Thompson co-star backs me for Senate — and presidency

(Regarding article, “Minnesota candidate plans to change name to Wellstone,” Aug. 8.) I just wanted to thank your paper for not slandering me like a lot of diehard Republican National Committee supporters like to do locally here in Minnesota.

I have direct phone numbers in regard to every single Democratic U.S. senator and will be calling them in regard to either: A, coming out in support of what I am doing; B, A thousand dollar donation; or C, both A and B.

I will be making a list of the U.S. Democratic senators that do A, B or C. The ones who do nothing I will address personally after being elected.

The Independence Party is not too happy about what I am doing, according to the St. Paul Legal Ledger. They actually, from what I’ve been told, are not endorsing my actions?

Last time I checked I thought it was up to the I.P. voters to decide who their candidates are?

I will stick around the I.P. for due process of elimination. If I don’t get the nod — they have no one else running — then I will be a write-in candidate.

Speaking of write-in candidates, Fred Thompson from “Law and Order” almost was a write-in for president, before he made it official.

Fred’s coworker Ice-T from “Law and Order” has not only endorsed me for the United States Senate, but took it a step further on June 9 in Anoka, Minn., and requested that the 4,000 people there vote Broom for president.

What an honor.

P.S.: I can defeat Sen. Norm Coleman with $300,000. I’m banking on $50,000 of that coming from our very own Democratic and independent U.S. senators.

And in regards to the I.P., it would be nice to get a free ticket into the debates. Let’s be clear here though: The I.P. party was not going to make me; I planned on making them.

-From James McBroom, Apple Valley, Minn.

Bush, Iraq and the Vietnam War

(Regarding article, “Democrats blast Bush’s Vietnam comparison,” Aug. 22.) President Bush and I share a lot of common ground; unfortunately, little has to do with Vietnam or Iraq .

… We both did everything we legally could to remain stateside during the Vietnam War. His route to avoid serving there has been the subject of debate for years. Mine is more straightforward. Having fractured three vertebrae in a fall from a cliff while in high school, I made damn sure I flunked my physical exam two months after graduating from college.

In his recent speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, Mo., the president argued, “There is a legitimate debate
about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like boat people, re-education camps and killing fields.”

Well, yes, all of that is true; but, so what? Today, people from all over the world flock to Vietnam to surf. If I was the parent or brother of a U.S. soldier killed in a rice paddy decades ago, I’d be asking myself one simple question today: Was it worth it?

If I still believed that the geopolitical “domino theory” was right, then my answer probably would be yes. If, on the other hand, I had my traveler’s visa and surfboard in tow, my answer most likely would be no.

Any way you slice it, losing more than 58,000 troops in Vietnam was a disaster. Clearly, if then-President Nixon had withdrawn U.S. forces earlier, thousands of young Americans would have been spared their ultimate sacrifice.

Today, President Bush faces a similar dilemma in Iraq. Interestingly, he now is comparing what’s happening in the Middle East to what happened 35 years ago in Southeast Asia. I’m not sure that logic is going to stick. …

-From Denny Freidenrich, First Strategies consulting, Laguna Beach, Calif.