The tally in the presidential race

Re “McCain has edge over Democrats,� Feb. 27

You say one of the main reasons Sen. John McCain has the edge is the war in Iraq. Considering all the people who are against the war, that should be surprising. But Americans are hypocrites. The dumb thing about the war is not that we are in it; the dumb thing is that no one has any idea what else we should be doing. The fact is, for 25 years terrorists had been killing Americans, culminating in 9/11, when we lost more in lives a day than we lost in Iraq in a year. We finally got a president who did something. We haven’t had a 9/11 since we went to war. Anybody who thinks we won’t have one again if we quit the war in Iraq is living in la-la land.

John Waugen

Anaheim

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Do you think you are being responsible journalists or partisan hacks when you show a 2% lead for McCain over Sen. Barack Obama with this headline?

The Democrats have not yet chosen their nominee, and you are already lining up to mislead the voting public.

Siddharth Dasgupta

Pasadena

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I’ve been feeling all warm and comfortable because we have two totally terrific candidates, so we Democrats couldn’t lose. Or could we? I was greeted with the breakfast-curdling front-page article announcing that McCain has an edge over either Democrat. There is only one solution -- a twofer. One for president and one for vice president. It matters not which is which. It’s time to put egos aside and put the welfare of the country -- and the world -- first.

Barbara Toohey

Van Nuys

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Statistical discipline dictates that “44% to 42%,� with “a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points,� is a dead heat, not a lead by either candidate, as this article states and this headline suggests.

J. Robert Bragonier

Redondo Beach

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Apparently, a large number of the poll respondents have the memory of a goldfish, because they think that McCain has the best experience to lead us during a time of war. It is true that McCain has been critical of how the war was handled in the past, but do they forget that he also thinks the Iraq war was the proper course of action from the beginning?

The war was bad strategy to begin with, and McCain’s poor judgment would still have gotten us into the mess we are in now.

Do many also forget that they did not think McCain was good enough in 2000? If you think George W. Bush was a better choice than McCain, then I am not sure how he is good enough to fix Bush’s many mistakes.

The way to win the war on terrorism is to repair our international reputation. A Republican president who supported our ill-conceived, unilateral actions will not be able to do that.

Peter Molnar

Venice