Letter: Iraqi oil should be used first to help Iraqi people

Thursday, Dec. 11, 2003 | 9:51 a.m.

On Dec. 5, I came across two news articles online, the combined implication of which was at once disconcerting and unsurprising.

The first, "Iraqi output, exports surge" (Associated Press), extolled the record rise in Iraqi oil production to more than 2.1 million barrels per day. The second was a Reuters piece entitled "No relief in sight for fuel-starved Iraqis," which recounted the day-long lines suffered by increasingly restive locals, who are reduced to scrounging amid a burgeoning and chaotic black market for fuel.

Mr. Bush, this is criminal. It tends to vindicate the critics who have contended that our invasion was indeed in large measure about gaining control of Iraqi oil, a strategy abetted by a crony-compliant puppet government headed up by the Iraqi Andrew Fastow, Ahmad Chalabi.

His indelicate choice of expletive notwithstanding, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is right about the mess Bush is making in this tinderbox region. Continued on the present course, it will come to no good.

ROBERT GLADD