Madam, - Edward Horgan (March 6th), in charging the Irish Government with complicity in "mass murder" in Iraq, has clearly not himself fully read the Lancet report on which he bases his outlandish claims.
Even if one accepts the (now thoroughly discredited) figure of 655,000 war deaths, inconsistencies in Mr Horgan's argument remain.
Firstly, the report does indeed seek to tally "all death as a result of the war", including those who perish from malnutrition and disease. Even with this qualification removed, however, those who died "violently" remains at the staggeringly high level of 601,000 people.
Mr Horgan is disingenuous, therefore, when he argues that the Lancet survey includes the "many more" who have died from "vicarious war-related causes".
Secondly, the survey itself is both precise and vague as to who is responsible for such terror. Only 31 per cent of violent deaths are traced back to "coalition activity" - which leaves, according to the Lancet, almost half a million deaths unaccounted for.
Yet here the cause of death becomes suddenly less precisely identifiable. We are told that 24 per cent of the violent deaths were caused by "other" agents, and 45 per cent of them by "unknown" ones. Who might these mysterious forces be? It is not a stretch to imagine that a large number of these shadowy actors are the sort of people detonating rush-hour car bombs, beheading captives on video, torturing abducted civilians en masse, calling for the return of Ba'ath rule and blowing up mosques, among other things. That is to say, the very people the coalition in Iraq are ranged against - and the very "resistance" the "anti-war" left in Ireland claims to support.
Only yesterday we read of a car bomb that "devastated" the historic bookselling quarter of Baghdad - a heinous strike against culture and learning in Iraq. No doubt the "unknown" forces that carry out such atrocities will be gladdened to hear that responsibility for their crimes lies not with them, but in Washington, DC and Leinster House.
If Mr Horgan is really as concerned about slaughter in Iraq as he would have us believe, he should surely be directing his ire at the black-clad militias which strafe and terrorise the neighbourhoods of Baghdad and Basra, and not at those who are presently risking life and limb in battle against them. - Yours, etc,
SEAN COLEMAN, Lindisfarne Lawns, Clondalkin, Dublin 22.