Chavez is half right
To the Editor:

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez infuriated a lot of Americans with the broadsides he fired at the US during his visit here, and most of us wish that he had just stayed home and held his tongue. Virtually all of what he had to say was bloviation and pure nonsense, unworthy of comment, but one thing he said absolutely hit the mark right on, and should not be lumped in with all the other blather. While visiting Cuba last week Chavez announced that he would push to move the United Nations headquarters out of the United States, possibly to Syria or Brazil, and during his speech here at the UN he said, "The UN must be pulled out of the US." Bravo! On this point he is half right. The other half of the point is, "the US must pull out of the UN." Proof of how dysfunctional the UN is continues to mount. Perhaps the latest example was the election earlier this week, of an Iranian representative to be the vice chair of the UN's disarmament commission (reminiscent of Libya's assignment, a couple of years ago, as chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights). Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), who heads the House subcommittee on the Middle East issued a statement in which she compared the decision to "appointing a serial killer to serve as a juror in a murder trial." Exactly.

Cordially, Chuck Esposito

Suches, Ga.