People Before Profits

I live in a poverty stricken rural area of Michigan's Upper Pennisula. We are on a par economically with Appalachia and Native American reservations. I responded to a letter to the editor in a local paper, calling for an expansion to the Iraqi War with this letter,(some changes made for privacy issues):

To the Editor:

I had just gotten off a website breaking down the cost of the Iraq war to the American public when I read a “Letter to The Editor�in the Newberry News calling for even more insanity.

At the time I write this, the approximate cost of the war to the U.S.A. has been 350 billion dollars. Michigan’s share of that is $9 Billion, Luce Counties’ share of that is 4 million, Mackinac Counties share, $8 million. In the same issue of the Newberry News that has this letter is an article that tells of Newberry’s budget woes as they try to decide whether to cut sports or education. Here in my school district of Engadine, we have big time budget woes, too.

With the money that Luce County, via federal taxes, etc., has contributed to the Iraq war, 81 teachers could have been hired. In Mackinac County, we could have hired 144 teachers with that money.

When do we wake up? When do we start putting people before the profit margins of the oil companies? The war in Iraq has been spun as being about Weapons of Mass Destruction, getting rid of Sadaam Hussein, and now establishing a Democracy. This story has changed constantly and George Bush can’t tell you what “winning� is because this war is about controlling the Iraqi oil supply for maximum profit for the oil companies. That doesn’t sound like anything anyone wants their child or spouse dying for, thus all the spin.

On September 11.2001 we were attacked by 19 terrorists, 15 Saudi Arabians, 2 from the U.A.E., 1 Egyptian, and 1 Jordanian. No Iraqis. Bush’s good pals the Saudis continue to fund the hate schools in the Islamic world and the Sunni end of the Iraqi Civil War. Since the average American doesn’t know a Sunni from a Shiite from an Iraqi from an Iranian, it was easy to do what is called “transference�. Bush and the boys transferred our hate of the hijackers and the terrorists to the Iraqis. Hopefully, we are all getting educated and if we are going to be the world’s leader, we are going to have to get smarter.

No one on the Iraqi Study Group was “leftists�.(The letter writer accused the ISG of being leftists) They were oil men and members of the “Heritage Foundation�. The “Heritage Foundation� is a right wing think tank that wanted to invade Iraq and take its oil BEFORE the 9/11 attack. On page one of the Iraq Study Group report they say Iraqi is important because it has oil. A key component of the report was privatizing the oil for maximum profit and protecting that investment. There is nothing revolutionary about his report; they are just proposing a different method to accomplish the same objective.

It is time to wake up America! I say schools, health care, Social Security, an end to poverty, and PEACE before the profits of the oil companies!

Merry Christmas

Jim Ramelis
Gould City