Madam, - In the light of the car bomb in central Baghdad on Tuesday which killed 78 people, does the US seriously still believe Iraq is a better place since the invasion? If, as is their latest claim, the war aim was regime change, why are US and British forces still in Iraq with no apparent exit strategy now or any time soon?
The truth is that the US has no intention of leaving. Iraq will become a permanent US military base with the sole aim of securing the region's oil supplies. Anyone who still thinks otherwise is living in cuckoo-land.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians lie dead under their homes, entire families wiped out to secure the short-term well being of the US economy. I fear the US will reap what it has sown.
- Yours, etc,
DERMOT SWEENEY, Ushers Island, Dublin 8.
Madam, - This week I visited the Leonardo da Vinci Codex Leicesterexhibition at the Chester Beatty Library. As I admired this great man's legacy to humanity, I could not help but notice the great contribution made by Iraq, then Mesopotamia, to preserving and passing down the works of the greatest thinkers of ancient Greece, including Euclid, which were lost during the so-called Dark Ages.
I am saddened at how this once great country, a cradle of civilisation, has become a battleground where Sunni opposes Shia, where local tribesmen back the Iraqi police to oust militia from their towns, where suicide car bombers kill civilians, where battles involving mortar strikes on police are a regular occurrence and where Christians are no longer safe. I wondered how man-kind could have regressed so much, and how such a great civilisation could be lost in the twinkling of an eye.
- Yours, etc,
BEATRICE AIRD-O'HANLON, Delgany, Co Wicklow.