Netlets for Saturday, March 29

Perhaps it is good news for us that Gov. Tim Pawlenty has threatened to veto the Berglin-TTF cobbled health care bill. It tips too far in the tired direction of HMOs and individual insurance mandates.

Let's get behind Sen. John Marty's SF2324 and that of Rep. Ken Tschumper in the House calling for a single-payer state plan! Let's show the rest of the nation some real innovation while attracting business to our state!

MARY K. LUND, MINNETONKA

I appreciated the March 25 letter "Why we fight," which that both lamented the loss of 4,000 American lives in Iraq and reminded us of why we should be thankful for our soldiers.

Reading it, though, also crystallized for me why the loss of life in Iraq is so unfortunate compared to other campaigns. After all, as Iraq had no realistic means of threatening our way of life (see Bush-appointed weapons inspector Charles Duelfer's Oct; 6, 2004, report to congressional committees), we did not attack Iraq to protect our way of life. We cobbled together a justification with fixed facts that eventually proved false. Then, we ignored the warnings of experts -- some from within the current presidential administration -- about what would result in country when we succeeded, making conditions even more dangerous for our soldiers on the ground.

Had the Iraq war been fought for noble reasons in the first place, it's unlikely that we'd have been so careless with how to handle the environment our soldiers were left to control. This absence of nobility of purpose, though, is exactly why the recent milestone of 4,000 American dead is not just solemn but tragically wasteful.

ERIC KALENZE, NEW BRIGHTON

Nice to know our congresswoman is "on the job" about light bulbs (front page, March 26).

MICKEY DELFINO, BIG LAKE, MINN.

I'm still waiting to read letters of outrage from the people whining about the increase in the gasoline tax as the price of gas went up 15 cents a gallon in the past couple of days. Where is their outrage now, when not one fraction of one cent of that increase won't go toward fixing the deteriorating roads in the state, but instead go into the pockets of the greedy oil barons?

JAMES HOWE, NORTH BRANCH, MINN.

The people in the metro area who oppose the quarter-cent sales tax for transportation aren't thinking clearly. Would they sooner raise more transportation dollars via the regressive property tax?

We now are enjoying all those facilities.

Without the half-cent sales tax, it might be another 15 years before we could have financed those facilities via the property tax -- regressive as it is.

DON BRAND, NEW ULM, MINN.

People are objecting to the cameras for red-light runners on the basis that they may not have been driving the vehicle. However, when they loan a car to someone and that person runs a red light and causes an accident, the owner's car insurance is responsible. You own the car, you own the liability -- red light or accident.

JUDY KNUDSON, BRAHAM, MINN.