The question is, why, precisely, does the US military appear to be discouraging post-war health screenings for our vets? - M. R.

Anyone who understands programming knows that it would take an intentional act of will to program the voting machine to recognize a straight Democratic party vote and transform it to a Republican party vote. For one thing, the voting machines have no inherent mechanism (or need) to identify any candidate with any particular party. Hence the ability to switch a Democratic party-line vote to a Republican party-line vote requires additional code not normally in the system.

Folks, they are stealing your election and your country right before your eyes. Real errors would produce results that went both directions equally. Just as many errors should favor Democrats as Republicans. But all the "glitches" and "programming errors" favor the GOP. Hence, there is design and intention evident in the results.

The US is the dictatorship Bush joked about. But the joke is on you. - M. R.

Of course, as the Fox News lawsuit proved, pointing the finger at chemicals used in agriculture can get you fired and sued, hence the rather banal and generic "environment and genetics" cited as the cause in this article. - M. R.

Be prepared to see a lot more of this in the elections nation-wide next week, and this has nothing to do with programming glitches. - M. R.

And the US is rolling out the welcome mat for him?

When does humankind finally get that ALL genocide is bad, period, end of discussion? - M. R.

Readers are strongly encouraged to FAX Senator Grassley's office at either (202) 224-6020 or (515) 288-5097 to demand answers to these questions. I suggest FAX because emails and the web form are either ignored or filtered on this issue. - M. R.

There you have it. President Bush had admitted what the eyewitnesses reported on 9-11; that there were bombs inside the World Trade Towers.

Of course, Bush pins the blame for the bombs on Al Qaeda, which is sort of accurate when you consider that most of Al Qaeda is a creation of US and Israeli intelligence.

But in trying to explain away the eyewitness reports of bombs, Bush has dug himself into a deeper logic hole. How did these "Al Qaeda" bombers manage to spend at least a week (according to witnesses who heard and saw them) working inside the buildings under the noses of Bush's cousin and brother, who were in charge of security for the World Trade Center? Security at the towers was tight following the 1993 attempted bombing. You could not simply walk into an elevator unless you could document employment or a meeting. Yet as one can tell from the tell-tale marks left by the cutter charges, these preparations took a great deal of time and materials to carry out.

Why did these "Al Qaeda" bombers go to the extra effort to drop all three buildings straight down instead of toppling them sideways, maximizing the damage?

If Al Qaeda succeeded in bombing the buildings, why bother with the airplanes? Why bother hiding the bombing itself, if it was truly the work of terrorists out to make a statement?

In admitting the bombs, Bush has opened up the inquiry to include the very great amount of incriminating evidence found near the airplanes linking the attacks to Arab nations, versus the total absence of any such evidence near the bombs. This contrast is ONLY explained if the evidence left with the airplanes was planted, to frame someone.

Why did it take 5 years for the government to admit what was obvious to everyone right from the start; that explosives were used to bring down the buildings, unless the original plan was not to admit to the bombs in the first place?

Dubya, in his pathetic attempt to pin the blame for the now-admitted bombs on Al Qaeda, has created far more logical problems then he has solved. - M. R.

How much more obvious can it be that this administration has a 'zero-tolerance' attitude toward free speech, and the Constitution itself? - M. R.

:) - M. R.

Pathetic.

Just #$%^ing pathetic. - M. R.

Maybe not. - M. R.

Saddam did NOT have links to Al Qaeda.

Saddam did NOT have anything to do with 9-11.

Saddam did NOT "gas his own people" (Iran gassed the Kurds).

This is a show trial on a par with anything the USSR ever did, with a pre-ordained verdict, timed to be announced just before the elections. - M. R.

If a government cannot prove the accuracy and honesty of the election by which they claim authority over the people, then the people are neither legally nor morally obligated to obey that government or to pay its bills. - M. R.

"Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information." -- US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring and its connections to 9-11. - M. R.

Why should they stop? They have no reason to stop. Unless and until you give them one. - M. R.

In 1940, Fulgencio Batista won the Presidency of Cuba in an election tainted with massive vote fraud. Batista was very popular with American interests such as United Fruit and PepsiCo to whom he sold Cuba's agricultural produce at below-market prices, and with organized crime, which built the infamous casinos in Havana.

Batista lost the election of 1944 because of his unpopular policies, but ran again in 1952. Polls showed him in last place. With the backing of his American supporters, Batista staged a coup and took over the government. He held elections in 1954 and easily won, being the only candidate on the ballot.

Batista continued to impose tighter and tighter controls on the increasingly angry Cuban people until finally forced to leave office, and fleeing Cuba on January 1, 1959.

Cuba came under control of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, a former lawyer. Having studied in the United States when young, Castro approached the US to normalize relations, but US interests still wanted favorably trade deals, and Castro refused. Cuba's produce would be sold at prevailing international prices. Castro also wanted the Mafia's activities in Havana, in particular the excesses like the "donkey shows" (women performing sexual acts with animals before an audience), shut down.

