Sir, The hype has begun in anticipation of the arrival of the giant US aircraft, USS John F. Kennedy off Dun Laoghaire.
Referring to the 175,500 hopefuls who applied to the National Lottery for tickets, Ray Bates claimed, "This shows the huge interest by the Irish public in this event of the year." US Ambassador, Jean Kennedy Smith, is quoted as saying "I am proud and delighted that so many Irish people want to visit the aircraft carrier named in honour of my brother." The statistics being used are staggering. The vessel is the size of the Empire State Building. It has a crew of 5,200 and it carries 756 aircraft on a 4.5 acre flight deck.
I would like to quote some statistics too. Fr Joe Dunn, in his books No Vipers in the Vatican (page 71) says, "The US Defence Department, with a budget of $291 billion, spends almost $1 billion each working day of the year. In the next five years, the US will spend $1.3 trillion for military objectives it does not need and cannot afford. (A US trillion is a million million.)" There is more, including, "While the (US) military budget increased by 50 per cent in the 1980s, the federal programmes directed towards reducing poverty were cut by 54 per cent." So why, in God's name, are we clamouring to visit this machine of death, because that is what it is. And why, oh why, is our National Lottery making a circus of this obscene visit? Ray Bates would do well to drop his role as PR man for the US navy and go back to doing what the National Lottery was set up to do and drop the cheap gimmicks. Yours, etc., Hillcrest, Laburnum Park, Model Farm Road, Cork.