25/04/03

The involvement of our forces in an illegal war should make those responsible for authorising it answerable to a world criminal court.

There should be a mechanism for the expulsion of UN members and the US would be a suitable candidate. There would be some hope in the future if applicant nations had to give guarantees of good behaviour before admission. - Geoffrey Bulmer, Billingham.

PETER Murphy (HAS, Apr 17) in his attack on the Prime Minister, seems to be missing a few points.

It now is clear that the people of Iraq did not support Saddam - they feared him.

Weapons of mass destruction have not been found yet, but give them time. When you find 50,000 rifles in a military hospital and missiles disguised as market stalls then you know what you were fighting against.

The mass grave with up to 2,000 bodies in it and the torture chambers in the prisons, plus the eyewitness accounts of the brutality imposed, indicate that Tony Blair asked this country to do the right thing. He should be praised and not condemned. And the troops who went out to do the job should be thanked for their bravery. - Martin Flanagan, Catterick Garrison.

IS there a politician who can explain the difference between a vile dictator like Saddam Hussein, who tortured and killed selected people and tribes among his own people, and someone like Pol Pot of Cambodia, who carried out genocide against his own people.

Much has been made by the US, UK and Spain that they are freeing the people of Iraq, but when Pol Pot was carrying out genocide against his people the same three countries helped and supported him. Could it be because the first has oil which they want and the second was fighting the Vietnamese? - Peter Dolan, Newton Aycliffe.

I WOULD like to respond to Tony Kelly (HAS, Apr 18 & 19). I apologise for misinterpreting his earlier letter (HAS, Mar 27). He rightly disputed the suggestion that Arab opinion was solidly behind Saddam, and I wrongly assumed that he meant to imply that Arab opinion actually supported the war. Apart from that misunderstanding, I retract nothing I have written on this subject.

It is unfair to suggest that I was "defending" Saddam by questioning Mr Kelly's claim that Saddam was responsible for six million deaths. He was an evil tyrant, and only his close associates will regret his demise; but before hailing Bush and Blair as the saviours of Iraq, it is necessary to count the cost in bloodshed and destruction, remembering that there were alternatives. We must wait and see what further conflicts are inflamed, and the West must acknowledge its complicity in Saddam's murderous activities. His friends in the West were solidly behind him for decades - Donald Rumsfeld himself assured him of US approval for his war with Iran. - Pete Winstanley, Kimblesworth Grange, Durham.

I AM concerned about the innocent Iraqi citizens who were caught up in the recent war. With a little less than the full cost of the campaign, the education of all children could have been secured by 2015. With just a third of what has been spent on the war, the number of people without access to clean water and proper sanitation could have been halved. The list goes on and on...

If the US and UK governments can spend with such profligacy on a war, why can they not do more to help those in our world who are in really dire straits? - Andrew Denison, Darlington.

IT IS very sad that the War Memorial at Etaples, France, has been desecrated but we must keep things in perspective.

I'm quite sure the French people revere the memory of the British troops killed on the Somme in the same way we respect their casualties at Verdun.

The desecration was not committed by the French nation but by small-minded fanatics.

The desecration is particularly ignoble when you think of the excellent way the War Graves Commission keeps the war cemeteries.

The dignity with which we keep our war dead is only right and proper. It is a pity we did not treat the men who came home with similar respect. I can remember veterans of the First World War selling matches and shoelaces on our city streets to eke out a living.

Recent stories suggest we are still remiss in our treatment of war veterans. Telling a war widow to vacate her home and to pay back her husband's salary is rather crass to say the least. - Derek Parker, Bishop Auckland.

YOUR comment column (Echo, Apr 14) was a timely reminder of the main pretext for Messrs Blair and Bush going to war: weapons of mass destruction.

It is amazing how many other reasons have been invented to justify a quite unnecessary intervention in Iraq. It is worth noting that the chaos now prevailing in that country could largely have been avoided had these clever people anticipated the obvious course of events. The trouble is that the coalition has been so blinded by narrow objectives, such as the toppling of Saddam, that it has failed to see the wider issues.

Now Mr Blair is embarking on his next power drive. He has put forward his vision of a Europe led by a president so that the enlarged community is on a par with the US. His cohorts are suggesting already that such a president should be someone who is able to hold his own with Mr Bush. It doesn't take much to see who that exalted person should be.

Mr Blair is a man who is after personal power without regard to the consequences of his actions. - RK Bradley, Darlington.

ROADS

IS IT possible to find out which is the most dug-up road in County Durham?

I nominate the high street in Willington from the border of Crook to bottom of the roundabout. Does anyone know of a more dug-up road? - JA Stott, Hunwick, Bishop Auckland.