Madam, - I can digest lots of claptrap from your columnists but I draw the line when Charles Krauthammer has the gall to say that George Bush will in time be remembered as President Harry Truman is today.
The two have nothing in common and never had. Harry Truman was a great president. He enlisted and fought for his country in World War 1. When duty called in George Bush to Vietnam he never showed - but later he smirked when the infamous Swift Boat smear was perpetrated against some who did see action.
When Truman took his country to war in Korea he did so with over 40 other nations as part of the United Nations effort to stop Communist aggression.
George Bush and his lackeys poured scorn on the countries that refused to join him in the wrong war in the wrong place and one that would never have happened had his government not lied shamefully to the American people.
Truman fired the very popular Douglas McArthur when the general developed notions of abrogating presidential powers to himself by crossing the Yalu River and thus extending the Korean war into China. Truman stood up to Stalin and Tojo and to all the other bullies, including the Bible-packing preachers and the fundamentalist right - in total contrast to Bush.
Truman presided prudently over the US economy, then recovering from the ravages of a world war and coping with having to station hundreds of thousands of US troops in Europe as a bulwark for the free world. The late 1940s were times of solid growth and the American people re-elected Truman in 1948 despite the most virulent attacks against him from the Krauthammers of the day.
If Bush is remembered for anything besides going to war in the wrong country it will be for allowing his nation to be brought to its knees by Wall Street fat cats while ordinary Americans lost their jobs and their homes. When Harry Truman left office in 1953 he left behind him a sound economy. When Bush leaves office next January he will leave the American people with a bill for $700 billion and a country either on the brink or in total meltdown.
The gutsy Missourian was the best 20th-century US president by a wide margin. George Bush probably will be regarded as the worst president of all centuries. - Yours, etc,
LAURENCE POWER, Temple Manor Green, Celbridge, Co Kildare.