Bush’s Uranium Claim

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from Jacob Heilbrunn’s “When Presidents Deceive” (Opinion, July 13), reeling off numerous presidential deceptions over the past century. It almost sounded as if he was making President Bush’s State of the Union lie about an Iraqi nuclear purchase attempt from Africa as a mere part of a grand American tradition.

Indeed, he states, “Given the historical record of the presidents who came before, it would have been more surprising if Bush had not manipulated intelligence.”

The problem is, all the cases he cited were and are reprehensible -- not some sort of excuse for Bush who, like them, evidently felt the need to distort “facts” because he knows better than we and wanted to get some policy past the pesky public (and in this case, the world, too -- which didn’t quite work).

In any case, if finally with President Clinton, because of his Oval Office shenanigans and subsequent public deceptions, the Republicans self-righteously decided to set a new standard holding presidents accountable, then the same should clearly be true of Bush’s recent presidential deception. He lied, people died. His actions should not be virtually dismissed as “Oh well, another president who deceived”; Bush should be impeached.

Robert Illes

Santa Monica

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In Heilbrunn’s article there appears a surprising conclusion: since Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson deceived us, it is expected and accepted that Bush II does the same. It is morally repugnant to think that it is expected or acceptable for our leaders to deceive us and then send our country to war on the premise of that deception. I would hope that when a future president decides to send our citizen soldiers to fight and die, that president does not deceive them, their families and the rest of the public. I hope this is the last time any president acts in such a manner.

Jamey Wyman

Los Angeles

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Heilbrunn’s flawed attempt to remake or explain history appears to be intellectually manipulated to fit the premise of his column.

One of a president’s duties is to ensure and protect our national security. I would rather the president err on the side of uncertainty when making decisions of ensuring our safety. A president makes judgments not based solely on the reliability of certain data but on a wide range of criteria. Those prerequisites include the nature of an individual (Hitler or Saddam Hussein), the volatility of the region and the climate of the world setting.

Heilbrunn is endeavoring to reconstruct history, simply because he is writing with the benefit of hindsight. If deception and manipulation are what he is searching to define, he conveniently left out the master of those terms, William Jefferson Clinton.

Peter J. Demetralis

Los Angeles

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In responding to the charges that Bush misled the American public by asserting in his State of the Union address that Iraq was attempting to acquire uranium from Africa, the White House has failed to explain why Bush didn’t correct this error. Surely after the address someone told him that the statement was based on erroneous intelligence.

The fact that the error was not immediately corrected is evidence to me that the assertion was deliberately and knowingly included in the address to incite support for attacking Iraq. It was no accident, and the attempts of the president to try to explain away the mistake further weakens his credibility.

Jack Allen

Pacific Palisades

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Whoa! Why all this ruckus about the U.S. going to war in Iraq based on insufficient intelligence? (That’s for sure!) But my question is this: Why did Congress allow one man -- our president -- to have the authority to declare war with no further discussion in Congress?

Sylvia Graham

Los Angeles

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What a dishonor to our troops that they were asked to make sacrifices, in too many cases giving their lives, based on what now appears to be an intentional pattern of deception by the White House.

Why did we rush into war when we didn’t have to? Who is profiting from this bloody and expensive misadventure?

Robert Anderson

Los Angeles