To the editor:

In his response to my March 22 letter to the editor, Kevin Groenhagen correctly points out that President Clinton’s hands were bloody when it came to meddling in Iraq; certainly the hundreds of thousands of deaths attributed to the sanctions are testament to that.

Presidents Carter, Reagan (remember the run-up to Iran-Contra in which Reagan urged Saddam to advance on Tehran by expanding airstrikes and at the same time encouraging Iran to buy Hawk missiles to shoot Iraqi planes down – mid 1980s), George H.W. Bush (whose envoy April Gillespie, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, famously said to Saddam as he was poised to move on Kuwait, “We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts”), as well as Clinton, all bear some responsibility for the ungodly mess Iraq has become, and the estimated 1-1.5 million deaths (Iraqi Ministry of Health) over the last 20-plus years.

As ugly and incomprehensibly inhumane as these are, we are in another critical moment. The president’s extravagant bungling in Iraq, and his willingness, on behalf of failed policy, to encumber our personal liberties and safeguards, to dissemble and deceive, makes this a democratic tragedy.

How much more damage in Iraq and at home are we going to let this man of little vision and shaky moral imagination do? Deceiving and spying do not an admirable president make. Congress does have means to address the situation. Further, they have the obligation to protect the rights of citizens, and the inviolability of democratic principles.

Dennis Saleebey,

Lawrence