All of Jon Kyl’s letters that are fit to print
May 4th, 2008, 12:23 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Paul Giblin
Jon Kyl
Sen. Jon Kyl penned letters to the editor that appeared in two of the nation’s leading newspapers Friday.
In The Washington Post op-ed pages, he differed with a column headlined, “Iraq War is Everyone Else’s Fault, Feith Explains.” The column suggested that there were no links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
Kyl wrote, “The historical record tells a different story.” The Republican senator from Arizona noted that in 2002, then-CIA director George Tenet described a connection in a letter Sen. Bob Graham, who at the time was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
He also noted that in 2006, the U.S. Joint Forces Command discussed in a report relationship with Hussein and Osama bin Laden’s second in command.
Kyl wrote, “Critics of the war in Iraq often try to minimize – if not dismiss – the links between Saddam Hussein and terrorists. As they say, facts are stubborn things.”
In the East Valley Tribune’s op-ed pages, Kyl differed with an editorial headlined, “Don’t blithely give feds our DNA.” He differed with the newspaper’s concerns about the creation of a federal DNA database. The Trib argued that a federal DNA sampling and recording system could infringe on civil liberties.
Kyle wrote, “The Tribune has a right to disagree with my position, as it did in a recent editorial regarding a new DNA database, but it is not fair to characterize my effort as ‘blithely’ or lighthearted.
“The new regulations and the bill that led to them are the product of years of review and consideration. Since the bill creating this database was first introduced in 2003, my staff and I spent hundreds of hours consulting with experts in the field, opponents of expanded sampling, and other government agencies to ensure, among other things, that the regulations do not violate anyone’s privacy or result in misuse of data.”
He further argued that if such a database had been in place years ago, it could have helped identify the Chandler Rapist more quickly.
