Otis Page (Letters, New Times, Sept. 30-Oct. 7) seems to have missed the main point of my article (“Seek your own sources,� New Times, Sept. 23-30).
Those of us who found alternative news sources during the buildup to war in Iraq (such as the Pacifica Radio Network’s “Democracy Now!�) did not require “20/20 hindsight� to realize that mainstream news was providing inadequate coverage of skepticism of the administration’s rationalizations for war.
There is probably no way that Mr. Page will ever be able to see what is so obvious to me, particularly when he refers to the “9/11 Commission’s acknowledgment of the ties between al Qaeda and Saddam.�
In fact, the commission found that Saddam did not collaborate with al Qaeda. But I agree with Mr. Page when he accuses me of having an “anti-war bias.�
Of course I have a bias against war. I would think that the central tenet of a civilized society is to maintain a healthy bias against the use of war, or violence in any of its forms, to solve our problems. This requires an equally healthy skepticism, largely lacking in the mainstream media, of those that would all too readily resort to its use.
Mark Phillips
Atascadero
This article appears in Oct 7-14, 2004.