AMERICANS MUST REMEDY OIL ADDICTION

Because of our mass addiction to wasteful oil consumption, our government
consorts like a crack addict with that corrupt and perfidious petroleum
pimp, Saudi Arabia, a barbaric nation of polygamous patriarchs without
democracy or even the most basic emancipation of women.

Shackled to our addiction to over consumption of oil, President Bush is
meek and gentle with the Saudi Arabian back-stabbers. No nationality is
more connected to al-Qaida and the Sept. 11 attacks than the Saudi Arabian,
but the Bush administration simply accepted the Saudi refusal to provide
information about possible suspects connected to the Sept. 11 attacks.

If we cannot quit our self-destructive oil addiction, we can at least cut
back. But we will never see the White House creating ads that urge
conservation as a way to deprive the Saudis of funds for jihad against
America. Vice President Dick Cheney, no stranger to investments in Saudi
Arabia, once chided conservation as contrary to the American lifestyle.
That deep denial makes the hypocrisy and scapegoating of the White House's
drugs-support-terrorism ads stink like a fresh oil spill on a pristine
tropical beach.

Christopher R. Lucas, Concord