Venezuela owns Citgo, not Conoco

While two readers were busy writing letters about Conoco being owned by the Venezuelan government (which it isn't), they missed that since 1990 Citgo has been 100 percent owned by Venezuela. Every time we fill up at Citgo, we put money in Hugo Chavez's pocket. Considering that the Bush administration takes every opportunity to bash Chavez, isn't it more than passing strange that no one from President Bush on down has called for a nationwide boycott of Citgo? Could it be we need Venezuelan oil so badly, we're willing to prostitute ourselves to get it? And to the Friday letter writer, who could miss the racist underpinnings of that comparison of the flooding in Iowa to Hurricane Katrina? I'll tell you the difference between Iowa and New Orleans. The federal government took almost a week to make any kind of meaningful response to Katrina. In Iowa, no citizens drowned in their own homes or in their beds in nursing homes because the federal government couldn't or wouldn't act. Instead of pontificating, the writer should look inward to see where the real problem lies.