Our reader Steve Carpenter: We were attacked on Sept. 11 with a savagery not seen since the nazis

Hello, Pravda readers, I write for the second time in four months from the Los Angeles area. To be frank, we here are waiting here in L.A. for the other shoe to drop, for a suitcase nuke or poisoned water or for the massive earthquake we've been waiting for for years. It feels to me like it did when i was a teenager, when we were hiding under our desks in school and waiting for the USSR to blow us to bits with an accidental launch. we're storing water and food and praying. I write because once again I see so many anti-American letters to the editor from Americans. Maybe democrats and liberals write to Pravda because they're thinking all the time - well, I'm a conservative who worked for McCain but then voted for Bush. I wish the rest of the world could come to L.A. for a while and let me drive them around for awhile. Maybe they'd understand that America is not trying to take over the world or steal mid-eastern oil, etc. We're trying to play guitar and raise babies and make a living. We were attacked on Sept. 11 with a savagery not seen since the nazis. We're scared and angry and hurt. No matter what our foreign policy may have been in decades past, we are a good country at heart. So many women and children were murdered on Sept. 11. Not killed accidentally by a stray bomb in the pursuit of criminals supported by a criminal regime - but murdered in cold blood. We see a clear and present danger to our continued existence. America is not a force for evil. I do think in the past we have supported totalitarian regimes in the Mid-East for economic gain. rest assured, every citizen here is taking that under advisement. However, Russia and the rest of the world must understand that we feel we are in a fight for our women and children. We will bomb during ramadan, and we unfortunately will have to kill many women and children because the murderers have taken refuge among them. This is war. This is human tragedy. We will try our utmost not to kill innocents. However, those innocents must realize that when the Taliban come among them to hide, they must flee - for we are sworn to obliterate the murderers of our children, to save those that remain. "Jihad," they cry, but they and everyone must remember that now America has her own jihad. Sincerely,

Steve Carpenter, age 34 California