Editor,
When I finished reading Richard Berthold's Feb. 14 column titled "Government Wields Real Terror," I honestly didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Here we have a man who garnered national attention for declaring his admiration for mass murderers mere hours after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
As soon as he was called to account for his actions, of course, he issued a tearful apology, claiming that he didn't really mean what he said.
Despite calls for his dismissal by numerous public officials, in the end, the system he so despises came to his defense, and he received a slap on the wrist.
As Berthold's most recent column makes eminently clear, however, the whole penitent bit was nothing but an act for the television cameras.
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Now that the spotlight has faded, he's back to his old self, spewing his usual brand of recycled anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda.
Is anyone really surprised?
The truly pathetic part of his screed, though, has to be the concluding paragraph, in which he lashes out at the president and attorney general for having "injure(d) our Constitution" in some unspecified way.
In his view, the current administration has somehow "threatened" his "freedom."
Were this the case, I find it highly unlikely that he would still be employed by the University of New Mexico, let alone able to continue publishing his views.
I rather doubt that he would have the same opportunity in Iraq, although I would certainly be willing to contribute toward the purchase of a one-way plane ticket should he wish to test that theory in person.
Jeffrey Gunn
Graduate student
public administration
