To the editor:

During my lifetime, the greatest threats to the peace and security of the United States have been Communism and terrorism.

Remarkably, Richard Gephardt has consistently been wrong about policies that have defended the country from these threats. Yet at this time, he considers himself a serious candidate for the presidency.

Mr. Gephardt opposed the Reagan de-fense budgets that eventually led to the fall of the Soviet Union and tearing down the Berlin Wall.

Between the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and its destruction by terrorists in 2001, Mr. Gephardt voted on numerous occasions to decrease spending on intelligence and on defense.

He supported the policy of the Clinton Administration to build nuclear reactors in North Korea and he has consistently op-posed development and deployment of the “Star Wars” missile defense that has the potential to defend us from nuclear missile attack by North Korea and others. Mr. Gep-hardt voted against establishment of the Department of Homeland Security.

On Tuesday, July 22, Mr. Gephardt was critical of President Bush and the war in Iraq telling the Bar Association of San Francisco that “Foreign policy isn’t a John Wayne movie, where we catch the bad guys, hoist a few cold ones, and then everything fades to black.”

This was the day before our forces took another major step in defeating terrorism when they killed Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay.

When the thought of President Gephardt crosses my mind, I am reminded of a line from a Bee Gee’s song that went something like this, “I started a joke that started the free world laughing.”

Garland Tschudin

Concord