Madam, - It is in the very heart of journalism to be objective, promoting fairness and tolerance of people's different views. However, I believe that Lara Marlowe, in her World News Review on Iraq entitled "The agony and the devastation", (December 30th) failed to reflect the views of the majority of the Iraqi people.
On a recent visit to Iraq, I visited many cities in the north and the south including Baghdad and the reality is that people are happy and free for the first time after 35 years of killing.
The former dictator is now going to face the justice he never deliver to the Iraqi people. Any Iraqi can now walk in the street free from fear of the security forces, which during the regime killed and arrested people who had done nothing. There will be no more mass graves.
We have more than 200 newspapers and 200 political parties, whereas during the time of Saddam, we had only his party and four newspapers owned by the state for his own propaganda. I witnessed people celebrating the capture of the dictator in their thousands in many cities.
As for the killing of Iraqi people by some terrorists, one can hardly call that resistance to the new administration. It is an act of killing of the innocent that should be condemned by every right-minded human being.
I can assure Ms Marlowe that Iraq is going to be a country that stands for peace rather than terrorism, democracy rather than dictatorship and prosperity for all its citizens rather than a family-run affair such as we have in many neighbouring countries. Time will tell. - Yours, etc.,
KHALID IBRAHIM, Spokesperson, Iraqi Human Rights Organisation in Ireland, PO Box 5375, Dublin 1.