No Blood for Oil, Maybe for Contracts

I rarely find myself agreeing with Michael Ramirez, but he seems to have hit the nail right on the head with his Dec. 14 editorial cartoon (Commentary), in which he implies that some 450 GIs lost their lives to secure profitable contracts for Halliburton, et al. Their loved ones must be very pleased.

Another thought on the exclusion of companies from Germany, France, Canada and other countries from bidding on Iraqi rebuilding: American companies enjoy doing business in those countries. I wonder what obstacles they could find themselves facing in the future. The wheel turns in more than one direction.

David Schendlinger

Burbank

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Ramirez’s cartoon suggests that the reason for each of the 450 American fatalities was to bid on Iraqi reconstruction contracts. The suggestion shamefully cheapens the purpose for which these patriots died.

John D. Raiford

Pacific Palisades

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Thanks to the capture of Saddam Hussein, stories about Halliburton’s profiteering are off the front pages (“Bush Tries to Quell Halliburton Uproar,” Dec. 13). The timing of such an event could not have been better if it had been planned -- unless, of course, it had.

Scott Kravitz

Los Angeles

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Re “Bush’s Enemies List” (editorial, Dec. 12), about Iraq’s reconstruction: I have a serious disagreement with your biased take on this issue. It isn’t an enemies list, it is a “not-friends” list; there’s a difference. What’s wrong with limiting our taxpayer-dollar awards to countries that supported the overthrow? We do not demean any of Canada’s effort in Afghanistan and the Balkans or its promise to fund $200 million for Iraq, but let’s award contracts to Canadian firms only after their money appears.

Albert Bigelow

Valencia

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President Bush, referring to his illegal, immoral and stupid postwar Iraq policies, has implied that the blame for these policies goes to the U.S. taxpayers because “that’s what the U.S. taxpayers expect” (Dec. 12). April 15 has always been difficult enough, but not until now has it been conferred with a sense of shame. In Bush’s stampede to trash this country’s long-held values, along with all semblance of a hard-won world order, he can take his policies straight to hell, where the taxpayers will be finding themselves soon enough.

Ann Steindlberger

Fountain Valley

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The U.S. says it will not permit a foreign company to participate in Iraq reconstruction contracts if that company’s nation failed to support the war. The scary part of this public policy is that it intimidates other nations into supporting our future preemptive wars based not on any perceived immediate threat or consensus but on whether those nations want to share in the “spoils.” And what Washington bonehead decided that now was a good time to ask those same nations to forgive debts that Iraq owed those nations?

Richard Dickinson

Glendale