Letter: Captain Bush steering this ship into disaster

Thursday, Oct. 19, 2006 | 7:34 a.m.

A ship's captain is responsible for the safety of the passengers and their safe journey through difficult and stormy seas. The president of our country is likewise the captain of the national ship of state and responsible for the safety of the nation in times of peril. The decisions and course he sets for the nation impacts the destiny of its citizens.

Unfortunately, our nation's captain and crew exhibit considerable incompetence and a stubborn unwillingness to alter a course destined to be destructive to all of us. As time grows closer to the end of Bush's term at the helm, talk of nuclear confrontation with Iran and North Korea will undoubtedly intensify. The path for a pre-emptive strike against one or both of these nations is now being paved in gradual increments of bellicose posturing by the administration. A miscalculation by our leaders could easily put us in a nuclear world war!

We cannot long continue on course with burgeoning national debt and expect to survive when we hit that reef of economic disaster; the guts of the national ship will be torn out and we are all doomed to drown in a sea of debt.

Like the mine sweeper in the novel and movie "The Caine Mutiny," our national ship of state is beginning to show signs of floundering in stormy waters at the hands of a captain and crew with questionable leadership skills. Bellicose rhetoric and out-of-control government economic debt is steering us onto a reef of disaster.

Virgil A. Sestini, Las Vegas