Dr. John Poindexter may be completely insance, who knows for sure?

To the Editor:

The lastest insanity coming out of the Pentagon's DARPA office is an Internet betting parlor with posted odds on various hypothetical future terrorist events in the Middle East. According to the CSPAN report last night by U. S. Senators Ron Wyden and Byron Dorgan, anyone can bet on anything unpleasant happening in the near future. This program is in extremely bad taste, but after you have just invaded and occupied a soverign nation on completely bogus evidence, I suppose that the Pentagon folks believe that "anything goes."

Dr. John Poindexter, a former National Security Council advisor of the Reagan Administration, who was convicted of lying to the U. S. Congress in the 1980s (and who later got off on some obscure technicality), was selected by Bush to create the absurd universal domestic spying system that would create computer files on every American. These files would include credit card records, bank records, web surfing tracking records, and health records. This lunatic system has been somewhiat reined in by Congress since it first came to light several months ago.

This proposed terrorist-futures-betting parlor is wrongheaded every possible way: it is highly offensive to foreign countries and their leaders, be they friend, foe or neutral. It is morally wrong and shows us as merely arrogant barbarians and bullies to the rest of the world.

Perhaps it is time for Bush, Cheney and this gang of idiots (Poindexter, Perl, Wolfowitz, Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld to submit their resignations. If they are not of a mind to resign, they should be impeached, convicted and removed from office.

Yours truly,

James K. Sayre

29 July 2003