I’m tired of the widespread assumption that Bill Clinton lied under oath.

Editorialists and commentators keep taking an assumption that I believe is not accurate and running all the way down the field with it.

The President has not been convicted of lying under oath.

He is innocent until proven guilty.

Mr. Clinton testified he did not have “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky.

That was a truthful statement consistent with his and many other Americans’ view of what sexual relations are.

Comedians have had a field day with this downright odd, in my view, definition of sexual relations but the fact remains that poll after poll has told us that millions of Americans define sexual relations the same narrow way that Bill Clinton does.

Mr. Clinton did what every person does when being deposed by hostile forces.

He tried to protect himself and his privacy without crossing the line into perjury.

If he misled the Jones lawyers, that’s part of the game.

It’s the lawyers’ responsibility to ask better questions, not the deponent’s responsibility to help them hang him.

Alan L. Light

Iowa City