Regarding your article on the cost of the war in Iraq ("Iraq 5 Years Later," March 19): I am reminded of two things. The first is a remark by neocon strategist Grover Norquist about "getting government down to a size where we can drown it in a bathtub." The second is an article in the September 2007 Rolling Stone on contractor fraud in Iraq, where billions of dollars are being given away to shadow contractors that fail to provide the services they contract for. Despite mountains of evidence, the Bush administration has refused to prosecute a single case of contractor fraud.

I wonder if what we are seeing here is monumental incompetence or a coldly calculated plot to bankrupt the United States government and privatize it. Perhaps I'm having a bad daydream, but wouldn't it be much easier to hire a private army like Blackwater (which is designing and building its own armored vehicles and aircraft) to intimidate small nations into handing over their resources than to bribe several hundred Congresspeople and the executive into waging your war? Could we reach a point where the United States Army becomes depleted by constant warfare and the foreign banks on which it is dependant decide to stop funding it, that powerful private contractors might buy all or huge parts of it in a gigantic Wall Street fire sale?

This, of course is preposterous speculation. Still, the dinosaurs did disappear. The Roman, Nazi, and British empires did fall.

All of the above will become irrelevant if we continue to do nothing about global warming. The issues of the war and global warming are joined at the hip. Wasting money and attention on one is diverting them from the other. Precious little ink is being spent on the gravest threat ever to face humanity. In a recent AARP poll (that's the country's largest voting demographic), global warming is not even included on a list of the top eight issues of concern to seniors.

The weather is still king, my brothers and sisters. Two years in a row of global drought like 1988, and we are toast. Millions, possibly billions, will die.

Maybe it's inevitable, who knows. But I'd rather go down fighting than continue to waste mountains of money and ink on this stupid war of the terrorist boogieman. How do we as a nation get smart? How do we get serious about this? When is it time to drop everything and take to the streets screaming? The people and the candidates remain silent.

JOHN KASTNER, ROCHESTER