Happy with Bush

Restraint, please

• This refers to reports about ‘Ex-Miss Jammu’ being held for acting in porn films. The girl may have been trapped using her ambition and young age as bait. It may be that the people involved in the whole scandal played on her naivete and that she had no alternative but to do as they said. It is wrong on the part of the media to disclose her name in public before the whole truth is uncovered.

— Sakshi Jammu

Eastern, despotic

• Your editorial on Yasser Arafat (‘A legacy in limbo’, IE, November 6), accuses the US of being partisan in the Middle East. Of course, we are! Israel is a democracy, has a free press and allows all forms of religious worship. The Arab states, on the other hand, are mostly totalitarian regimes with government-controlled press. Most allow open practice of Islam only. The US finds in Israel a nation of similar culture: Western and democratic, rather than eastern and despotic.

— Adam On e-mail

CBI’s dance

• Instead of talking about Zaheera Sheikh’s turnabout, the nation should focus more on issues of delay in the prosecution of corrupt ministers like Laloo Prasad Yadav, and Satish Sharma who has been given a clean chit by the CBI and the Home Ministry! Ever since the Manmohan Singh government has assumed charge, the CBI has been dancing to the tune of its masters, namely Sonia Gandhi and her coterie.

— N.B. Patel Vadodara

Kerry’s truth

• Saeed Naqvi’s article ‘Dear Mr Bush, stay your hand’ (IE, November 5) was written as a Muslim. The issues close to his heart are Palestine, Iraq and the ummah. He is disappointed because President Bush was reelected. I am sure he would have been more disappointed if Senator Kerry had been elected. Kerry was also close to Israel and distant from the Arabs. He would have stayed in Iraq, merely brought in America’s allies as well.

— Lalit Bagai On e-mail

Exploit it

• Instead of analysing whether political issues such as the Iraq War or moral issues like gay marriage, abortion rights and stem-cell research contributed to the success of Bush, we should concentrate on making the best use of Bush’s return to the White House. We must think of how we can exploit it in respect of better trade relations, enlarging BPO, increased quota of student and work visas. We must also try to enlist US support to our efforts to combat terrorism and to our legitimate stand on Kashmir.

— R. Thirunarayanan On e-mail