Dear Editor,

I’ve no idea where Robert Steinback got his information, but it smacks noisily of having come from Dan Rather. His “Republicans Delusioned” piece has more inaccuracies than a Michael Moore “documentary.” But my 400 words won’t allow a full retort, so let me hit the high spots.

There is not now and never has been a $5 trillion surplus for Bush to squander, nor a surplus of any amount in recent memory. Bill Clinton created a fairy tale $11 billion “surplus” out of a combination of thin air and undedicated Social Security funds. Sadly, the Republicans jumped on the surplus bandwagon because things like that make voters just oh so happy.

Perhaps Robert meant the national debt, a completely different critter that has been around since the Civil War.

That CBS refused to report 18 chemical warheads found by Polish troops on July 1 doesn’t mean they weren’t there. World Net Daily had no trouble reporting the find.

But anyone with a memory that goes further back than Election 2000 should recall WMD warnings made by Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Al Gore, Kofi Annan, Sandy Berger and some guy named John Kerry, among others.

Then there were, count ’em, 17 United Nations resolutions between 1993 and 2000 addressing what? That’s right, Iraqi WMD.

Please let me point out that Bush was in Texas then, and it wasn’t his CIA reporting the weapons. And let’s not forget that supposedly fictitious story about yellow cake uranium that MI-5, the British intelligence agency, still insists was accurate.

Relying on soundbites and failing to use memory, history, research, or even logic, people like Robert feel we should jettison Bush in favor of a man with an abysmal senate attendance record, who left his command behind in Vietnam after only four months, and who now claims to have the traits of leadership. With the creative assistance of media giants like CBS, he and his party are playing a political game with out future in a suddenly very dangerous world.

Republicans are delusional? Check the record, Robert – the REAL record, not Dan Rather’s.

Dennis Fishel Anthropology