Rep. Neugebauer's Newsletter

Open e-mail to Rep. Neugebauer:

Randy,

I read your latest newsletter.

You are favorable to the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, but you are concerned that it it will "diminish progress we have made in the area". What progress? We are not in the business of nation building, or at least shall we say. There is no humanitarian consideration, which should not be a big factor anyhow. We have no intention of taking Iraqi oil. The only possible concern that you could have is to have troops on the ground in the vicinity of Iran to hopefully deter them from military action against Israel. That is also silly. With the advent of terrorism, we have learned some new tactics of war. Basically, you don't need troops on the ground, you demonstrate military might through technology, which involves primarily aerial activity. Even going back to World War II, we reduced Germany to nothing through bombing with conventional explosives. We could do the same to Iran. In addition, we can use drones for specific strikes against foreign leaders, such as we have done recently against terrorists. Finally, we now have intercontinental ballistic missiles, which could carry conventional mega bombs rather than nuclear warheads. All of this requires a strong military, but not for aggressive use, but rather for defensive use against our Homeland and also against a few of our "friends".

With respect to the U.S. Postal Service, I was disappointed to see that you confined your discussions with Postal Service administrators to whether service will be affected in our area. You seem to have taken the naïve approach that sense service would not be immediately affected in our area, all is rosy. This is far from the truth. Your responsibility is to see that the national postal service remains effective. The U.S. Postal Service's has self-admitted that they continue to loose money and must take steps to diminish services. Sooner or later, this is going to affect us. Randy, look at the big picture. Not just what is happening locally.

It's a nice addition for you to encourage young people to apply for appointments to military academies through you.