Timothy Mcveigh

Alexander Cockburn's June 29 Column Left ("Where Do We Bury McVeigh?") is remarkable. His premise is that since Timothy McVeigh was trained to kill by the Army, and all McVeigh did in Oklahoma City was simply what the Army trained him to do, how can McVeigh not now be buried in a national cemetery? Cockburn seems to believe that all people who underwent Army training are now social deviates who don't see anything wrong with bombing 168 innocent people. This is a despicable insult to those who have loyally served in America's military services.

It only took a few minutes for Newt Gingrich to display the bluntness that has become his signature quality during the Republican presidential debates. Gathered at the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall in Washington, the GOP presidential hopefuls were quizzed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer on foreign policy topics. First up was the Patriot Act. Asked whether the Patriot Act should be strengthened, Gingrich launched into a lecture about "the difference between national security requirements and criminal law requirements.

Timothy McVeigh was rightly put to death (June 11). His note, "I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul," tells why. He did not give 168 people the right to be the masters of their fates or the captains of their souls. Anyone who takes this right away should forfeit his own life. Douglas Hall Culver City One last thought: What if McVeigh had decided to martyr himself and explode with the bomb? We would likely never have known who engineered the thing.

Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, on Friday criticized the Obama administration's action in killing Anwar Awlaki, the American-born cleric who advocated jihad against the United States. Paul was the strongest critic on the Republican side in condemning the attack, which was praised by other candidates including Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a libertarian like Paul, also questioned the tactic of killing a U.S. citizen without due process.

Re "Killing Him Lets Us Off the Hook," Commentary, June 12: "We failed Timothy McVeigh and . . . his execution fails us all." Robert Scheer's "we" does not include me. It does, however, include Scheer. If McVeigh was "us in our darkest moments" then Scheer switched off the lights. McVeigh learned the lessons of the radical movement of which Scheer was a prominent member: The government of the United States is a criminal enterprise, those who serve in the military are baby killers, and "off the pigs."

If confessed mass murderer Timothy (not "Tim," as some TV people chummily call him) McVeigh is executed June 11 or on any other date, I want to see him die. Not necessarily in person at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., where McVeigh is still on death row after getting a stay, although that would be fine. Already picked, though, are the few media members and others who will be watching there through a glass window, as provided by law.

Timothy McVeigh is back in the news, and this is bad for opponents of capital punishment. McVeigh's desire to end all further legal appeals arising from the Oklahoma City bombing and receive an execution date puts the death penalty abolitionist community in a bind.

The one-room office with overflowing bookshelves and Maria Callas playing quietly in the background isn't the likeliest setting for a storm of controversy. Nor is its slender, soft-spoken inhabitant a likely target for angry finger-pointing. But Los Angeles composer David Woodard could easily incense the friends and family of those who were killed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing when he performs a musical "prequiem" for Timothy McVeigh shortly before his execution next Wednesday.

America's violent far right would have no difficulty recognizing the tell-tale signatures of Friday's killing spree in Norway — and not just because they would see the confessed perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, as an ideological soul mate who, like their own heroes, thought he could trigger a white-supremacist revolution with bombs and bullets. Breivik appears to have been more than simply inspired by American predecessors such as Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber: The materials he used, the way he planned and carried out his attacks, and his own writings all suggest he was deeply familiar with the actions of some notorious political killers on this side of the Atlantic.

Just days ago, when it was still an ordinary spring, the farmers, loggers and factory hands in these parts had plenty on their minds: the cold weather that kept corn stubble littering the untilled fields, the high cost of fertilizer, the faraway O.J. Simpson trial and, of course, the Oklahoma City bombing that killed more people than any terrorist action on this nation's soil. Most sighed over the scores of lost lives and opined that the roots of the deadly explosion likely lay overseas.

America's violent far right would have no difficulty recognizing the tell-tale signatures of Friday's killing spree in Norway — and not just because they would see the confessed perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, as an ideological soul mate who, like their own heroes, thought he could trigger a white-supremacist revolution with bombs and bullets. Breivik appears to have been more than simply inspired by American predecessors such as Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber: The materials he used, the way he planned and carried out his attacks, and his own writings all suggest he was deeply familiar with the actions of some notorious political killers on this side of the Atlantic.

If your knowledge of spies and terrorists is limited to the names of Benedict Arnold, Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden, visit Philadelphia this spring and learn about anarchists and traitors that have haunted America since its birth. On March 4, “ Spies, Traitors & Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America ” opens in the National Constitution Center ’s new exhibition space in the Center’s lower level. Created by the International Spy Museum in Washington, the exhibition combines artifacts, multimedia elements and interactive exhibits to reveal tales of espionage, treason and deception in the U.S. from 1776 to today.

On the day Jared Lee Loughner was indicted for the shootings in Tucson, the top federal prosecutor in Arizona signaled that the government most likely would request the ultimate punishment. But the federal death penalty process is filled with obstacles, and Loughner's execution would be far from assured if he is convicted. Most defendants initially targeted for death are more likely to spend their lives in prison. Of 182 federal death penalty prosecutions approved by Washington since 1988, 60 defendants are on death row, and only three ?

Actors love to "stretch," taking that out-of-my-wheelhouse part that subverts typecasting. For two TV nice guys, Mike Farrell, 71, the beloved B.J. Hunnicutt of "MASH," and Jim Parrack, 29, who plays puppy-dog Hoyt Fortenberry on "True Blood," the Blank Theatre Company's production of Edmund White's "Terre Haute" offers a daunting stretch. The 2006 drama is based on imagined encounters between only-the-names-are-changed versions of writer Gore Vidal and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Twice a week, a caravan of trucks lumbers out of this volatile northwest Pakistan city in the dead of night and makes its way toward Afghanistan, loaded with one of the most coveted substances in a Taliban bombmaker's arsenal: ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Every time the illicit caravan makes its trip, it moves unhindered past a gantlet of Pakistani police checkposts along the Pak-Afghan Highway. A string of bribes paid out to police, politicians and bureaucrats ensures that the smuggled explosive agent reaches its destination, middlemen on the Afghan side of the border who sell it to insurgents, says the co-owner of a Pakistani trucking firm that dispatches the caravans.

To predictable criticism, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Friday that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other accused 9/11 conspirators held at Guantanamo Bay will be put on trial in New York City. The fact that even Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks, will have his day in court makes an eloquent statement about the Obama administration's determination to avenge the victims of terrorism within the rule of law. Holder immediately was denounced by Democrats and Republicans alike for sending the cases to the civilian judicial system rather than military commissions (which, inexplicably, he has decided to entrust with the trials of those accused of attacking the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000)

In a 2005 speech at Ft. Bragg, N.C., President George W. Bush laid out his latest justification for the war in Iraq: "There is only one course of action against [terrorists]: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home. The commander in charge of coalition operations in Iraq -- who is also senior commander at this base -- Gen. John Vines, put it well the other day. He said, 'We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us.' " But of course, fighting the enemy overseas doesn't mean we're not still fighting him here at home too. He struck Thursday in Ft. Hood, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding 30. With the nation still mourning those deaths, he hit us again Friday in Florida, shooting six in an Orlando office building.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano defended an agency intelligence assessment warning that veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan could be susceptible to recruitment by right-wing extremists. Napolitano said on CNN's "State of the Union" that she regretted that some people had taken offense, but added that "a number of groups far too numerous to mention" were targeting returning veterans to carry out domestic attacks. The report mentioned Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Timothy McVeigh, a decorated Army veteran convicted of detonating an explosives-laden truck in front of the federal building, killing 168. McVeigh was executed in 2001.