Dan Roberts [01/01/2004]

To the editor:A Dec. 29 letter highlights the "lie" of one president with those of the present one. Touch. Presidents do tell half truths, fabrications, obfuscations or outright lies all the time. What sets this president out from the recent past is he has done this under the guise of national security. Here's a news flash. We were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Perpetrators have still not been brought to justice. They may be al Queda they may not be. They (whomever) may even be plotting another attack even as we debate the current issues of the day. If the current president has to rid the world of one more despot who may (we still don't fully know) have had ties to terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attack, so be it.Now then, I take issue with President Clinton's handling of the economy in the 1990s. It is no secret all presidents take credit (or the blame) for the economy during their watch. Does the president have any Constitutional power to really affect the economy? Not really. The president can pursuade Congress, propose budgets, propose tax increases or tax cuts. The political body that really has the power is Congress. Thanks to those pesky Republicans we had surpluses (overpayments if you will) which, after some pursuasion, was turned into a tax cut. Good for the U.S. taxpayer! Working Americans now have more bucks in their pockets and now they are going to save, invest or spend it. All are great news for the economy which we now see improving. If President Clinton worked tirelessly on national security why then how did the North Koreans acquire nuclear weapons after his administration brokered a peace deal with them with the apparent purpose of ridding the Korean penninsula of them, only to find three years hence the North Koreans now have them? Now to be sure, President Clinton wasn't lying. I just don't think he cared. Rouge states took him and the United States for a fool and nine months after his flurry of midnight pardons (still stinks doesn't it?) we had the Sept. 11 attack. History shows nations are attacked when they are percieved by their enemies as being weak. Hmmm, thanks Bill Clinton for furthering that perception.It is also stated in this Dec. 29 letter that Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States. Really? We don't know this. I don't know if they did have ties. How can we be so sure they didn't? Reasonable doubt existed in the minds of reasonable people if ties did exist between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. Ergo we should not have attacked Iraq. Right? Wrong. Saddam, Osama and their cronies hate us. Their mindset is nothing like ours. They are not "reasonable" and we are at war.