Alamo

Re "In Baghdad, fighting their 'Alamo,' " May 23 Some of our soldiers are referring to their piece of the Iraq conflict as an Alamo-like situation. It is ironic (and little known) that the Alamo was a fight for the right of European American citizens to own and use slaves in Mexican territory. Mexico said no, and history turned it into a fight for "American freedom." As an African American, I know that the Mexicans were the heroes, not the European Americans. Again we are in a battle that has a dubious motivation.

Customer satisfaction with renting cars at airports declined for a second consecutive year, according to a survey by J.D. Power & Associates that is in its 13th year. Enterprise ranked highest in customer satisfaction among rental car companies for a fifth consecutive year in the survey, followed in the rankings by Hertz and Alamo, with Alamo improving from 2007. The study measures overall customer satisfaction with renting cars at airports by looking at costs and fees, pickup process, rental car, return process, reservation process and shuttle bus/van.

A copy of the letter written by the Texas commander at the battle of the Alamo pleading for backup and pledging "victory or death" was auctioned in San Antonio for $299,200. The letter from William Barret Travis, one of four known copies, was sold along with a later letter that announced the defenders had lost the March 1836 battle, said Lauren Gioia, a spokeswoman for Sotheby's. The second letter was auctioned for $78,000. Both were from a private collection.

Remember the Alamo? Unless you recall it as the last stand of a multicultural Paradise Lost, filmmaker John Lee Hancock is sure you remember it wrong. "Whites and browns lived together," said Hancock, a Texas native, describing his home state's pre-revolutionary past. "It was really culturally diverse. People intermarried. There was very little racism." For one brief moment in the still-aborning 19th century, he believes, "Tejas, Mexico, was a very, very interesting place."

Mitchell Gaswirth's April 8 commentary "Remember the Alamo" captured many of my emotions about this war. I openly admit that I hate the Bush administration for what it is doing economically, environmentally and diplomatically -- and truly the worst is this war. But my heart goes out to the young people who have dutifully gone off because they have made the commitment to do so. I hope when they return they are treated better than those who returned from...

On the hallowed grounds of the Alamo, a shrine so sacred that men still must doff their hats before setting foot in the limestone chapel, Frank Buschbacher is digging for gold. For the last month, his team of excavators has delicately sifted through a gaping hole carved out of the plaza floor, an unprecedented treasure hunt somewhat akin to burrowing for riches underneath the Vatican.