I will never agree that any child, anywhere in the world is 'illegal'

To The Daily Sun,

Mr. (Bob) Meade seems to be offended that I chose to "go public" with his letter to me, but I don't know why. We are certainly not friends in any way. I suppose that if I had a printer that worked or could hand write a letter to him, I would have responded to him that way. I don't have a printer that works, and my hands hurt so badly with neuropathy and arthritis that it would take weeks to write a paragraph and he most likely wouldn't be able to read it any way (because of my terrible handwriting).

Aside from that I have to tell you that I rarely go to any websites for any reason, so it isn't personal Mr. Meade. I wonder if Mr. Meade believes that these children are "illegal" because they weren't born here; if he does, he is certainly welcome to his opinion. I don't agree; will never agree that any child anywhere is illegal. The color of their skin, where they come from, or their religion matters not one bit to me. If they come here as refugees from violence in their home countries, I think we have an obligation to treat them as humanely as possible. If they have family here then turn them over to their families as soon as possible. If they don't, then we need to decide what to do with them that is in their best interest.

Obviously, something needs to be done with our broken immigration system. Calling children illegal is not helping anyone. No matter what reason these children come here, we are obligated to take them in and decide what to do with them due to a law George W. Bush enacted to protect them from violence and human trafficking. The "Obama blamers" just look even more silly about this, and as silly as they have looked in the past, that's saying something.

Now on to Mr. Earle, I'm still waiting for you to name even one "made up fact" I or any other liberal used in our letters, I can only defend myself of course. But your wonderfully hysterical letter of Aug. 26 is more proof that you can't remove yourself from the delusional fog of a channel called Fox. Not being able to come up with even one "made up fact" you resort to name-calling. I understand that you honestly feel that blaming all the things Republicans screw up on Democrats is perfectly sensible, nonsensical is more like it. It was only a few short months ago that Mr. Earle was telling us that it was we pesky liberals who were responsible for the war in Iraq. I understand that right-wingers like to either rewrite history, or at least ignore inconvenient facts that they don't happen to like, this is just more of the silliness from the right.

Prior to George W. Bush taking office Saddam Hussein was telling the world that he not only had WMDs, he was working on delivering them to far-off locales, such as the USA. Guess what? He was lying. Being rightfully concerned about this, the world decided to send U.N. inspectors into Iraq. Well, look it up as to what happened next. It is the part of real history that the right can't stand.

Mr. Earle puts quotes around the word lies we on the left point out came from Bush and his administration. From the beginning, Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq, even prior to 9-11-2001. After that awful day he tried to associate Saddam Hussein with al-Qaida, even though any one with experience on these matters knew this was nonsense, Bush continued the very real lie that this was "true." At the same time he was pushing the lie of WMD, and had his henchmen also trying to convince us it was "true".

I have been a proponent of peace for many years now, and I will continue to be, but "peace at any price" seems to be something that is your problem Mr. Earle. When I was in high school there was a bumper sticker that claimed that "the peace symbol is the foot print of the American chicken." A friend of mine and I were asked in art class to create a poster. We made one that said that same phrase, but added, "yes it is, it is also the foot print of the Bald Eagle," as well as any other bird. We received an A for the poster, mostly because my partner in this endeavor was a fantastic artist, I came up with most of the wording, he supplied the last line. Our poster was selected to be placed in a glass case outside the Art Room, along with other well done posters, we obviously hit a nerve with someone because they broke the glass and our poster was the only one taken out and left ripped up on the floor. I will always believe peaceful solutions should be used before starting any war, if possible.

Marty Valengavich

Belmont