Red-light cameras

Use officers to enforce laws, not cameras

Red-light cameras are not needed in Mill Creek. They have been proposed for four intersections where there were 128 total accidents last year, including non-injury fender benders. This represents 0.0005 percent of all traffic at these intersections.

Are we prepared to spend $200,000 a year or more of our precious tax resources to install and operate these devices? If this problem is so severe, I’m left wondering — what solutions have we already tried?

We should enforce our red-light laws in Mill Creek, but not with “robot cops.” We have paid to hire and train one of the best police departments in Washington. Let’s direct these fine officers to make this issue a top priority, if it’s truly such a problem.

We’ve built a wonderful downtown in Mill Creek. Do we want to reward those who come into our city to shop by sending them a ticket in the mail? Is this what our business community wants? And these automated tickets are legally the same as parking tickets — they don’t affect the drivers record or provide a real deterrence.

Violators should be contacted by our police officers who can exercise discretion. Officers can stop both the distracted parent who just barely missed the light, and the suspended driver who’s been drinking or worse. If somebody is dangerously blowing through red lights in Mill Creek, will mailing them a ticket stop someone from getting hurt? These drivers should be pulled over and contacted immediately.

Our city council needs to stop wasting time on this highly controversial issue. We have all the technology we need to address this issue. Direct our police department to enforce these laws. Use the funds we would waste on robot cops to hire real officers. That’s what our city needs.

Ed McNichol

Mill Creek

National

War is not the answer for our future

War is not a sport nor is it the answer to violence. We do not tolerate homicidal violence in our homes and public spaces. So why is it that we believe fighting violence with violence is a solution outside our borders?

War is obsolete. It has been over two generations, since World War II, that our Congress declared war on an enemy nation. The Korean War was a U.N. “police action” that proved un-winnable short of a nuclear conflagration. Since then, our nation (or should I say our military industrial congressional complex) has engaged in foreign occupations more akin to Viking raids than wars. Vietnam was as much about Michelin rubber as communism.

The conflict in Iraq is not a war. It is an occupation. If our goal is to gain control of the second largest oil deposit in the world by military occupation in order to monopolize their oil, then we will fail. The longer we stay, the better we are training our enemies.

Iraq is a mess. Now a majority of Iraqi Members of Parliament want us out. Since we arrived as “liberators,” life has become much worse for the typical Iraqi. By the late 1980s Iraq was a quasi-secular semi-developed nation. Now after 16 years of sanctions, civil chaos and combat, Iraq has fallen into extreme poverty and more than 2 million Iraqis have fled to neighboring countries. Ethnic and religious conflict have engulfed this land and Al Qaida is gaining a following like some toxic weed thriving on blood-soaked soil.

There are those who say we could or should be in Iraq for another decade. I say the sooner we get out, the sooner Iraq and our nation can begin to heal. Have we learned nothing from the self-inflicted trauma that was Vietnam?

Eric Teegarden

Mountlake Terrace

Politics leading to destruction of America

One party is intent on the destruction of the White House, the destruction of the U.S. Constitution, they are tearing down the authority of the president of the greatest country in the world, and they are intent on defeat of our military. These people are in Congress! If this is not enough, the judiciaries are also making rulings for the destruction of America.

I am proud to be an American and if you don’t like the constitution, if you want to change America, then go to where you like the government. Do not change ours. If you have come from somewhere else, why do you want to change us to what you left?

Shouldn’t the Bush administration stand up and fight? Fight for the American Constitution. The liberals are willing to tear America down for their power. It makes my heart cry, as Americans stand by and let this happen. Cannot the honorable of both parties come together and save our American heritage?

Grace Hofer

Everett