LETTERS

...I spoke to Colonel Geraghty briefly and he cordially told me that he had decided immediately after the Beirut bombing never to give an interview about it, and that he felt he had to stick to that policy...

...As for the events surrounding the battle at Suq-alGharb, everyone on the scene recognized the potential for being seen as taking sides by returning fire when we were shelled...

...ROBERT MCFARLANE Washington, D.C...

...However, you overlooked several of the culprits: Interns...

...I had just finished a month in which I gave my government employer 80 hours of uncompensated overtime...

...And what kind of magazine would print it...

...Even today, many hospitals foster the appallingly dangerous practice of requiring nurses to impede the birth of those babies who dare to arrive in the delivery room sooner than the obstetrician...

...Though the physician wielding the scalpel may be a private practitioner, his decision to operate is influenced by the interns' desire to see more glamorous, exciting procedures...

...yet the bench-time statistics do not reflect one minute of the weeks of time I spent evaluating and deciding pretrial motions in my chambers and in the law library, decisions which were then incorporated in written opinions...

...Most lawsuits never go to trial, yet they occupy most of a judge's time...

...Perhaps the most outrageous charge in the article is that my "own desires for battle" led me to risk and ultimately cause the death of the Marines...

...Insurance rules...

...I am startled to see claimed, by an editor who wishes to impress his readership with occasional references to his former career as a lawyer, that trial judges should be on the bench more because you think that, unlike appellate judges, they do not read legal briefs and write opinions...

...For example, you say that I aligned myself with Maronite President Amin Gemayel...

...LETTERS Caesar's ghosts I was pleased to see your comments on the soaring rate of cesarean sections ["Tilting at Windmills," September...

...You ignore the dangers to Americans of doing nothing—more lost lives in daily shelling and the image of impotence...

...I made several attempts to set up an interview with McFarlane, but I was told on two occasions by his assistant that she had relayed my request to him and that he had decided not to talk to me...

...Your article concerning my service in Lebanon from August to September 1983 ["What America Hasn't Learned from Its Greatest Peacekeeping Disaster," October, Scott Shuger] doesn't...

...Many insurance plans follow the penny-wise, pound-foolish policy of declining to cover normal prenatal or maternity costs—but they will automatically and without question pay for any cesarean operation...

...The United States stands virtually alone in its belief that the only acceptable birth attendant, even for the uncomplicated labor and delivery of a normal healthy woman, is a board-certified surgeon...

...Pintak and Sloyan mention them, and three other sources—one of them a Marine based at the Beirut airport at the time—told me about them...

...LOUISE HOPE Davis, California Trials and tribulations It was with rising anger that I perused your editorial observations about underworked trial judges ["Tilting at Windmills," September...

...The problem is that by most Friday afternoons at 4, most judges aren't on the bench or in their chambers—they've gone for the weekend...

...In my experience, most journalists deliver that...

...I am a trial judge...

...It is probably too late to expect doctors to change...

...The errors throughout the piece are too numerous to rebut in this space...

...In the preceding month, I took off eight weekdays for a well-earned vacation, but gave most of it back with 40 hours of uncompensated overtime...

...It is also untrue that Colonel Geraghty and Mr...

...The very highest cesarean rates in this country are found at teaching hospitals—spiking up to 40 percent at certain times of the year...

...I was on the bench more than seven hours each day and worked in chambers most nights...

...Colonel Tim Geraghty, the commander of the Marines, and I were in the middle...

...The author replies: Because his reputation is at stake, Mr...

...In August, I presided over a wrongful death case brought against a national drug manufacturer, a trial that lasted three and a half weeks and held millions of dollars in the balance...

...For you to do so is grotesque...

...McFarlane has an obvious interest in charging "false history," but several disinterested published reports—for example, Patrick Sloyan's pieces for Newsday, Thomas Friedman's stories in The New York Times, Larry Pintak's book Beirut Outtakes, and David Martin and John Wolcott's Best Laid Plans—have indicated that when McFarlane took on the job of presidential special envoy, he too often identified with the Gemayel point of view...

...Others are more harmful to the extent they present a false history...

...Women themselves...

...Not one minute of those five to six weeks was spent on the bench...

...The envoy strikes back Public officials are fair game for criticism...

...In another case, a complex race discrimination suit, I spent five to six weeks in court hearing the evidence, but that was preceded and followed by five to six weeks of work by me and another judge evaluating pretrial motions, sifting mountains of evidence, reviewing other court decisions spanning a century, and writing a 60-page decision explaining the facts and legal conclusions...

...Sadly, the vast majority of cesarean patients have bought the doctor-fostered myth of "cesarean birth," the notion that it doesn't really matter how the baby gets there...

...Similarly, Mr...

...Of the four babies on my block under the age of two, three were born by nonemergency cesarean...

...And it was toward that end that I worked not just with Gemayel but with Sunni, Shiite, and Druze leaders both in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East...

...THOMAS M. JAHNKE Ketchikan, Alaska The editor replies: I would feel the same way if I were one of the minority of judges who, like Thomas Jahnke, do work very hard...

...McFarlane's claim that there were no shouting matches between himself and the Marine commander, Colonel Geraghty, doesn't hold up...

...No one who has ever been a soldier or sailor or Marine in war could conceive such a thought...

...it was your illinformed contention that judges spend the rest of the workday laying about...

...But 1 probably spend, on average, less than 20 hours per week on the bench...

...Perhaps that, in the end, is the point...

...Because it would have been so easy to get the truth— virtually all those involved in decision-making from Colonel Geraghty to the president are available—one has to ask why this tract was published...

...Neither of us determined U.S...

...I work 50 to 60 hours most weeks and am paid no overtime...

...strategy or the rules of engagement...

...What kind of man would write such trash...

...But what angered me in your column was not that trial judges spend only four hours a day on the bench...

...I believe the best hope for American women lies in the longoverdue recognition and acceptance of the certified nursemidwife...

...ambassador to Lebanon...

...I work most Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays...

...Far from it, I was the first American negotiator to insist to Gemayel that he commit himself to the fundamental reforms needed to give Lebanese Moslems their proportional due, both politically and economically...

...McFarlane were available to me...

...The little ones can be forgotten as petty meanness...

...Most of us expect no more of journalists than an honest effort toward accuracy and objectivity...

...Our job was to make recommendations to Washington, as we did, and it didn't require any shouting matches...

...This assessment of McFarlane's behavior is shared by Robert Dillon, who was then the U.S...