Cobb doesn’t want Bus Rapid Transit
We need to vote Cobb County Chairman Tim Lee out of office. He has made several underhanded moves since he’s been chairman, including this most recent one for a Bus Rapid Transit system (“Voters get no say on bus line,” News, June 10). People in the county do not want it or need it. Lee did the Riverview Road project, without hearing from the public until it was all but completed; and the Braves’ stadium, for which he made deals before any of the other commissioners knew about it, and then he lied about what the total cost would be. Now this. We do not need rapid transit, especially if MARTA is going to be involved.
GREG QUEEN, MABLETON
Who ‘lost’ Iraq? It wasn’t Obama
Really, Thomas Sowell? (“Mistakes Were Made, But No Doubt Who Lost Iraq War,” Opinion, June 10). Iraq wasn’t lost because President Obama “made the headstrong decision to pull all the troops out, ignoring his own military advisers.” It was lost because the Iraqis lost it. The Iraqi government, under pressure from its citizens who wanted U.S. forces to leave their country, refused to extend the Status of Forces Agreement that protected our troops. In other words, if the Iraqi government wanted a soldier or soldiers arrested for any reason, jailed, prosecuted and sentenced, they would have been able to do so, without legal recourse from the U.S.
When Obama came into office, the Iraqi government was still insistent the pullout proceed as scheduled. They did want a number of advisers to stay behind to continue to train their military, but did not want to guarantee our soldiers protections under an extended, or newly negotiated, SOFA. So in effect, the Iraqis took full responsibility at that point for the success or failure to govern their country.
DAVID LAMPP, SMYRNA
Democrats, too, didn’t give specifics
Jay Bookman’s claim of being astonished at the lack of a specific GOP plan to redo health care is laughable (“GOP’s plan to redo health care? We’ll let you know,” Opinion, June 10). Maybe Jay has forgotten the full disclosure from Democrats when the law was passed years ago: “We’ll have to pass the bill so we can find out what’s in the bill,” famously spoken by his health care champion Nancy Pelosi. Or has Mr. Bookman also misremembered another astonishing statement uttered by one of the Obamacare architects, Jonathan Gruber: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.”
PAUL OZIEM, LAWRENCEVILLE
