Correspondence

...The notion that bin Laden—unassisted by any state—is waging war against the United States is a Clinton administration claim...

...It is self-contradictory for a conservative to think that the federal government can dramatically improve, say, education...

...That has to be done on the state level...

...on the national level, the unions and the educrats are just too powerful...

...WILLIAM J. DURR Cornwallville, NY...

...Instead of promoting what works, namely comprehensive sex education and family planning through proven, effective programs that include increasing adolescent (and adult) access to and use of contraceptives, the Bush administration is promoting what doesn't work...

...And another question exists: Was Sudanese intelligence fronting for a third party...

...Sudanese intelligence was also involved in the 1993 New York bombing conspiracy for which Shaykh Omar was convicted...

...RICK KROPP Clearlake, CA THE NEW REPUBLICANS I ENJOYED DAVID BROOKS'S article "Permanent Defense" (August 6...

...Administration health officials missed a golden opportunity to help bring reason and solid research into the sexual health poli-cymaking process...

...They often have large intelligence agencies and significant and dangerous unconventional weapons programs...

...There aren't really any feasible big savings in government spending...

...Real change will come only when the parents of children in failing schools demand it...

...Tommy Thompson welfare is more expensive than the bad, old, liberal kind...

...Tell her to run faster...

...JOE WILLINGHAM Berkeley, CA CHINA GAMES DO WILLIAM KRISTOL and Robert Kagan really want war with China ("Imprisonment and Other 'Irritations,'" August 6...

...Robert Novak is free to indulge himself in the delusion that the average working stiff believes in his heart in the Weltanschauung of Steve Forbes...

...Instead of pursuing libertarian fantasies that government in our complex, heterogeneous society can be smaller than it is now, conservatives should congratulate themselves that they are winning most of the political arguments, in principle and to a large extent in practice, save the insoluble ones about sex and religion...

...The Chinese don't cancel military exercises for light and transient reasons, and our vast nuclear edge seems of little use since we have no intention of using it...

...School vouchers aren't cheap...

...The report's conciliatory tone and fair reporting could have helped end the controversy over policies relating to reproductive and sexual health...

...Subsequently, Iraqi intelligence established Khartoum as a major base for its operations...

...Indeed, the prosecution's star witness—who defected from bin Laden's organization, Al Qaeda, in 1996—also worked for Sudanese intelligence...

...States control territory and maintain embassies abroad...

...After each bombing attack against the United States, Clinton vowed to arrest the perpetrators and bring them to justice...

...But his "page of history" says nothing about lower drinking ages in the '70s resulting in a mass outbreak of drunken 16- and 17-year-old drivers...

...Bush is playing with a weak hand...

...Another factor was the deadly mix of pot and booze common in the '70s...

...What did the army do...

...If Illinois had allowed it, those 18-year-old drinking drivers could have stayed home or with friends or gone to a local tavern and learned to drink responsibly...

...compassionate conservatism needs to be also rational conservatism and face that reality...

...There is, of course, a lot of pork in the federal budget...

...Sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds still drive the least and crash the most...

...But that isn't going to change—it is built into the structure of democratic governance...

...Chapman says the drinking age is different from other age limits, arguing that "lowering the voting age to 18 didn't cause a mass outbreak of illegal voting by 15-year-olds...

...Those of us who live in the real world should take a different tack and discuss compassionate conservative and intelligent neoliber-al solutions to the problems facing our society...

...Almost certainly bin Laden is working with a state...

...Correspondence SEX, LIES, AND SATCHER Andrew Ferguson's cynical and misleading article on the surgeon general's sexual health report, "Sex Talk" (August 6), does a great disservice to the field of public health and to Satcher's sincere attempt (which failed, unfortunately) to defuse the politicized and highly controversial issue of reproductive and sexual health policy...

...If anything, he offers proof that the voting age should be raised...

...Instead, Ferguson and The Weekly Standard should concern themselves with how the Bush administration missed an excellent opportunity to end this nationally controversial policy issue...

...To ignore the role of states in terrorism is to invite more of it...

...It needs to be carefully examined before we launch any war against bin Laden, lest that war provide cover for yet more terrorism—including unconventional terrorism—conducted by the hostile power that is, at least arguably, using Al Qaeda as a front organization...

...Gerecht is himself a prisoner of the concept he debunks, namely, that terrorism is a law enforcement issue...

...In fact, as Ferguson pointed out, the report was ignored, even denigrated, by administration officials...

...unfortunately, the surgeon general's recent sexual health report failed to influence Bush administration policy...

