Letter: Neocon dream for Mideast is over

Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2006 | 7:22 a.m.

The Oct. 8 letter by Warren Willis Sr. argues that because Islamic terrorists existed before the United States invaded Iraq, our occupation did not create terrorism. That is a straw man. No one argues that all terrorism began in Iraq, but rather that our occupation increased the number of terrorists and sympathy for their cause.

Terrorists are people who react to foreign control and military occupation of their countries. Unfortunately for us, their countries have a lot of oil that we want to control, and we also want U.S. and British companies to make the profits from it.

In his long history of the terrorist attacks on Americans, Mr. Willis fails to mention that none of those terrorists lived in Iraq. Even now only about 7 percent of the resistance is al-Qaida. If Iraq is, as Mr. Willis says, the "center" of the terrorism war, then it is a war on the Iraqi people. The Iraqis want us out of their country and half of them were even willing to admit in a poll that they approve of the attacks on the occupiers.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism. Rather, it had to do with a neocon dream to take military, political and economic control of the Middle Eastern oil resources. Terrorism was to be just a small price to pay for doing business. That neocon dream of empire has turned into a nightmare.

Jerry Bitts, Las Vegas