ALAN COUNIHAN,
Sir, - The ongoing debate about the threat to world peace as presently posed by the regime in Iraq seems rather one-sided in your pages.
With any military power in possession of weapons of mass destruction the crucial question is whether those weapons are being amassed for offensive or defensive purposes. In the case of Iraq, the question is precisely whether such weapons are being developed for the protection or projection of power. One would hope that the same scrutiny applies to all nations equally.
In the United States of America, military spending will grow by $45 billion in the next fiscal year. While the war in Afghanistan was a costly exercise, the bulk of spending is in the "transformation" of American military power and new technologies of destruction. New weapons of mass destruction based on nano-technologies are being developed which are terrifying in their possibilities. Will the American Administration or its military-industrial complex allow access to the sites of weapons development by United Nations weapons inspectors so that the rest of the world can assess the threat of possession of such weapons poses to them?
Should access be denied then surely we should ponder the purposes of that military power? The guardian of world peace? Quis custodiet custodies? Who will guard the guards? - Yours, etc.,
ALAN COUNIHAN, Whitegate Lawn, Kilkenny.