Katrina fallout

Re “Bush accents the positive in New Orleans,” Aug. 30

New Orleans is President Bush’s domestic Iraq. He sees accomplishment where there is none, he promises what he can’t deliver -- and all at the expense of the most defenseless.

New Orleans is an American city with running water and lights, but the administration has yet to find a way to help it clear the debris from the streets.

Bush would see this if he visited something other than a handpicked school and mingled with the citizens instead of delivering another set of stock phrases in range of any camera.

We see that there is embarrassingly little to show for the president’s happy talk after two years in this stable American city, where there are no suicide bombers or rockets aimed at workers who are attempting to rebuild.

If the administration cannot restore New Orleans in peacetime, why should anyone believe that Bush knows what he’s doing in Iraq?

Marion Lewish

San Diego

Re “There’s a dog in this hunt,” Column One, Aug. 27

As a dog owner (and lover), I’m appalled by Pia Salk’s refusal to return the pit bull Crown to its New Orleans family. The people of New Orleans have suffered enough at the hands of Katrina and its aftermath.

While I applaud Salk’s efforts to rescue the animals that owners were forced to abandon, her self-righteous position regarding the owner’s care of her beloved Crown -- apparently based on little more than the fact that Crown had not been neutered -- makes my blood run cold. Can she not put herself in the rightful owner’s shoes? Absent a clear case of actual abuse, she should return Crown now.

Martha A. Warriner

Riverside