Letters

Charles and Camilla: Love Actually
By and large, I don’t follow and don’t give a hoot about Britain’s royals, but this time I want to say bravo and best wishes for a long life of growing old together to the steadfast couple [Feb. 21]. In centuries to come, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles’ love story will undoubtedly be the subject of novels, plays, films and maybe even an opera or a Broadway musical. And, of course, their parts will be played by beautiful young people. The true story is better.
Patricia Collier
Annapolis, Maryland, U.S.

For years, Prince Charles seemed to be aging ungracefully, since we automatically compared him with Princess Diana. Suddenly, next to Camilla, he looks like an assured and happy middle-aged man, which is exactly what he should be. How nice that once in a while a man actually chooses a woman his own age instead of a fetching, young knockout!
Karin Judkins
Turin, Italy

I do hope that the island kingdom of Britain will maintain its royals forever. After all, stories of kings and queens have fired the imagination of generations of young children whose loving parents call them princes and princesses. What will happen to the bedtime fairy tales that send them to sleep and generate sweet dreams? With no kings and queens, princes and princesses, fairy tales will die.
Lokendra Nath Roychoudhury
Calcutta, India

The British royal family should have let Charles propose to Camilla right from the onset. Broken hearts, broken families and unnecessary death would have been avoided. If it had not been for Charles’ on-and-off affair with Camilla, he would not have been separated or divorced from Diana. Diana would not have taken up with Dodi Fayed, and there would have been no car accident. But wait, there would also not have been Diana, Queen of Hearts. It all boils down to providence.
Augustine Kallon
Hemmingen, Germany

“Love actually,” you declare. But who cares, actually? And on the cover? You should be embarrassed.
Jennifer Jones
Stellenbosch, South Africa

High Stakes in North Korea
North Korea wants to develop nuclear weapons only as a deterrent to the threatening nuclear superpower of the U.S. [Feb. 21]. President Bush included North Korea in his notorious “axis of evil,” along with Iraq and Iran. He invaded Iraq and has now focused world attention on Iran. He said he loathes North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and called him a “pygmy.” The U.S. has in the past maintained up to 40,000 troops at North Korea’s border with the South. Bush needs only to look in the mirror to see the person most responsible for forcing North Korea to go nuclear.
Reno S. Zack
San Dimas, California, U.S.

For the Missing Soldier
Thank you for your article on Private First Class Matt Maupin, who was taken captive by insurgents in Iraq 10 months ago and is still missing [Feb. 21]. Though many Americans may have forgotten about Matt, a number of us haven’t. I feared that type of tragedy when my son was in the service, so I feel a connection to Matt’s family. I hold on to the hope that Matt may still be alive. Thanks for keeping his situation at the forefront. We must never forget our heroes.
Virginia Rebyak
Bear, Delaware, U.S.

Show and Ask at Gitmo
Your report confirms that the military used sexual tactics at the Guantánamo Bay prison [Feb. 21], where female interrogators touched handcuffed detainees in sexually suggestive ways in an attempt to extract information. Those practices, deliberately violating Muslim taboos, have less to do with sex than with religion. Religious humiliation and degradation are prohibited by international law and dishonor our country. As the torture scandal continues to unfold — and where will it end? — we have every reason to demand an independent prosecutor.
George Hunsinger
McCord Professor of Theology
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.

There is an old saying that when dog bites man it’s not news, but when man bites dog, it is. Your report of the sexually loaded torment of prisoners at Guantánamo is hardly shocking. After what happened (and probably continues to occur) in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram, Afghanistan, such abuse by U.S. forces has come to be accepted as the norm. When we hear of prisoners being humanely treated by their U.S. captors, that will indeed be news.
Tony Correia-Afonso
Benaulim, India

Peddling Nuclear Secrets
You called Khan “the merchant of Menace” [Feb. 14] for his sale of nuclear technology, but it seems you forgot to mention many other “merchants of menace” since the development of nuclear weapons in the 1940s. The title should be conferred on Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and President Harry Truman, who was responsible for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And don’t forget the Americans who leaked nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, and the Israelis who developed their own nuclear weapons. The Americans, not Khan, should be at the top of that list.
Aziz al Rehman
Karachi

A Sister’s Sympathy
It is interesting to note that in your interview with Roman Catholic Sister Helen Prejean about her stand against the death penalty [Feb. 21], she did not express sorrow or sympathy for the innocent victims of crime and their grieving relatives. She talked about letters from prisoners’ mothers as being some of the saddest but didn’t mention the victims’ mothers.
Leonid Oleinik
Wanamassa, New Jersey, U.S.

Kyoto’s Global Scope
I was amazed to read your article about the implementation of the Kyoto accord on climate change [Feb. 21], which went into effect in much of the world on Feb. 16. Reduction of greenhouse gases is a global issue, yet you focused on what Europe is doing and the buying and selling of carbon dioxideemissions allowances. Not a word about the much larger emissions problem caused by other parts of the world, especially the U.S., which among other nations declined to participate in the efforts of the Kyoto accord to save the planet.
Dirk Roggeveen
Voorburg, the Netherlands

The Kyoto accord is not about saving the earth. It is about saving humankind for a while longer before accelerated climate change wipes out the not-very-wise Homo sapiens. If we were really smart, we would take into account our track record of raping the earth and devise an exit strategy for our self-indulgent species, leaving the planet to the invertebrates to carry on without us.
Tim Symonds
Burwash, England

Calling the Kettle Black?
re The viewpoint by terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna on the Maoist insurgents in Nepal [Feb. 14]: The counsel to Nepal’s King was typical of that of an academic like Gunaratna, who is based in Singapore and feels free to dispense his advice without introspection. Gunaratna should perhaps turn his attention to the Lee dynasty in Singapore, with its one-party monopoly on power since 1959, lack of an independent judiciary and press, ill treatment of minorities and dynastic tendencies that run through government and the corridors of power.
Raj Menon
Leeds, England