By Richard E. Dellwo, USN (Ret.), San Diego

Remember that we are not a Democracy; we are a Republic. We have a representative form of government. We elect people to represent us and entrust them to do what we want. If we were a democracy, each one of us would vote on each and every bill before Congress. It is not be best way to go. We must trust our representatives to do what is right or vote them out of office. If we demand that the President show each of us the evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction before we will go along with his plan, we need to vote him out of office. If he does show us this evidence, he may in fact compromise his (our) source of the information and cause the death of the person or persons who obtained this evidence. I for one am willing to take the President at his word and I believe he will lead this Republic on the best possible course of action.

By William J. McCausland, San Diego

I appreciated the article under the heading of "Politics" (January 2003) and entitled "President Bush distances himself from comments about Islam." Since reading the book Islam and Terrorism by Mark Gabriel (a converted Muslim, who was a former imam of a mosque in the city of Giza, Egypt, and also taught at Al-Azhar University in Cairo), it has become very apparent that the media and politicians in general have attempted to whitewash the real status and goals of Islam in the world. Based on Gabriel's (he was forced to change his name for various reasons) tremendously revealing insight into Islam, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were absolutely correct. The author outlines in great detail just exactly the way things really are and why we're witnessing such dramatic developments everywhere in the world. These incidents are not the products of just a few radical terrorists. It's much bigger than that. If your readers are not familiar with the aforementioned book, they should attempt to obtain one of the most authoritative and insightful publications on Islam available