Don’t blame

I have to take a minute to respond to the partisan tirade from Bob Keegan in his letter in the Aug. 12 edition of The Acorn.

He states that President Clinton "sat on his hands for eight years," which caused the deaths of 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11. The fact is that President Clinton established the U.S. Commission on National Security in 1998.

The commission was headed by Democrat Gary Hart and Republican Warren Rudman and contained 14 members evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.

In January 2001, the commission set up a meeting in the White House to present their recommendations to the newly "elected" president. President Bush chose not to attend but did send two aides to the meeting. None of the suggestions were acted upon.

President Bush did go on to appoint people in top security positions, such as Rice and Rumsfeld, who were experts on the Soviet Union and not the Middle East. Since 9/11, the president resisted a commission to study it and has so far not implemented a single suggestion of that commission.

Let’s face it. There are Clinton- haters. Those eight years of balanced budgets, paying down the national debt, 20 million new jobs and a respect for the Constitution and environment were hard for some people to take.

Those days are gone and we now have a president who needs to take accountability for his policies and not blame them on an administration that ended four years ago.

As Harry Truman said, "The buck stops here."

Robert McPherson

Oak Park