Madam, - I know that you will not wish to prolong any verbal ping-pong in the Letters page, but I am surprised at the ferocity of Bert Wright's attack on me (April 17th) for the contents of my letter of April 14th.
I am all the more surprised since I have received a number of letters agreeing unanimously with the content. Furthermore, articles which have appeared in other outlets in recent days support the attitude expressed (Patrick Cockburn, Geoffrey Hodgson, et al.)
May I simply suggest, since Mr Wright seems to think that I am ill-informed and anti-American that Mr Wright should read Unholy Babylon by Adel Darwish to see that today's American intervention is only the latest in a sequence of Machiavellian interventions.
He should also note that the pretext given by George Bush and Tony Blair for invading was that of WMD, with the "proven existence" largely based on the evidence of Dr Khidir Hamsa, who after being propelled into an exalted position in Baghdad, has now been discredited and quietly sacked.
Mr Wright should ask himself if it is in the "interests of democracy" that the American military is now building no fewer than 14 massively defended, apparently permanent military bases for themselves inside Iraq.
Saddam Hussein may not have ever considered apologising for the innocent Kurdish civilians he killed but George Bush's war has killed over 25,000 innocent Iraqi civilians to date and yet we hear of no hand-wringing from that quarter, let alone any admission his behaviour is unacceptable.
Lastly, I ask Mr Wright to read my letter again and see if, on a second reading, he cannot grasp what I was actually saying. - Yours, etc.,
TIM RYAN,
Priory Street,
New Ross,
Co Wexford.