Letter: Middle East’s oil is not worth sending soldiers

Friday, Dec. 26, 2003 | 9:10 a.m.

But Iran was also angry because the U.S. had been harboring and protecting their deposed shah, the dictator who had caused the torture and deaths of thousands of Iranians.

President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, who is now secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, who is now vice president, and other Republicans then became friendly with yet another dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Iraq's Saddam was strongly urged by the Reagan administration to attack his next-door neighbor, Iran, and was provided with many of our weapons. So the Iraqi dictator Saddam predictably created even more mayhem in the Middle East.

In 1989 Republican President George H.W. Bush then suddenly decided that former buddy Saddam was now our newest enemy and attacked Iraq. And the current Republican president, George W. Bush, is following in his one-term daddy's footsteps, also invading Iraq -- even though it was not the Iraqis who were responsible for Sept. 11.

If the Middle East were not so rich in oil, would these corporation-oriented, right wing Republican leaders and the conservative media remain so avidly interested and involved in these countries? Or would they simply be dismissed as faraway, unstable Third World countries not worth sending courageous Americans into to risk and often lose their lives? The answer is clear to any intelligent American.

RUTH DIMAGGIO