Letters: Jul. 5, 2004

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"Stretching The Troops In Iraq" [June 14] stated that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry called the Army's unilateral extension of soldiers' enlistments a "back-door draft." But if it weren't for our troops fighting in numerous wars, we might not have the freedoms we have today and America could have become a country like Iraq. The war on terrorism started the day al-Qaeda decided to crash planes into buildings, killing thousands of Americans. I do not blame Bush for this, and I stand by him 100%. If we didn't go to Iraq and stand up for our country, that would give other terrorists an opportunity to attack America. It is disrespectful not to fight for those who died on 9/11. ALEXIS A. EMERY Aberdeen, N.J.

No Regrets

Re "Performance Of The Week" [June 14]: I was nauseated by the endless stream of apologies made to Smarty Jones and his camp after Birdstone won the Belmont Stakes, the real test of horse-racing greatness. Birdstone was the best horse that day. His breeding and an exquisite, masterful ride by jockey Edgar Prado took him across the finish line first. TIME gets a gold star for recognizing a true champion. ELAINE DUETT Coral Gables, Fla.

Limited Vision

In "He Could See For Miles" [JUNE 14], essayist Charles Krauthammer repeated a notion we keep hearing from Reagan's sillier admirers: that he won the cold war by forcing the Soviet Union to go bankrupt in its efforts to keep up with the U.S.'s surge in military spending, culminating in the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Star Wars program. Many critics of Reagan's foreign policy have pointed out, however, that as the Soviet Union started to fray, there was a real chance it would end with a nuclear bang rather than a whimper. Had the U.S.S.R. not been lucky enough to draw Mikhail Gorbachev instead of, say, Yuri Andropov as its last leader, the odds are high the outcome would have been very bad. All any U.S. President could do with that nightmarish regime was restrain it from further expansion while praying that when it finally did collapse, it would somehow manage to do so peacefully--which, finally, was what happened, through pure luck. Reagan's policies had nothing whatsoever to do with it. BRUCE MOOMAW Cameron Park, Calif.

Krauthammer may claim that Reagan won the cold war, but in 1990, two years after the Gipper left office, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Russian reformer who presided so masterfully over the Soviet Union's demise. MORT PAULSON Silver Spring, Md.