Good Morning, Corvallis, and happy holidays! After reading the Associated Press story, "Military said working on armor upgrade, I believe that more clarification is needed.

Yes, they are doing a wonderful job bolting armor onto old Hummers as a stop-gap method for dealing with the current crisis in Iraq. What people need to understand is that simply bolting plates on does not make a Hummer armored. The current nomenclature for a true armored Hummer is M1114. This type of Hummer has a different engine, different suspension and is armored on all six sides. We have trucks like these that have been rocket-propelled grenaded (three in one attack alone), then attacked with IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and small arms, bringing the crew home alive and well. A bolt-on armor kit would not be able to take that kind of abuse. The suspension and drive train of the Hummers that are not M1114s do not hold up to the added weight.

What we need in theatre is more M1114s, and we need a better system to armor the larger trucks, real revisions that can take the kind of abuse this theatre dishes out on a regular basis. It is time to stop knee-jerk solutions, plan and create solutions for the changing world, stop reacting and start planning. I believe the M1114s are assembled in Mexico, and you cannot tell me that it is that hard to ramp up production.

Have a a great holiday, Gazette-Times folks!

SSG Lewis Franklin

Camp Taji, Iraq

Why trumpet good news for lupus?

It's amazing how misleading a headline can be. In the Dec. 9 article on page 6 entitled "Outlook for lupus brightens," made me wonder if the disease was making a comeback; if it was afflicting more people than before.

If the headline had said, for example: "Lupus treatment improves," or "Lupus symptoms treatable," or even, "Outlook for lupus patients brightens," I would not have been caught off guard.

It's all a matter of perspective. It reminds me of the cartoon where, as one looks through a microscope at two bacteria [one in a hospital bed, the other visiting,] one germ says to the other, "I wonder if they will ever find a cure for penicillin?"

Long live the English language!

M. Boyd Wilcox

Corvallis

Love more than black and white

We are writing in response to Mary Ann Albright's Dec. 12 article, "Love sees no color."

Mixed Media Watch is a grassroots coalition we started that works to promote more realistic, three-dimensional portrayals of mixed race people, couples and families in the media.

While it was nice to see a positive portrayal of interracial relationships in Ms. Albright's article, we were disappointed that she only featured couples in which one partner is black, and the other is white.

We hope that in any future articles about interracial couples, your newspaper will reflect the far more diverse reality of the mixed race community. While only 6 percent of African-American husbands and 2 percent of African-American wives are in interracial marriages, the intermarriage rate among other groups is much, much higher. In the case of Japanese-American women, for example, 49 percent are married to non-Japanese-American men.

And interracial marriages don't happen only between white and non-white people - there are many couples in which both partners are people of color (e.g., Black/Asian, Latino/Black). In short, being in an interracial relationship is not just a black/white thing.

As the number of interracial couples has grown, so have the number of resources available for mixed race individuals and interracial couples and families. It is important that people recognize that support does exist. For a fairly comprehensive list of resources, please visit www.swirlinc.org, or visit us at ww.mixedmediawatch.com.

Jen Chau and Carmen Van Kerckhove

New York

Political views not easily defined

Recently, a number of people have written in giving a dictionary definition of a liberal. One of the words they use to describe a liberal is tolerant. Tolerant and liberal? It's hard to even use them in the same sentence. More like tolerant if you are of the same opinion and hate the same people. By the way, don't think I give the conservatives a pass on this, either.

Ron Freborg

Corvallis