To the editor:

I am writing to express my grave concern about the clamor for war in the Middle East. War is a very expensive undertaking, not only in terms of money, which could be better spent on more humanitarian means, but also in terms of human life, both ours, and those of the Iraqi people, most of whom are innocent victims of their own government and ours.

In spite of what has been gleaned based on cleverly worded polls, there are a great number of people in the United States who recognize this as a cheap and dangerous political ploy on the part of the Republican administration and the powers behind the throne to get at the oil resources in Iraq for their own profits. Also standing to gain are the powers in the military industrial complex, who need to justify the massive buildup of arms and troops on our part and who wish to keep the money flowing.

All the diplomatic wrangling that Bush et al are doing cannot stifle the view in most of the rest of the world that we are acting as a bully, pushing our agenda at the barrel of a gun. I, for one, do not wish to see our government trying to subvert the peaceful intentions of the United Nations an organization that we are usually in arrears to for our membership dues solely for the sake of the profits of multinational corporations, who are skilled at paying no U.S. taxes at all, while bilking our government of billions of tax dollars that came from the hard-working Americans whose retirement funds they have drained.

I am fed up with the nationalistic and jingoistic rhetoric coming from Washington, and I cannot, as a Christian, or as a human being, stomach this travesty of justice.

Bob Gent,

Lawrence