"America's Long Middle Eastern Romance," by Michael B. Oren (Week in Review, March 16), in suggesting an analogy between President Bush's confrontation with Saddam Hussein and the alleged one between Thomas Jefferson and the Barbary "pirates," leaves out some historical facts. Jefferson was not a foe of Algiers, but the initiator, together with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, of the Treaty of Peace and Amity signed at Algiers on Sept. 5, 1795. The article refers to the privateering practiced by the Barbary States as "piracy." Remember, however, that privateering was an internationally accepted practice at the time. Privateers had official...