Mind our own business
I don’t understand why everyone is making a big deal out of what happened to Saudi citizen Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Turkey. It is a tragedy, but it has nothing to do with the U.S. people or their government. It’s a problem for the Turks and Saudis to deal with. If, for example, a Russian citizen was killed in the Russian embassy in Washington, it would be a criminal matter but nobody’s business except for the D.C. police, Russia and the USA. We would not expect a third country, Germany, for example, to demand a full investigation of the death. Let’s mind our own business instead of telling others what to do.
George Palmer, McLoud
Facts missing
“A needed rebuke” (ScissorTale, Oct. 20) missed some important facts. The article was about Atlanta’s city council voting to pay $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the former fire chief who was dismissed after he wrote a book that included anti-gay passages. $1.2 million doesn’t even come close to what this has cost. Consider this: Who pays that $1.2 million? Not the people who fired him, not the mayor or the city council. The taxpayers in Atlanta paid that double. Why double? Because that’s $1.2 million not in city coffers to provide services in a city that is in dire need of much more than is ever available. Add to that the cost of litigation prior to settlement. Who knows what the tab came to? What did it cost those who engineered this? Nothing — not a dime out of any of their pockets, no shaming in the news and they will all be re-elected to keep doing whatever they want so long as it costs them nothing.
There is a lesson to be learned from this but it isn’t likely to be learned by elected officials who have an agenda other than doing their jobs in accordance with the laws and Constitution rather than their personal agenda driven biases.
David Browne, Oklahoma City