...They essentially accuse Bush of an escalating show of weakness toward China...

...When my liberal friends defend the Democratic party line on public education, I point out to them that they don't send their kids to bad urban schools...

...Progress might be slow, but change is possible...

...The idea developed by the Clinton administration—that a new form of terrorism exists that does not involve states—is dubious on its face...

...No, it cancelled the run...

...It's a little hard to understand why Sudan would carry out terrorism against the United States on a scale so large it was tantamount to war...

...The pro-testing, pro-school choice impetus has to come from the grass roots...

...Namely, the highly charged and controversial policy of funding programs that limit themselves to the abstinence-only-until-marriage approach...

...Nor has it caused a mass outbreak of voting by 18-year-olds...

...The just-completed trial for the 1998 African embassy bombings made clear that bin Laden was tied to Sudanese intelligence...

...On sex and religion let's just try for a draw between the dogmatic left and the neo-Taliban right...

...His best issue is education...

...Consider the recent episode of a female officer's complaining that always finishing last in the company run humiliated and embarassed her...

...Yet states are far more important than individuals...

...But how much of a decline has there been in overall teenage crash fatalities...

...The United States is in no mood for war—the military is unprepared for it...

...They can afford to be "liberal...

...Even the Wisconsin-Illinois "blood border" is open to other interpretations...

...Even the Democratic governor of california and the liberal legislature are taking a fairly tough conservative line on school testing...

...mission and otherwise depicted as peripheral...

...Sudan supported Iraq during the Gulf War...

...The average Joe and Jane are willing to try to split the difference, and Brooks eloquently describes the direction that conservatism should take...

...By defining terrorism as a law enforcement problem and deploying a law enforcement agency, the FBI, to address it, Clinton guaranteed that he would get the answer he wanted: Individuals, not states, were responsible...

...But his lack of skill at the bully pulpit and the fact that education is not primarily a federal issue limit what he can achieve in that department...

...it's easy to understand why Iraq would...

...JOHN J. CARRIGG Kettering, OH USAMA AND COUNTRY REUEL MARC GERECHT'S call for war against Usama bin Laden ("A Cowering Superpower," July 30) is good as far as it goes—but that's nowhere far enough...

...As reported by the Washington Post on July 30 in "Administration Promoting Abstinence: Family Planning Efforts Are Being Scaled Back," the Bush administration is expanding the troublesome dominance of conservative religious dogma and right-wing political ideology as the cornerstone for national public policy on reproductive and sexual health, especially unintended teen pregnancy prevention, as well as prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, and prevention of coercive or violent sexual behavior...

...LAURIE MYLROIE Washington, DC BLURRED THINKING STEVE CHAPMAN'S ASSERTION ("Keep the Drinking Age at 21," July 30) that a policy which is "contradictory, less than satisfying, and, in some sense, unfair" is "far preferable to an approach . . . that is wrong" is unassailable, but he fails to prove that lowering the drinking age would be wrong...

...As Brooks indicates, compassionate conservative programs cost at least as much as liberal programs...

...But imagine how our feminized legions would do against those tigers from Peking...

...Bush's problem is that he talks about compassionate conservatism but seems to spend his time designing corporate welfare for the energy industry...

...Not only is Bush's policy inappropriate for addressing the public health problems of teen pregnancy and STD prevention, it is also extreme, divisive, misleading, and definitely unhealthy for the American public, especially American women...

...A cohort that overwhelmingly supports a high age limit for drinking, while doing its darnedest to circumvent the issue, seems not quite ready for discussion...

...His strongest argument is that "drinking and driving is no longer the leading cause of death for teenagers," saying, "the number of youngsters killed in crashes involving a drunken teenage driver has plunged by 63 percent...

...As usual, the national media downgraded and politicized it...

...Little wonder that following those bombings, Clinton included the Sudan in our retaliatory strikes...

...During that trial, the Sudanese intelligence agents who participated in the plot (and who had diplomatic immunity) were described merely as "employees" of Sudan's U.N...

...Yet the role of states rarely comes out in the trials, and if it does, it is treated as a secondary matter, presumably because a prosecutor cannot bring a state into the courtroom and convict it, at least not so easily...

...Any study of crash fatalities since the 1970s must consider the vast improvements in automobile and highway safety features, increased law enforcement, stricter penalties, and more pervasive and sophisticated anti-drunk driving and driver safety education and training...

...on the state and local levels, Republicans like Tommy Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, and John Engler have made progress on issues important to conservatives...