The McCain/Palin ticket represents a continuation of the dangerous, neo-conservative Bush/Cheney package and would keep the world at terrible risk of continuing terrorism.

The Bush administration’s initial response to 9/11 was to go after the perpetrators in Afghanistan. The world was with us.

Out of the blue, we declared war on Iraq: a country not threatening us, with a secular (albeit brutal) government, with Christians serving in key positions, with an Iraqi-Jewish population living as they had for thousands of years, with a co-ed university and discos, with a leadership wanting no dealings with the fundamentalist bin Laden group. We have lost more than 4,000 service men and women, thousands more mentally and physically wounded and are spending billions on this war every day.

“If you are not with us, you are against us,” Bush has declared on more than one occasion.

“It was a task from God,” Palin piously declared of the Iraq war.

“My way or the highway,” declares Palin. She is under investigation for firing public employees with dissenting views from her own.

“We would go to war with Russia — I don’t blink!” Palin answered in a recent interview on the Russia/Georgia conflict … having no knowledge of the diverse ethnic population and historic strife present there for hundreds of years.

Vote for intelligence, decency and sound judgment: vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Kathleen Crabtree

Renton