To the editor:

Sometimes the lies, illogic and misapprehensions put out by the radical right whip up such a perfect storm of self-contradiction that they end telling the simple truth by accident. Such is the case with Kevin Groenhagen’s March 27 letter defending President Bush.

Earlier writers had characterized the case for impeaching Bush as vastly more significant to the Republic than the case used against Clinton. Groenhagen thinks he scores debater’s points by attacking Clinton’s Iraq record. Actually, progressives will cheer him on. Groenhagen seems unaware that many progressives condemned President Clinton’s bombing of Iraq as inhumane, illegal and ineffective. (Maybe Groenhagen is ignorant of this because it received little coverage in a mainstream press he regards as “liberal.”)

As it happens, however, the radical right majority in Congress impeached Clinton purely for attempting to keep private his sexual relationship with another consenting adult. Most Americans think the impeachment was repulsive. It is no contradiction to support Clinton’s sexual privacy while opposing his war policy.

But in any case Groenhagen’s comparison fails as a defense of Bush. Clinton never tricked us into a spurious and hopeless ground war and never diverted us from the struggle against al-Qaida. As far as we know, Clinton never even misled the public about intelligence data.

David Burress,

Lawrence