Correspondence

...I would agree with the authors that we are likely to need more money, not less, to accomplish our security objectives...

...The former White House was more interested in using the military as a social experimentation lab than in transforming it into a force capable of meeting 21st-century security requirements...

...This argument is flawed both in rhetoric and substance...

...I need to find a "Snoodists Anonymous" group to help wean me from grabbing my laptop every evening as soon as supper is over to play my next game...

...Fortunately, it is nearing completion, and the results will be incorporated into the Quadrennial Defense Review expected this fall...

...Given the failed Clinton policies of the '90s and the devastation they have caused within our military, it is unfair to lay blame for the pent-up frustration among our fighting forces at the door of the new administration...

...DANIEL JOHN SOBIESKI Chicago, IL I JOIN ERIC COHEN and William Kristol in applauding the recent House vote for a total ban on human cloning...

...They were cured...

...Like them, i consider so-called "therapeutic cloning" to be oversold on its scientific merits, and a dangerous first step to a Huxley-esque future...

...On July 24 he passed his 100th day of survival, a "milestone" according to his doctors...

...First, in defining the sides of the cloning/stem cell debate, the authors describe the pro-cloning forces as "hubristic scientists," one of several slurs against the research community as a whole, yet all of their relevant quotes come from lobbyists and congresspeople...

...President Bush did not create the military deficit this nation is now grappling with...

...Much more content to focus on their ambitious social agenda, the "Clintonistas" left our services hanging in a post-Cold War purgatory...

...Not only is William Kristol and Robert Kagan's verdict on the White House defense agenda premature, but it aims arrows in the wrong direction...

...The fact is these miracle cures are neither imminent or inevitable...

...I'm a middle-aged, middle-management female, and I'm an addict...

...It is time to move ahead with missile defense and ensure that our nation is not left undefended...

...Stem cells can grow into many things...

...This logic also applies to the proposed uses of stem cells to treat diabetes, Parkinson's, or spinal cord injuries...

...Do the authors also object to laser surgery to correct eyesight...

...John IP Chute, director of the adult stem cell research lab at the Navy Medical Research Institute, reports that in research on curing radiation sickness, which functionally destroys bone marrow, blood stem cells were isolated, replicated, and transplanted back into baboons that were exposed to a lethal dose of radiation...

...The rest, as they say, is history...

...CHARLES MURTAUGH Molecular and Cellular Biology Fellow Harvard University Cambridge, MA MURDER BY NUMBERS WILLIAM TUCKER'S ARTICLE on capital punishment ("Capital Punishment Works," August 13) is a fine one, but the chart on the first page of the article has the wrong scale on the right side...

...Bravo for the vigorous insistence that the ends do not justify the means, but spare us the postmodernist nostalgia for medieval sensibilities...

...Their article, however, goes far beyond reiterating their opposition to cloning and embryonic stem cell research, and for the first time brings into the mainstream a broader argument against biomedicine per se...

...But maybe one of the human embryos we let live will grow up to find a cure...

...By the way, I scoff at Caldwell's "high" score of 44,545...

...At least for now let's give the secretary and his deputy the time and support they need to carry out the president's promise...

...Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researchers have injected non-embryonic stem cells into the spinal fluid of paralyzed mice and rats, half of which partially or fully recovered...

...i am proud to share this label with Charles Krauthammer, whom the authors approvingly quote in spite of his repeated calls for combining federal funding for embryonic stem cell research with a cloning ban...

...U.S...

...Stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood have improved the health of a 13-year-old Arizona boy dying from leukemia, who received the experimental treatment when no matching bone marrow donor could be found (The Scrapbook, August 6...

...After decades of looking, no one has even found a decent weed to make tea with...

...By Rumsfeld's own admission, that review is taking more time than he originally expected...

...It's not hard to see how this excess could have left our troops around the globe feeling that their mission was less driven by a clear foreign policy than by public opinion polls...

...It is going to take time to undo the damage inflicted on the military by the clinton team...

...President Bush has plans to do all of that, and that is why he has already proposed an $18.4 billion increase and the largest defense budget in 10 years...

...In fact, the new administration has proposed the highest defense budget in a decade—and with a $32.6 billion increase over last year, it offers the most significant jump in spending during that time...

...President George W. Bush has pledged to restore our military strength, and to do so on the basis of a sound security strategy...

...Until that occurs it is only a guess as to how we should be shaping our military forces...

...in fact, these approaches are anti-eugenic, because they allow those born with deficits to overcome their "lot in life...

...The replicated stem cells regenerated their bone marrow, which began producing healthy white blood cells again...

...Within three days of first touching the game, my high score was 56,323...

...But the plan laid out by then defense secretary Dick Cheney was never completed, and the policies on which it was based were thrown out the window by his successors in the Clinton administration...

