Madam, - Kevin Myers writes quite funny columns and, importantly, also addresses quite serious issues. However, his flaw is to discredit otherwise legitimate discourses by resorting to insults.
He calls Noam Chomsky a chump (An Irishman's Diary, January 24th) and in an earlier column likened Jane Fonda to a macaque monkey. In any given week I find myself agreeing with Kevin Myers one day and disagreeing with him the next. When he needlessly peppers serious issues with derogatory remarks, I'll read on, but he has lost the argument long before the column ends.
In Tuesday's column he states that "Iraqi political parties loudly insist that the US military should stay until their police and army are capable of defending their country's emergent democratic institutions".
Two things come to mind. One, Iraq was deemed a threat to American security. Two, in the circumstances, to invite the US-led coalition to stay in Iraq may be quite a sensible thing for members of the democratically elected government there. The consequences for them, otherwise, may be wholly undemocratic. - Yours, etc,
STEPHEN O'DOWD, Dooradoyle Road, Limerick.