Why does the Republican administration continue to take the American people for a bunch of fools? L. Paul Bremer III, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, compares his spending plan for rebuilding Iraq to the Marshall Plan, which rescued Europe in 1948-52 (Sept. 23). The Marshall Plan spent $13 billion (that is about $100 billion in today's dollars) over a stated limit of a four-year period. The Marshall Plan money went to 16 nations and benefited 270 million people, including at least 12 of our wartime allies. We will now pour hundreds of billions of dollars into a single country of 26 million people, most of whom resent our presence there and some of whom are killing and maiming American, British and U.N. personnel.
The purpose of the Marshall Plan was to make the devastated European economies viable again and to give the European people the means to reconstruct their own countries. In Iraq, American and a few other foreign interests are doing the investing and rebuilding rather than the Iraqis themselves. Just imagine what all that money could do for creating jobs, improving schools and cleaning air and water in our nation. What a farce!
Matt Schwartz
Laguna Woods
Friday, September 26
L.A. Times Readers Have It Nailed
Of course it took some thinking and math, so you'll never hear it on talk radio. From this morning's letters section:
