Clinton is not the trouble

Now a big deal is being made over ''lying to a grand jury'', but what was done about Reagan lying to Congress? Why, nothing. We the people - sorry, I mean Congress - just honoured him by naming an airport after him.

What happened to Oliver North when he lied before Congress? Why, he got off on a ''technicality'' and then he made money on the lecture circuit criticising the ''liberal'' Government; he even had the nerve to stand for the US Senate, but lost, fortunately for us.

Clinton tried to get a universal health-care system for the American people, but was fought tooth and nail by some members of his own party and the insurance companies. Do you know how much the latter spent working against his proposals? $42m, that's what. The British people have had a wonderful health system for years, but I see it being thrown down the drain because you are following America's lead. Before you know it, you'll be serving McDonald's hamburgers instead of haggis at your Burns suppers!

Congress has been trying to prevent ''pornography'' from being ''broadcast'' on the net, but releases Starr's very salacious report to the public without giving Clinton and his advisers an advance copy, a copy which was specifically requested.

Congress has for itself the best health insurance programme and retirement benefits in the country, but ignores the needs of the common people.

(I enjoy your new format on the Internet. All in all, it's ''pretty slick'', as we say over here.)

Duncan R Maclean,

3255 NW Norwood Drive,

Corvallis, Oregon 97330, USA.

September 14.

IF the sexual peccadillos of great men over the past 50 years had attracted the attention that has attached itself to the sexual encounters of President Clinton and which may lead to his impeachment, the world today would no doubt have been a very different place.

Many of the men whose actions were writ large over the past six decades engaged in extramarital affairs which, if they had been as ruthlessly exploited by the media at that time as they would be today, would have changed the face of history.

Without Roosevelt, that great champion of freedom, an isolationist America might not have been persuaded to enter the war and save Europe from the excesses of Hitler's terror. He also inspired the Marshall Plan which saved Europe from post-war chaos. Without Roosevelt and Churchill (''the nation had the lion's heart, I had the luck to give the roar'') instead of Chamberlain, would a beleaguered Britain have successfully withstood the might of Germany?

When the Cuban crisis threatened nuclear holocaust, the prompt action of John F Kennedy almost certainly saved the world from nuclear extinction.

All of these men had feet of clay. President Clinton is not the first man, nor will he be the last, to yield to the charms of predatory females. He should be judged on his abilities to lead America successfully, not on the frailties that are ever more common in today's laissez-faire attitudes.

In the modern world, where it seems every individual is deemed to be free to do his own thing, where mores and parameters once held dear have been expunged, where millions of Americans of both sexes feel free to pursue their own sexual fantasies, why all this fuss about Clinton?

Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

Duncan M Macdonald,

5 Menzies Terrace, Fintry.

September 12.

JUDGING by the media's obsession with President Clinton's current position as recorded by Gallup, etc, one would be forgiven for believing that the United States was governed by the ''rule'' of opinion polls as oppossed to the rule of law.

Steven Scroggie,

22 Springfield Crescent, Carluke.

September 14.