So, the US decided to blockade Cuba and cut off their trade, to starve the new government into surrendering Cuba back into the hands of the favored US thug, Batista. Castro refused. The irony is that it was this very blockade which forced Cuba into their relationship with the USSR, giving the soviets a key base right at America's doorstep and handing the US a disastrous foreign policy blunder.

Working with the remnant's of Batista's regime, now holed up in Miami, the CIA and Mafia began to plan a counter-revolution to place Cuba back under Batista's rule. Claiming that the Cuban people were having second thoughts about Castro, the CIA enlisted President John F. Kennedy's assistance for an invasion, as well as support from prominent businessmen such as George H. W. Bush, who provided three ships for logistical support. The claim was that the people of Cuba would rush down to the beach to join the invaders in overthrowing Castro. In reality, the Cubans preferred Castro to anyone the US was going to back, rushed down to the beach at the Bay of Pigs, and pounded the invaders into the sand. When JFK realized he had been lied to regarding the popular sentiment on Cuba, he pulled the plug on the invasion. The USSR responded to the attempted invasion of their ally by plaving nuclear ICBMs in Cuba, triggering the Cuban missile crisis, and bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war over cheap sugar and donkey shows.

Kennedy fired CIA director Allen Dulles for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and shortly thereafter, Dulles sat on the Warren Commission "investigating" Kennedy's assassination. There was a brief attempt to link the assassination to Cuba in order to build support for a new invasion, but President Lyndon Johnson was well aware that the USSR had pulled their nuclear missiles out of Cuba with the express understanding that another invasion would result in an immediate nuclear strike by the USSR on the US. At the time, the USSR had an advantage in l;ong-range ICBMs and a working anti-0missile system as well, so Johnson quickly shifted the blame to the "lone nut" Oswald.

Since that time, the US has maintained a blockade against Cuba not because the island nation is any kind of a threat to the US but because it is an embarrassment. Little Cuba has withstood the covert might of the United States for half a century now, a beacon to the world that the US is not always able to select who will rule other peoples' countries. The Cuban blockade is not a military necessity; it is a grudge, written in steel and signed in the blood of the Cuban people.

And it is an antiquity the world can live without. - M. R.

We cannot rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction because they did not have any.

We cannot harm Al Qaeda by attacking Iraq because Iraq was already an enemy of Al Qaeda.

We cannot punish Iraq for 9-11 because Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11.

Therefore, victory in terms of the publicly stated objectives is impossible. WE cannot win this war. We can only lose it, which is exactly what Bush is doing right now.

Thousands of Americans dead or crippled. Thousands more Iraqi dead as well. The region poisoned with depleted uranium. Trillions of dollars spent in an economy that cannot afford such a drain. This war fought to make a few rich men richer still is a disaster for the rest of us.

Yet people like Dov Zachiem will still struggle to find new ways to sell us more of these wars. - M. R.

Israel does not allow most wives or other relatives this privilege for the over 9,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails... and even most children can only go until their 16th birthday. - M. R.

Back in the 90s, when rape was the feminist banner, false rape accusations became the single most often falsely reported crime in the US, according to the FBI. NOW lobbied that mere accusation should be proof of guilt, and that DNA tests should not be used as they damaged the credibility of women. Men were sent to jail on accusations without proof. Cities were bankrupted when those men were finally freed on the basis of DNA tests or confessing accusers. In one infamous case, Gary Dotson went to jail for six years until Cathleen Crowell Webb confessed that she made up the rape story to keep her parents from finding out she was having sex with her boyfriend. NOW had championed her case and lobbied for the strictest penalties for Gary. When the hoax was revealed, NOW turned on Webb, accusing her of selling out to a conspiracy to harm women and support rapists. It was all typical of the fear mongering on which many of the male-bash feminists (as opposed to the gender-equity feminists) built their careers and fortunes. Rape hoaxes became instant keys to celebrity status. In 1991, Catherine Comins, Assistant Dean Of Student Life At Vassar, suggested that false rape charges were a good thing for men to have to deal with. Davis California was on the verge of imposing a male-only curfew when the "skateboarding rapists" were revealed to be a hoax. Then there was the infamous Tawana Brawley hoax, which helped to make Al Sharpton a household name.

I had thought that those dark says were behind us. but as the Duke case continues to unfold, I see the same warning sings of a hoax. The idea that charges have been brought against the lacrosse players without a formal statement being taken from the accuser worries me greatly. Something is wrong with this case. - M. R.

Hunting for the next batch of patsies? - M. R.

What these additional sanctions appear to be engineered to do is to push Kim Jung-Il into the absolutely opposite direction from what you have stated is the US intention: to get the North Korea back to the conference table. - M. R.

There appears to be no apparent motive for this crime, except for the fact that she was a Muslim woman wearing the traditional hijab (scarf) on her head. - M. R.

Please decide what Israel can do to live equitably and honestly with its neighbors, and decide that trade - not wars of conquest in the name of "Erez Israel" just might be the best way to go.

Also, please stop buying American foreign and domestic policy: the citizens of that country just may have had enough of this. - M. R.