Letter: Make no mistake: This is an oil war

Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007 | 12:55 p.m.

Regarding criticism of Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., for remarks he made about Iraq as the House failed to override President Bush's veto of a bill that would have increased funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program ("You don't have money to fund the war or children," Stark said of Republicans. "But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."):

Stark owes no apology. We owe the poverty-laden families of America a decent shake. We owe children the fair chance. We owe the country productive families. We owe our country honesty that is sorely lacking by this administration. We owe the world an intelligent discourse on a way to leave Iraq and bring our troops home.

I joined the service a long time ago when there was a draft, but I felt I owed my country something. I did not volunteer for Vietnam, yet I went. In fact, I was there for two years from June 1965 until June 1967. I loved most of the people over there, yet they did not want us there.

We are faced with the same thing now. We are in a country that neither wants nor needs us. We were lied to to go into a country that had no weapons of mass destruction. What they did have was oil and our present regime wanted it.

Jim Hyder, Las Vegas