Mother's fears about son in Bangladesh heightened by Susan Thorne-Devin



Mother's fears about son in Bangladesh heightened by Susan Thorne-Devin

Mother's fears about son in Bangladesh heightened

Letter to the Editor

I am the mother of a "young" (age 23) Peace Corps volunteer. He has been near Dhaka, Bangladesh, for three months and has just received his permanent assignment, where he will be close to the border of Bangladesh and India.

I have been reading the Dayton Daily News’ articles and truly appreciate the investigative reporting on the Peace Corps issue.

Brandon received two days of training in Seattle before leaving for Bangladesh. He was truly in a culture shock. He grew up in a suburb of Chicago and attended the University of Iowa, majoring in English.

He has always had a "heart" to serve others, yet was in complete culture shock. I could hear it in his voice the first time we had a chance to speak. We were not at all prepared for the lack of communication, etc.

He will be more than an hour away from any English-speaking person. Obviously, we are very concerned about his safety and his mental health.

He was told that he will be in a dangerous area, since there are surrounding villages that have been known to harbor terrorists.

The DDN articles have heightened my fears, and my intuition agrees with the paper’s findings.

I applaud the DDN for its investigative pursuits.

Susan Thorne-Devin

Glen Ellyn, Ill.

[From the Dayton Daily News: 11.04.2003]

By Revd Andrew Tempelman, PhD (24.63.140.230) on Thursday, October 16, 2008 - 10:59 am: Edit Post

Letter to the nation’s newspaper editors, or for Op Ed page.
Dear Editors, I offer this as a minister’s final checklist for Evangelical Voters on the looming, all-important difference between McCain’s Character and Obama’s in the final days before the election.
For Evangelical Voters: a Checklist of McCain’s Character vs Obama’s.
1. McCain’s Character in the Hanoi Hilton: All we get is his self-glorifying account. Many Vets have said he ratted on his buddies for Viet Cong favors, that he turned down early release before his buddies in fear of his navy admiral father, that he made 32 Vietcong propaganda films that he later got them sealed in DC, but not in Russia. Is McCain a war hero? Or a traitor for Communist favors, an admiral’s son, feted with tarts, not permitted to his tight-lipped buddies who had no admirals for fathers? He was there in 1972 for months while Jane Fonda was there. Hanoi’s not that big. Tell us, Jane. Did you two hook up? NH Sen Smith and many others said McCain alone killed the MIA-POW recovery bill—why?--to keep MIA-POWs silent about him. Palin’s pin-hole story is pure hokum. Imagine jailers ignorant of a communication pinhole, or unaware of his thumbs-up and big grins after beatings as they walked him back to his cell. Pretty sleazy story, Palin. Ted Sampley, US Special Forces fighter in Vietnam, now a leading camp-aigner for veterans’ rights, says: ‘I’ve followed McCain’s career for 20 years. I know him personally. There’s something wrong with this guy; let me tell you what it is–deceit.’
2. His Character crashing not 1 but 7 planes—a drunken lousy flyer, he was known as ‘Flamer McCain’ in the service. Google McCain/Forrestal to see how in 1967 he killed 132 fellow airmen with a smart-ass stunt on the Forrestal, and got the hell off the ship on the 1st rescue helicopter because his buddies wanted his blood. He was never even questioned and was awarded medals for each 1.5 hrs in the air because of his father’s naval status, while good pilots got no awards for many hrs in the air. He wasn’t shot down; he crashed in Truch Bach lake, Hanoi, just one more crash by a lousy airman later that year. That’s McCain-type Character. A crazy wild-man. The kind we don’t need.

3. His Character cheating (rhymes with Keating) on his 1st wife, and dumping her after her disfiguring car accident, far sleazier than John Edwards, whom nobody would vote for now. Ross Perot paid her medical bills all those years; he says both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel–even by standards of modern politics. He picked Palin for the same reason he picked Democrat Feingold on campaign funding ‘reform,’--only to cover the smell of his own corruption.

4. His Character as one of the Chas ‘Keating 5’ senate swindlers of victimized US citizens, taking multi-$100,000 bribes to protect Keating’s creation of the same credit crisis on fraud loans in 1990-91 that we have today. That cost US taxpayers $160 billion. Thank you, McCain. You should be jailed along with Keating, not made president of the US. Bribery is the only economic Experience you have, also from Big Oil. You admit your ignorance of economics, and you claimed a profit on Palin’s plane-sale: more lies--she lost $600,000 on the sale, and the Alaska House leader sold it, not she ‘on E-Bay.’

5. His Character of 27 years cheating us in the Senate with a big salary to help him bag bigger bribes from the Oil Companies and subsidize more drilling, voting 23 times against alternative energy, vowing never to get the country off of its oil dependence, never doing an honest day’s work in his pampered life. And picking Mrs Exxon as his running mate. If we get McCain-Palin, we’ll always have Exxon-Mobil. He thinks we were all blinded by this poor Palin woman’s momentary flash and his poor judgment in picking her as a desperate, reckless and dangerous trick. McCain thinks he can run a self-glorifying soap opera in DC, like most of his life, not a serious national gov’t.

6. His Character cheating on the American people in Iraq, conspiring with Bush-Cheney on how to blow what will eventually cost us $3 trillion, nearly as much as WW II, and waste ever more of our youth’s lives over there. Not ‘the Surge,’ but Blackwater murders have ‘worked’ in Iraq. Bush-McCain lies again. If this fool were boss we’d still be in Vietnam, the way he’ll win ‘victory, someday’ in Iraq! Bush’s blowing $10,000 per sec-ond in Iraq (Google War-cost clock) will end US world leadership by 2015. I predict it.

McCain means ‘Son of Cain.’ And if you’re Biblical, Cain’s ‘Character’ will kill off US world-leadership as surely as Cain killed Abel. If he’s elected, the USA is finished as the world’s leader by 2015, just 8 years away, 2 terms. Here’s how: Just as Britain’s imperial world-domination killed it off by 1915, France’s by 1815, Holland’s by 1715, Spain’s by 1615, all 5 modern nations wrecked by gov’t blowing the national wealth on predatory wars, ours the Bush War, as clueless flyboy McCain will keep doing. Want no change and far deeper disaster? Vote the reckless mavericks, Cain and his little-yipping poodle.

The other man, Obama, has the Biblical character born of long-suffering, and the result-ing kindness and wisdom of the heart of Jesus Christ in him, something few nations will ever get to see in a leader, let alone a suffering world. Shame on you Evangelicals for preferring the shifty McCain, who mocks our faith, who only exploits it, as Bush did, who can’t even imagine the kingdom of God to which Obama wants to lead us. A glimp-se at that kingdom? If you earn less than $250 grand a year, there’ll be no more preda-tory IRS or income tax with Obama. This time he’s real hope for the middle class. Mc-Cain? Ignore his lies. There’ll be more taxes, for war, not to make us safer, but to enrich his wealthy, war profiteering pals, the same bankster bloats who gave us the recent economic collapse. That’s his record, and Bush’s, and now the Bailout’s: Socialism for the very rich. These are all McCain people, not Obama’s. They run McCain’s campaign. Haven’t we had enough of wealthy bloats running our lives, ruining our destinies?

Obama is simply the one with the brains and the heart this time; McCain has neither.

-- -Revd Andrew D Tempelman, PhD
-NH Republicans for Obama-Biden
-Former pastor, Lincoln’s church, 1st Presb, Springfield, Ill
-The Fellowship of Perfect Liberty, Nashua, NH
Dr-T@Comcast.net
Contact, any time, call to confirm 603-880-3211