IRAQ: I HAVE to admit that peace has yet to be fully restored in Iraq.

Anti-Western Iraqi civilians and supporters loyal to Saddam Hussein are shooting at and killing our soldiers and our great American counterparts.

Let's stop pussyfooting around. Let's locate these terrorists and send back over the B52s to pound them out of their snake holes before more troops are murdered.

Let's have the united forces of the US and Great Britain, with all hands on deck, backed with our full military might and firmly placed in the Middle East, while the threat of terrorism is still running high throughout the world.

That way we can hit back immediately at the pro-bin Laden supporters who saturate most of the Middle East. - Christopher Wardell, Darlington.

WHILST the Hutton Inquiry hears "it wasn't me guv" from all and sundry, aren't we all being cynically drawn away from the point?

Who was the person who delivered the information to the country that these infuriatingly elusive weapons of mass destruction could be deployed in 45 minutes?

Is the Prime Minister merely a conduit for the "sexed-up" opinions of others? With whom does the buck stop? - Chris Greenwell, Aycliffe Village.

PETER MANDELSON

AS a great fan of Roy Castle's Record Breakers show in the 1970s and 1980s, I was bemused to see that we have a Parliamentary record breaker in Hartlepool's very own Peter Mandelson.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, he has broken a record held by Michael Ancram for freebie trips abroad in a given year. This, together with his previous record of being the only minister to have had to resign twice, certainly sets him out from the rest of his hard-working parliamentary colleagues. - Geoff Lilley, Hartlepool.

DARLINGTON FC

ALTHOUGH the Reynolds Arena, new home of Darlington FC, is visually very impressive, visiting it for the inaugural match against Kidderminster was not a pleasurable experience, but a frustrating one.

I mainly refer not to the Quakers' poor performance on the field, nor even to such features of an unfinished stadium as the absence of paper towels or hand driers in the toilets, but to delays caused by poor traffic management and car parking policy.

One of several over-officious tannoy announcements threatened us with arrest if we did not accept a 15-minute delay before parked cars could move, but it actually took me 54 minutes from the final whistle to escape the car park.

Though high for Darlington, the crowd of 11,640 was less than half the stadium capacity and parking must be managed much better.

Casual supporters will not return if they cannot get away from the Reynolds Arena until 6pm. We have lives to get on with. - G O'Neill, Norton.

BEING a big supporter of George Reynolds for keeping Darlington FC alive, he has stood by what he intended doing: pay off our debts of £5m, give us a new stadium and a team to be in the Premiership within five years.

I agree you can only do one thing at a time. Now you have got the first two right, George, the third is a must because the team that I saw on opening day was the worst team to put on a DFC shirt.

We require at least four new players, left back, central defender, right winger and centre forward. If we don't get them George, then we won't get the support through the turnstiles.

I would like to see you sit back and rethink the players' wages structure which would then bring new players to the Reynolds Arena.

Come on George, dig deep. - H Dinsdale, Darlington.

NEW LABOUR

TONY Blair's dictatorship, where nothing works yet taxes go up while services go down, is a re-run of the two previous Labour administrations.

Both Attlee and Wilson's regimes were similar, almost bankrupting the country while licking the unions' boots.

Each time we are lumbered with Labour we pay dearly for it. Steps must be taken to ensure we never have another Labour Government when Mr Blair is finally turfed out. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Make the Labour Party illegal as the Communist Party was in the US.

2. Before anyone is allowed to vote they should first pass an intelligence test. This would ensure the Labour Party would never again be elected. How many are members of Mensa, I wonder?

3. Tax increases (we've had 60 of them) should apply only to Labour voters. Let them put their money where their mouths are. That is only fair and democratic.

4. Adopt the Californian idea of voting a politician out of office mid term when making a hash of things.

Mr Blair, your days are numbered. - JM Lethbridge, Middlesbrough.

POLICE

HOW dare Ray Mallon (Echo, Aug 15) ask the public who get caught speeding on the same stretch of road as the two police officers to accept their fines and not try to have them overturned.

These officers have well-paid jobs and can afford the fines, unlike some people who get caught and the fine amounts to nearly half their weekly income.

How many more convictions have been swept under the carpet without the public getting to know?

Speed cameras are alienating the police and the public and events like this do not help.

It stinks of cronyism. I have never known the police lose so much respect as they have over the last couple of years. - A McKimm, Crook.