Arms Spending

In your article “Aftermath of War” (March 10) on President Bush’s dictum that the U.S. will not help pay for the rebuilding of Iraq, I can’t believe this barefaced quote from Bush: “Iraq can be a very well-to-do country if they’d spend their money on helping their own people and not on arms and bullying the neighborhood.”

Does this remind you of any imperialistic, hypocritical, moralizing country that devotes an obscene proportion of its budget to arms production (and sales to cruel dictators) while its homeless population swells, its gang and drug problems multiply, its educational level and productivity sink, and it continues to illegally bully its small neighbors to the south?

Presidents who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones!

SARA MERIC

Santa Monica