As a subscriber to the News & Record, I have read many letters from Tony Moschetti. Most of his diatribes are partisan and petty and hardly even merit a response. The letter published Oct. 13, however, is so offensive that it would be irresponsible to leave his charges unanswered.
He asserts that "it appears to be safer in Iraq" than in "blue" America. This ridiculous claim is based on a specious comparison of homicide rates in three large American cities and U.S. military casualties in Iraq.
In the interest of brevity let me simply point out that he takes a very selective look at casualties in Iraq. In addition to military personnel killed in the war, almost 10,000 U.S. military personnel have been treated at Landstahl Regional Medical Center in Germany after being evacuated from Iraq due to injuries or mental health problems. Most of those young men and women will survive, but many of them will suffer permanent life-altering disabilities.
He also ignores hundreds of coalition military and civilian contractor casualties, and he fails to mention that bombings and kidnappings are everyday occurrences. Most egregiously, he totally ignores Iraqi civilian casualties, conservatively estimated at 13,000-15,000. (See www.iraqbodycount.net and http://icasualties.org/oif/ )
The human cost of this war has been very high indeed. Mr. Moschetti might do well to ask ordinary Iraqi civilians whether they think they would be safer in Chicago, New York or Los Angeles than in the cities of their war-torn homeland.
Julie V. Brown
Greensboro
News & Record
October 18, 2004
