Letters

Error that kept man in jail puzzling

So Mr. Anthony Ortiz spent five days in the Sandoval County Detention Center (and later the Santa Fe County Jail) because a secretary thought Ortiz was “an unusual name” and mistakenly plugged the first Social Security number that popped up into the blank on someone else’s arrest warrant without matching first and middle names.

Really? An unusual name in New Mexico? In the Santa Fe phone book there are 197 Ortizes, and Santa Fe is a small town. Wonder how many Ortizes there are in ABQ? The rest of the state? Wonder how lazy or inattentive this secretary was when filling in identifying information on an arrest warrant, for Pete’s sake?

A. FABER

Santa Fe

U.S., not Iran, should keep nukes

In his March 30 commentary, “If Iran shouldn’t have nukes, neither should U.S.,” Los Alamos Study Group President Peter Neils offers a pleasant vision: A world without nuclear weapons. However he neglects to balance his idealism with thoughtful anticipation of its implications.

There are two dates we should consider before committing ourselves to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. They are 1914 and 1939. Those were the years that the two world wars began. Interestingly enough, they both began in the world that Mr. Neils wants us to return to — a world without nuclear weapons. They both began back when the world was safe for massive armies, navies, and air forces — and expansionist sociopaths — but not for careers, families or lovers. The insane idea that nations could with sovereign impunity ally themselves to win wars of global domination became actual insanity in August 1945, in the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Why anyone would advocate that we return to the bad old days when millions of people might be killed, maimed or dispossessed year after bloody year is a mystery. Frankly, it is gross and inhumane of Mr. Neils to lobby for such unfettered industrialized horror, which has only grown more potent in the intervening decades.

Furthermore, Iran has convincingly demonstrated its proclivity for oppressing women, sponsoring terror and slaughtering neighboring Iraqis. All these very stark facts are exactly why the US should maintain its nuclear weapons, and why Iran should be denied them.

It would be incredibly silly not to.

STEVE STRINGER

Los Alamos

Kim Jong Un might remember Saddam

I have two words for Kim Jong Un, the apparently unbalanced dictator of North Korea: Saddam Hussein.

He led us to believe that he had a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and had nuclear arms under development. He provoked the world by stating his intention to use these weapons against the United States and its allies.

His country was invaded, devastated and occupied. Hussein was executed a few years later. Kim Jong Un seems to be headed down the same path. This could be a tragedy for his people, who have suffered for too long already under leaders who kept them in isolation and abject poverty for decades.

And all because of one man acting like a two-year-old having a tantrum.

ADELE ZIMMERMANN

Embudo