On U.S. foreign policy

If anybody can be relied upon for vacuous, banal comments, Mr. David Wallis can and he has excelled himself in this respect in his letter published in The Jakarta Post on Jan. 2, 2002.

Most of the nonsense he commits to paper does not deserve even a mote of credit a response might confer on it. However, I would like to make it clear that I have never asserted that U.S. foreign policy is "wicked and evil". Misguided, fatuous, asinine, idiotic, and murderously inept, certainly! Furthermore, let me challenge Mr. Wallis, and any other overly patriotic American, to rationally refute my accusations against the U.S. in this column, rather than reverting to what appears to be their only weapon, puerile ridicule.

If I am currently obsessed with the U.S.'s past crimes against humanity, it is only because I see even greater danger for the world in the form of the half-wit, President George W. Bush. His usurpation of the U.S. presidency (with the apparent acquiescence of the American people), his family's ill-gotten wealth derived from pandering to Hitler's Third Reich and his redneck, issue- avoiding atavism, make me fear for the future of humanity. Simply that!

FRANK RICHARDSON

Tangerang, Banten