To the editor:

In his March 22 letter, Dennis Saleeby employed a tactic often used by Bush critics, i.e., limiting Bill Clinton’s sins to just the Lewinsky affair. These critics may not be aware of a few facts:

¢ Clinton in 1998 launched a unilateral and pre-emptive attack against Saddam’s “nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.”

¢ Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in January 2001 said, “The United States will continue to press Iraq to destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition of lifting economic sanctions, even after the end of the Clinton administration.”

¢ When confronted with a U.N. estimate that 567,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of sanctions, Albright in 1996 said, “We think the price is worth it.”

¢ Clinton increased the number of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia from 6,340 in 1993 to 15,879 in 2000 to enforce sanctions on Iraq.

¢ Osama bin Laden in a 1997 interview with CNN mentioned the “picture of the children who died in Iraq” and said U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia were a “blatant provocation to over 1 billion Muslims.” In response, he said, “Our people on the Arabian Peninsula will send (Clinton) messages with no words.” Al-Qaida would later bomb two U.S. embassies in Africa, bomb the USS Cole and carry out the 9-11 attacks.

If it was a lie to say Saddam had WMDs, Bill Clinton’s lies contributed to the deaths of 500,000 children and gave us 9-11. President Bush’s alleged sins pale by comparison.

Kevin Groenhagen,

Lawrence