LETTERS: FOCUS ON DOUGHNUT, NOT THE HOLE

To the editor:

According to President Clinton, the budget of the United States will not be balanced for the first time in a generation. This, we are told, should cause great elation all across the land.

However, upon closer inspection it appears that the budget-balancing act was performed primarily by raising taxes to their highest levels in over 30 year and by gutting the budget for our national defense.

Now comes the crisis in the White House starring Monica Lewinsky, and the full force of the Clinton smoke-screen team is unleashed upon the American public. Clinton's call to raise the minimum wage is a barely concealed effort to get unions to back the president. "More money for the children" has become the fallback battle cry to firm up the squeamish liberal supporters.

But the worst is the situation in Iraq. Due to major cutbacks in training and readiness, military aircraft are crashing at an unusually high peacetime rate, including a B-1B in our own back yard. Our top Army generals are saying that our ground troops are so underprepared that it will take at least six months to properly ready the best fighting units. All this, and we have a draft dodger who "loathes" the military leading an underprepared and underfunded American force halfway around the world into a conflict with no definable goal and no exit strategy.

No goal, that is, except to distract the American public from his personal legal woes and scandals. This is truly incredible.

Fellow citizens, we should be focusing on the doughnut. The White House is being occupied by the most deceitful administration in anyone's lifetime. However, instead of focusing on the doughnut, this president and his wife would have us focusing on the hole. After all, the economy is in good shape. Wag the dog.

R. SCOTT MATTHEWS JR.

Sikeston