Tim Kennedy

To the editor,

What a strange administration this is proving to be. There's all this talk all the time by Republicans about accountability, but the Bush administration rewards failure.

Yesterday it was announced that the Treasury Secretary John Snow had signaled to the White House his desire to remain at his post, which was apparently greeted quite favorably by the president.

How can this be? The federal government is compiling the largest deficits in history, our trade deficit has reached astronomical levels, the dollar is in a tailspin, employment growth is stagnant, more people are being plunged into poverty daily, thousands of manufacturing and service jobs are leaving the country, interest rates are climbing, and Snow believes he's done a great job and deserves to remain in office? And the president agrees?

We also heard yesterday that another cabinet holdover, the pugnacious Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, shot down a soldier's complaint about lack of armor on vehicles in Iraq by telling him "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want."

The army we have is the one Rumsfeld has been designing over the past four years. The army we have was thrust into a war with too little planning, insufficient manpower, and no clear exit strategy. The army we have is bogged down in Iraq, not receiving candy and flowers, but being demoralized by both the constant onslaught of an insurgency it is ill-equipped to combat, and by political leadership that continues to lie about conditions to soldiers and their families back home.

Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton is also staying on for another four years. Having already done more to dismantle environmental protections and open up public lands to corporations interested only in profit. Norton should be run out of town on a rail.

Oh, and lest we forget, Ashcroft is being replaced — but by someone who endorses the idea of torture, and has been particularly energetic in helping to march people off to the death chambers in our own country.

Perhaps this is how some people describe moral values. From my perspective, it's immorality on a scale never before conceived in America.

Tim Kennedy

Sanbornton