Brainstorm! Challenge

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Keep those buses running, please

We do not need beautiful boulevards, bus shelters, city parties, and so on. Those things are frosting when all Honolulu residents are working and we have money falling out of our pockets. But we do need bus drivers and buses.

The C bus is filled during rush hours before it gets to Nanakuli. The No. 40 is also a school bus for the high school and many grade schools so it is packed in the afternoons. Many of the other buses are the same. And the Waikiki buses are the best way for tourists to get around the island.

Since one cab company went out of business, there aren't enough cabs on Oahu for all the stranded workers to get to work or for people who live here without cars. So please, please make sure we get efficient bus service.

Kathleen Brose
Waianae

Let's be honest about Saudi role in 9/11

Why don't we bring those actually responsible for the 9/11 attack to justice? What may be surprising to many supporters of the U.S. war on Iraq is that we attacked the wrong country!

Even more mystifying, President Bush acts like he doesn't have a clue that one of America's favorite oil business partners, Saudi Arabia, supplied money to the attackers, and that 15 of the 19 terrorists and the mastermind of the attack were Saudis. Bush won't release a congressional report on the 9/11 attack that deals with Saudi involvement.

As the president takes full responsibility for fibbing about weapons of mass destruction so the United States could control Iraqi oil, the world is asking, "Where are the weapons of mass destruction?"

Not to worry, the president has people working around the clock to "find" the WMD. We must be patient, it takes time to bury them so it looks authentic when they are found.

Smoky Guerrero
Mililani

We need an accurate diagnosis in Iraq

President Bush's most urgent need now in Iraq is the honest identification of his goal and an honest appraisal of the situation there. The sooner and the more honestly he recognizes what he wants, the more effectively he can deal with the situation. The truer and clearer his appraisal, the more fruitful his military operation will be.

Bush says -- and may believe -- that American forces are there to free Iraq from Saddam Hussein. This mission leads the administration to identify Iraqi elements attacking American forces as Saddam supporters and to expect that the murder of Saddam's two sons would affect the current situation. But if the attackers don't support Saddam, and the killing of his two sons doesn't intensify or diminish the war activities, the U.S. goal in Iraq is not to liberate it.

If the truth is that Iraqis hate Saddam, but also hate their American liberators, who have come to free them by killing their parents, children and cousins; destroying their houses, villages and cities; and pumping away their oil -- then the solution is no longer military but political, and the U.S. military is the wrong tool to use.

Denying the true goal of the occupation and perversely adhering to the use of the wrong tool to deal with Iraqi resistance may either cost Bush his second term or force the United States into another never-ending Vietnam-like war in Iraq.

Nguyen Dat Thinh
Honolulu

Pope should preach morality to priests

The Star-Bulletin recently reported that the Vatican has begun a new offensive against gay marriages.

That's funny. The rest of the world wants the Vatican to keep its Catholic priests from molesting children, regardless of whether the abuse is homosexual or heterosexual. Perhaps the pope should consider controlling the rampant deviant sexual behavior of his own subjects before imposing a hypocritical moral code on consenting adults who choose to live their lives differently from the majority of us.

I guess it's OK to throw stones as long as you live in a stained-glass house.

Joseph L. Lemon Jr.
Honolulu

Boards, vision teams have different jobs

The growing discussion about the future of vision teams and their relationship to neighborhood boards is healthy, and some of the suggestions articulated in your July 26 editorial could enhance and broaden the effectiveness and participation of our citizens. However, your editorial promotes a fundamental misconception; the two groups do not have duplicative functions, and they are not formed for essentially the same purposes. Each has a very different mission and set of responsibilities.

As one who has been involved on both sides from the beginning of the visioning process, I strongly support the prospects of potential improvement. However, let us undertake this opportunity with full knowledge and clear vision.

Richard S. Morris
Honolulu

Cutting Jones' salary would not help schools

Recently, on a sports radio program, I heard yet another caller object to University of Hawaii football coach June Jones' salary. His objection was based on the premise that the woes of our public education system are traceable to our misplaced priorities. I guess the assumption here is that if we were only to have the fiscal discipline to mandate that our football coach make only $200,000, then we would somehow be beneficiaries of a windfall that immediately could be applied to our schools, transforming our educational system into the kind of quality institution our children deserve.

Hasn't this theory already been painfully refuted by the Von Appen years? There was no windfall, people. There was this great dark hole sucking resources out of the state coffers while offering no apparent benefits to anyone, much less the education system.

Jones' salary is the investment we must make so this nightmare scenario might never happen again. Perhaps we should not measure the appropriateness of our coach's salary solely in terms of what we pay him, but rather in terms of the net cash flow to our state that his employment represents.

Phil Abe
Pearl City

Founders deliberately kept religion separate

Steve Klein's Aug. 2 letter claiming that a legislature's only purpose is to legislate morality rooted in religion seems to confuse the United States with most other countries. Our founding fathers were determined to have a nation that kept religion and government separate. Those who argue otherwise have not read the personal writings of Washington, Adams and especially Jefferson. Their views were based on their experiences as subjects of the English monarchy and their historical study of the mutual corruption that occurs when church and government are combined.

In the place of religious morality, they gave us a civil morality found in the words of the Constitution's preamble, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Government's only purpose is to secure these rights, therefore any laws passed must be to this end, and not because the Bible declares something to be evil. Murder is not a crime because the Bible says it's wrong to kill, but because it violates someone's civil right to life. This is what allows people of all faiths (and of no faith) to live in one country.

Bryan Mick
Kailua

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