THE OILY CONNECTION

I think there's more to the story than Ed Quillen relates in "Despite
clever packaging, it's still a fraud" (Perspective, March 10).

It comes as no surprise that the Bush administration would attempt to make
a connection between America's disastrous war on drugs and the newest world
war, the war on terrorism.

In reality, far more funding for terrorism flows from legal oil interests,
than anything related to illegal drugs or the black markets surrounding
them. Most of the al-Qaeda members in captivity are reportedly from Saudi
Arabia, not a country with a history of drug trafficking. And Osama bin
Laden's money came from oil.

The Taliban's opium crackdown was purchased with U.S. taxpayer dollars, to
the tune of $43 million, just before we decided that the negotiations for
an oil pipeline weren't going so well and commenced to bomb them into eternity.

The story here was not the drug advertisements and the millions of
taxpayer's dollars wasted on them during the Super Bowl and afterwards, but
how a government bureaucrat named John Walters funneled over $3 million
directly to one of Bush's most ardent supporters, K. Rupert Murdoch and his
Fox Broadcasting, who by all reports, were having trouble selling
advertising time during the Super Bowl.

Walters came to the rescue with his bizarre, nonsensical drug ads. Another
political payoff financed by the American taxpayer, pure and simple.

Oil, illegal drugs, political payoffs and unfathomable amounts of cash;
that's U.S. drug policy in a nutshell.

MIKE PLYLAR

Kremmling