Letters To The Editor

Take Activist Off List of War Heroes
Editor, Times-Dispatch: Regarding the news story, "Virginia's War Dead": To place a peace activist in juxtaposition with the heroes in our armed forces who gave their lives to establish a free and independent Iraq devalues the legacy of the war dead. Tom Fox wasn't in Iraq to wage war on terror or provide security for the Iraqi people. He was there to protest our involvement in the Middle East. Truth be told, he compromised all of our fighting men and women who were in harm's way. Fox was a danger and a liability to our best and brightest who willingly sacrificed themselves for a noble cause.

If the paper must celebrate the death of a peace activist -- please do it independently of our veterans. Surely there are other protesters or human shields who can be celebrated and extolled in some separate venue.

As a Vietnam veteran and a patriot, I can assure you that it does great disserve to all of my brothers in arms to lump a protester in with fallen warriors who volunteer so that activists like Fox can question, diminish, and malign their contributions to our national security and prosperity.

No doubt Fox sacrificed for his beliefs. But his sacrifice was capricious and self-serving -- and not to be confused or compared with the service of our veterans who fought and died for duty, honor, and country.

Remove Tom Fox from the list of veterans. No disrespect to his family and friends, but he doesn't belong.

Greg Surpless.
Chesterfield.

That same letter -- word-for-word -- also appeared in more than 30 other newspapers in May. In each case, a different "author" signed it. This isn't a coincidence. It's a program of the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), a Maryland-based group that hijacks hundreds of editorial pages every year.

It's no big deal if a few lazy activists want to clutter opinion pages with poorly masked PETA talking points. But as health experts from every major organization across the globe have stated time and again, it's impossible to contract the "swine flu" virus from eating or handling pork products.

The letter's environmental claims weren't any more convincing: While the United Nations claims that global livestock production may account for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, data from the Environmental Protection Agency show that here at home, domestic meat production contributes only 2.4 percent.

If animal activists want to twist the facts to promote their fringe diet, the least they could do is take 10 minutes to write something original. David Martosko, Director of Research, The Center for Consumer Freedom.


Washington, D.C. Editor's note: The Times-Dispatch strives to keep "astroturf" -- fake grassroots -- out of the Letters columns. Once in a long while our radar systems fail. Correspondents who hope to see publication more than once in a lifetime should write their own material. (And yes: Martosko's letter of rebuttal has appeared almost word for word in at least one other newspaper, albeit over his own name. In this case, turnabout seems fair play.)