Letter: GOP busy making war instead of peace

Tuesday, June 12, 2007 | 6:59 a.m.

President Bush and the GOP say Social Security is too expensive and must be phased out, but it's all right to give billions of dollars to Halliburton, Lockheed and Boeing to build a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland to protect Europe.

With our spy satellites, nobody could build a missile launch site without our knowledge, and our missiles could take it out within minutes.

In his farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us to beware of the power of the military industrial complex. President Ronald Reagan sold out to them for his Star Wars initiative. Star Wars was always a big giveaway to defense contractors.

The "war on terror" is a GOP replacement for the "evil empire." It has to have something to scare the voters. We spend as much on defense as the rest of the world combined.

Meanwhile, all the major countries only want to sell us their products, because we are the world's biggest consumer. China loves us because we are its best customer. Iran wants to sell its oil, not war. Bush's war in Iraq is like the American Revolution, except this time we are the British army.

Jim Riley, Las Vegas