the computer companies lobbied (and bribed) Congress to exempt them from product liability, to protect the fledgling companies from being destroyed by the mistakes that are made in a new industry. Well, that was 30 years ago, and computer companies are no longer delicate fledglings. Yet for us end businessmen, we are faced with a major problem. If we buy a van for our business and because of a design defect it crashes and harms our buseinsss, we can sue the van maker. But if we buy an accounting package for our bueiness and because of a design defect the program crashes and harms our business, we have no legal recourse. Because of this, computer makers have little motivation to make their systems more reliable, opting instead to load the products up with new features to encourage new sales.

This lawsuit may signal a change. Since Congress will not protect the consumers, it is time for the consumers to take action. If computer companies realize that shortcuts to profitability are not so short after all, we may see more reliable systems coming onto the marketplace. - M. R.

Bill, WHO CARES IF IRAN HAS A BOMB? - M. R.