To the editor:

Dick Cheney says the accidental shooting of someone he describes as an acquaintance made for one of the worst days of his life, and that the image of the man falling to the ground is something he will never be able to get out of his mind.

At the expense of his unintended victim, perhaps the shooting was a good thing. Maybe the vice president can process this sensation and just begin to imagine a fraction of what is felt by U.S. service men and women as they see their friends and comrades blown to bits in front of their eyes in a country we needn’t have invaded. Maybe he can start to imagine the tiniest portion of what countless Iraqi men, women, and children have suffered through during the arbitrary and continuous death and destruction of the last three years.

Unfortunately for tens of thousands of dead or injured, the tortured and the permanently scarred and traumatized in Iraq and elsewhere, there was no swift response by a Secret Service detail and a medical team in a quiet field at sunset. I hope Cheney knows that one of the “worst days” of his life was truly a walk in the park compared to most.

Christy Kennedy,

Lawrence