...We shouldn't be throwing money at problems until we know what they are, and until we know what it will cost to fix them...

...RANDY CUNNINGHAM (R-California) Washington, DC SNOODY LETTER WOE IS ME, I'M HOOKED...

...Life begins at conception, and it is a nonsensical argument to say a human embryo should be killed and made useful because it is going to die anyway...

...Cohen and Kristol court absurdity in suggesting that to treat such diseases is to seek the perfection of man...

...Those deployments were not based on any overarching security strategy, but on political whim...

...I read Christopher Caldwell's Casual ("Snoodist Colony," August 13) and, being the curious sort, I researched the game Snood on the Internet...

...But a lot has happened since his father left office, and after almost a decade of turbulence, he is right to reassess where we are now and where we should be going in the future...

...Remember all those amazing cures that were supposed to come from rare plants to be found in the rain forest...

...Correspondence STEM CELL DOUBLE TAKE AS ERIC COHEN and William Kristol note ("Cloning, Stem Cells and Beyond," August 13), the supposed justification for embryonic stem cell research is that amazing cures for diseases such as Parkinson's supposedly lie just around the corner if only, so goes the end-justi-fies-the-means argument, scientists can have those "surplus" embryos that are going to be "discarded" anyway...

...Rather, it was eight straight years of defense cuts under the clinton administration that prevented us from pursuing military modernization...

...He has tasked Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz to oversee one of the most extensive reviews of our security posture ever undertaken in peacetime...

...The scale on the left side, which relates the number of executions during the same period, has thoughtlessly been reproduced on the right side of the chart...

...Despite their smaller numbers and reduced assets as a result of the positive Cheney restructuring, our troops were suddenly being asked to deploy at unprecedented levels, and they were wearing down their equipment in the process...

...Such a leap requires more than faith to sustain it, yet the authors provide no support for their insistence that the ultimate end of biomedicine is eugenics...

...Nor is Wilmut exceptional, as he was joined by many of his mainstream colleagues in a recent National Academy of Sciences forum essentially devoted to the scientific case against cloning...

...In the meantime, what we should be doing is ensuring that today's fighting forces have the training and operational equipment to get back into fighting shape...

...As for myself, please remove me from the "hubristic scientist" category, and lump me in with the "anguished moderates...

...Congress has not crafted its defense spending bills yet, and there is still time to increase funds for the next fiscal year if the findings warrant it...

...he inherited it...

...Whether by design or neglect, the Clinton team left our services to muddle through without clear guidance...

...Prisoners on death row are going to die anyway, yet we do not harvest the organs they will no longer need...

...As the chart on the next page shows, the rate must have been lower than 9 per 100,000 in all years from 1990 through 1999...

...Why not prohibit the use of eyeglasses, since they reflect the same desire to "conquer nature, relieve man's estate" that the authors find so troublesome...

...But when we have more detailed guidance, we can debate the budget issues...

...But we don't know how to control what they grow into or to make them do it on command...

...The first Bush administration had a well-defined security strategy to take us into the 21st century, and it initiated a logical, policy-driven restructuring of our forces to support it...

...The authors are apparently unembarrassed to be grouped with the environmental and anti-corporate leftists who have turned Seattle, Quebec City, and Genoa into bloody war zones...

...THEODORE W VOLCKHAUSEN New York, NY INDEFENSIBLE THE WEEKLY STANDARD'S VITRIOLIC attack on defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz ("No Defense," July 23) is unwarranted...

...Sandy Hebenstreit Norcross, GA...

...We should be providing funds to ensure that military families are getting more equitable pay and adequate health care coverage for their families...

...If there's anyone in the entire Weekly Standard readership who's matched it—and I rather suspect there is not—I'd love to hear from him...

...it is a myth that embryonic stem cells are the only or even the best source for research into possibly curing Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or other diseases...

...And I'm not even a "him...

...It purports to tell us that homicides ranged between 150 and about 75 per 100,000 between 1930 and 1999...

...Happily, I found that one could download a trial version for free...

...Most current breakthroughs in stem cell research have involved non-embryonic stem cells...

...in such hysterical company, it is unsurprising that Cohen and Kristol go on to claim that the quest to halt disease—regardless of whether adult or embryonic stem cells are used—"may end as a 'compassionate' effort to stamp out the diseased themselves...

...Why not quote Ian Wilmut, creator of Dolly the sheep, who has been outspoken in his opposition to human cloning on medical and social grounds...

...We don't know if we can find a cure for Parkinson's using embryonic stem cells...

...Its continual defense cuts and 124 unbudgeted military deployments left our troops ragged, their equipment worn, and our defense budget hundreds of billions deeper in the financial hole...

...That's far too high...

...The very next day, I purchased it...