I'm a conservative Republican, and it makes me break into sweats to say this, but Hillary Clinton is right this time. Conservative pundit Ann Coulter (not the local planner) has written scathing words of contempt in her recent book about some of the surviving members of 9/11 victims' families: "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."

This is in reference to the widows who sought the establishment of the 9/11 Commission. Hillary Clinton has rightly busted Coulter right between the eyes.

For Coulter to say that these people think they are the only ones who lost anything is absolutely absurd. This whole nation received a wake-up call that day to the realities of terrorism and that, yes, it can happen here.

Nearly 60 years prior to 9/11 was another wake up call. The "Day That Will Live in Infamy" shook America to its core. Inquiries and commissions were established to examine the failures that led to Pearl Harbor, and I'm sure President Roosevelt received many a letter from widows begging to learn of what went wrong.

The firefighters, police, and emergency personnel who perished on 9/11 are valiant souls who did their duty exactly as they were trained to do so. They went to work everyday knowing that it might be their last. None of them could have known that this was how their end would be, but each one of them knew the day might come.

It's different for civilians, especially the ones lost on 9/11. We rightfully memorialize those who perish in the line of duty, and I'm sure the survivors of especially the civilian dead wanted their memorial to be answers.

We stood to as Americans do and commenced the war on terror. There were obvious intelligence failures on 9/11, have been since, and will be again. I'm a combat veteran, and it happens at the tactical and strategic levels. President Bush has probably let this go on too long, but he knows things that the rest of us don't. The point is that the Republican leadership should have been the ones to blast Coulter instead of Hillary Clinton.

To me, Ann Coulter's words had the exact effect someone urinating off of the USS Arizona Memorial. Appalling and disgraceful are not strong enough words to use to describe Ann Coulter. Don't think for a minute that the Republican press machine is not just as organized as the liberal media. Republican leaders knew what she was up to and probably blessed it. I just hope that her cabal of conservatives is only a tiny fraction of the Republican Party, because her words make the rest of us who are real Republicans look callous, cruel, and cowardly. One can only hope that our President will publicly blast this woman, just as Hillary Clinton did.

Anthony Thomas
t-thomas66@hotmail.com

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Anthony Thomas didn't get the context of Ann Coulter or he would surely have agreed.

What she was trying to say was don't hide mean rhetoric behind the pity of a dead loved one.

I get to bash America because I lost a loved one.
Lilly Delk
Maryville,Tn.
annayellow@charter.net