DeLay response
Sir: I nearly fell out of my chair when I read Douglas Murray's egregrious whitewash of Tom DeLay (A thoughtful man at the eye of the storm', 10 November). Murray suggests that the reason for DeLay's indictment on criminal charges was `the inevitable blow-back for what the Republicans had put a Democratic president through' and that `the charges brought against him follow directly from that particularly personalised tone which Republicans set during the Clinton years'.
In fact, DeLay was indicted by a Texas grand jury, and it is tendentious to argue that this is about Democrat blow-back or revenge. Republicans control all statewide Texas offices, both houses of the state legislature and have a majority in the Texas congressional delegation. The people of Texas are largely Republican. How can the grand jury indictments of DeLay on very serious criminal charges be attributed to Democrat blow-back?
Moreover, in America, the man Murray characterises as a 'thoughtful man' enjoys the sobriquet of 'The Hammer', because of his political pit-bull style of vicious ad hominem attacks.
Finally, Murray uncritically accepts The Hammer's statement that the Left 'undermined the will of the American people on Vietnam'. In fact, DeLay sat out the Vietnam war on a student deferment (only available to university students, who were disproportionately white), and when questioned about this, stated publicly (according to the Houston Press) that so many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself. This is well known in the US, but is entirely omitted in Murray's whitewash. Why?
Andrew Halper London NW3
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