Cuccinelli’s values are not Virginia’s

Cuccinelli’s values are not Virginia’s

I was bemused to read the Aug. 12 letter “Cuccinelli understands issues in the region,” as this candidate — called “the most overtly partisan attorney general in Virginia’s history” by The Washington Post — seems particularly out of touch with our state.

It’s not in line with Virginia’s values to promote forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term in cases of rape and incest or when her health is at risk.

But this is the agenda of Ken Cuccinelli, who infamously stated that covering birth control is a sterilization mandate — even though birth control is not sterilization and insurance covering it doesn’t mandate women to use it — and asserted that fetal personhood is a “scientific reality.”

Certainly Cuccinelli didn’t have science in mind when he threatened not to defend board of health members after they tried to vote to keep women’s health centers open (defying his job as attorney general).

After his bullying, the board changed its vote, and now two women’s health centers already have closed.

Cuccinelli’s not in touch with the values and needs of our state.

TIMOTHY PRICE-O’BRIEN
SALEM

Don’t easily dismiss combat, suicide link

As the husband of a retired nurse who spent 35 years at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Salem, mostly in the acute psychiatric unit, I am disheartened by the Aug. 7 article “Link between combat, suicide disputed.”

This study was done by Navy doctors at the direction of Naval Command and, I suspect, with certain outcomes assumed from the start.

The rising number of returning veterans in need of psychiatric care flies directly in the face of this study’s conclusions.

The Naval Health Resources Center has a lot to explain, as do the other branches of the military, if any other conclusion were reached.

If its study finds no correlation, then the increase in suicides is not the Navy’s problem. It’s just a societal trend.

Until such time that sources outside the military reach the same conclusions, I will remain skeptical of the Navy’s findings.

Does anyone really think that a young recruit returning from his first combat deployment is going to be forthcoming to the military doctors interviewing him? Be serious.

SPIKE HARRISON
SALEM

Obama is all talk, no action on Syria

President Obama has once again reminded us that words without actions are hollow. The “red line” in Syria has been crossed through the use of chemical weapons.

The United Nations is unlikely to act because Russia and China (from whom we borrow 40 cents of every dollar we spend) won’t approve intervention.

Perhaps the hypocrisy greater than our own threats to intervene is how we judge war anyway.

Is there really any difference between 100 people dying from a chemical weapons attack as compared with dying from gunshot or grenade explosions?

If our own national interests were at stake, or we were truly interested in this from a humanitarian perspective, our window for action has long since passed.

FRANK LEYES
BOONES MILL

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