Dear Gov. Dean,
The question you pose in the title of your 23 February, weekly mailing is:
"I'm a terrorist sympathizer?"
Of course you got our attention with such a question. You wanted to remind us that Dick Cheney is still linking Democrats with terrorist priorities. Chairman Howard, there are quite a few of us that do indeed see a real link to between yourself, most of us and terrorism.
Our answer to your provocative question has to be, Yes, Yes you are, and we, as well, are sympathizers.
NOT because we sympathize with the terrorism of Osama bin Laden, but BECAUSE we have either supported or accepted the world wide terrorism directed by an obviously criminally insane Vice President.
The answer is yes, Governor Dean, you and I are terrorist sympathizers, for most of us have acquiesced in silence or in whimpering complaint, to a mad Vice President's insane projects of murder, torture and thievery abroad in other people's countries.
And in addition, dear Party Chairman Dean, there seems to be one consummately important legal aspect that is consistently missing from our holier than thou evaluations of this administration's criminally insane deathly military actions in countries not our own, uninvited, and aimed and practiced on groups or factions our government in the past has formerly supported and used.
In a court of law, the criminally insane are NOT held responsible for their inhumane acts.
On the other hand, those, who support, aid and abet the actions of people who are not in their right mind, ARE responsible, before the law, for the crimes against humanity, and especially, legally accountable for crimes against humanity committed in their name and ostensibly for their benefit.
You and we both know, that in Vietnam, America's two political parties conspired, three Democratic and three Republican administrations, to heap criminally insane death and destruction on the largely defenseless agrarian colonial population of the Indochinese peninsula, for nearly twenty years - first by French proxy, and thereafter in our own name.
Today, with Iraq and Afghanistan wars ongoing, Americans, tend to think, whew, that mistaken lost war and the millions of deaths it caused - glad it is in the past, and forgotten. Those of us old enough to have lived through then and now, would like to have the criminality and insanity of both past and present recognized, and the responsibility and accountability placed where it belongs. It does not belong with the criminally insane, but rather with their sympathizers.