Editor:

While a task force is reporting to the Defense Department that the costs of military personnel and benefits for their families are unsustainable, our tax money is being used to pay for a "Good Will Tour” of the Middle East by the imam behind the proposed mosque near Ground Zero. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

State Department documents reveal that this year the Obama administration will spend nearly six million dollars to restore 63 historic and cultural sites, including mosques and minarets, in 55 nations. This includes $76,000 for a 16th century mosque in China, $67,000 for a mosque in Pakistan, $77,000 to restore minarets in Nigeria and Mauritania, and $50,000 for an Islamic Monument in India. This is only a fraction, however, of the total in the 2010 Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation which also will fund projects to restore Christian and Buddhist sites, museums, forts, and palaces. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the U.S. program to restore Islamic and other cultural sites abroad is money well spent. This is not the business of government.

When our politicians misappropriate the funds taken from those who work to earn it and use it for such purposes it is thievery of the worst kind.

Euell White Florence