To the editor:

So, let me get this straight. Our national mission now consists of paying taxes to finance military personnel, delivery systems and ordnance that will be used to invade, bomb and terrorize a country (Iraq) to secure 11 percent of the world’s oil reserves.

These reserves will then be turned over free of charge to the friends of George W. Bush the global oil conglomerates who will refine the oil and sell it back to we consumers (both here and around the world) at prices high enough to guarantee themselves a hefty profit.

We will then change hats from taxpayers to consumers and buy the oil at a high profit from the oil companies that we have already paid to secure with our taxes (and the lives of our young soldiers).

We will use the oil in our vehicles and production facilities, thus polluting our country and choking ourselves and other life forms on the planet with noxious and poisonous exhaust.

In a nutshell, we will kill others to purchase products that will ultimately kill us.

Ah, irony, sweet irony.

Donald Phipps,

Lawrence