Newt. Nukes. Katrina.

Editor,

Newt Gingrich fanned the flames of fear in your pages today with repetition upon repetition of ominous sounding "if's": if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, if Iran holds the Strait of Hormuz hostage with nuclear weapons, if Iran threatens (nuclear armed) Israel with nuclear weapons. But Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, and by their own estimation they will not have them for another 7 - 10 years.

Newt Gingrich produced this tripe because he and the extreme right in the USA equate diplomacy with appeasement, coexistence with being subordinated, agreement with being humiliated, and because the legitimate national aspirations of other peoples on this planet are incompatible with American right-wing extremist politicians' assumption that it is the manifest destiny of the multinational corporations to rule the world.

Newt Gingrich needs to read American history so he can explain in a follow-up op-ed how annihilating the indigenous tribes on this continent, invading Mexico, slaughtering thousands in the Philippines, invading Hawaii, invading Cuba, and other American military adventures to project the interests of the American ruling class under banners cynically proclaiming freedom, liberty, and democracy are consistent with the principles upon which this nation was founded.

Newt Gingrich waves the specter of "losing a city" to nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons when George Bush, through ineptitude, greed, cronyism, corruption, and just plain not giving a damn about the United States or the American people, has already lost New Orleans to Katrina.

And Katrina was a monster storm because the Gulf of Mexico was hella hot, and the Gulf was hot because American energy policy, transportation policy, and environmental policy are based on pseudoscience, lies, and the entitlement that Newt Gingrich and his dinosaur class assume to kill this planet and everything that lives on it just so long as they are in the catbird seat and 90% of the wealth of the global economy belongs to them.