To the editor:

We find again that this president is not to be trusted. The distinguished, bipartisan Iraq Study Group used, as an example, a single day in 2004. The government reported that less than 100 attacks occurred in Iraq. The correct total was over 1,100. In addition, the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently concluded that the U.S. government had systematically exaggerated Iraqi military and police capacity to the point of dishonesty.

These two items, in and of themselves, are perhaps of little note, but become deeply disturbing in the context of:

The Downing Street Minutes which state Bush had decided to go to war for months, all the while telling us it was a last resort; justifying his invasion by cherry-picking questionable intelligence, from questionable sources, while discounting a mass of intelligence that said Iraq was not a threat; misleading/untrue statements to Congress about secret prisons in Europe; misleading/untrue statements about how prisoners were being treated – treatment that would have been considered a war crime in World War II; misleading/untrue statements about warrantless domestic wiretapping. I could go on.

As a teenager in my parent’s home I would have loved to get away with as many whoppers as this president has. Looking back, I’m grateful that my mom and dad jerked me back in line a few (OK, more than a few) times. We owe it to future Americans to jerk this president back in line with the ideals that make this country great.

Daniel Patrick Schamle,

Lawrence