December 22, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Sitting in a hippie cafe in Colorado, finally emerging from the travel-induced news blackout, staring at a headline that reads "Bush defends Rumsfeld as 'a caring fellow'" and trying to figure out if you even believe the words that are coming out of your mouth. The day after 22 soldiers died in Mosul, nothing could feel further from the truth, here in a lonely liberal outpost in a beet-red state, than your insistence that, "I have heard the anguish in his voice and seen his eyes when we talk about the danger in Iraq and the fact that youngsters are over there in harm's way."

Yours,

Dan