Madam, - Many words could be written about the disproportionate coverage given in The Irish Timesto the Iraq war apologists, such as Charles Krauthammer, Christopher Hitchens and most recently Tony Allwright (Opinion, March 27th).
Hopefully, the following will summarise a differing view in much less column space:
1. What matters most is not what the above write, but what they omit to write. They try to avoid numbers, which carry too much truth. Tony Allwright's article contains not a single statistic - no mention of the minimum 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths resulting from the Bush-Cheney-Blair invasion, or the recent estimate by Joseph Stiglitz that the total cost of this misadventure to future US taxpayers will be $3 trillion.
2. The current common theme of the Iraq apologists is the "success" of the "surge strategy" of the "brilliant" Gen Petraeus.
So civilian deaths are now running at an annual rate of 10-20,000, instead of the 30,000 in 2007. These figures are still horrendous. The "Anbar Awakening" is firstly dependent on US money, and secondly creates future challenges to central government.
It is ironic that Mr Allwright's article came exactly one day after Prof Anatol Lieven's article (Opinion, March 26th) effectively demolished McCain's foreign policy, including on Iraq.
America will fail to deliver democracy in Iraq because the criteria required for democracy do not exist there.
However there is one small piece of good news: in spite of the print space given to the Iraq apologists, they are not winning the argument, as exemplified by a poll reported a few days ago which showed 82 per cent of respondents feeling that the Iraq war was a mistake. Only a small gullible minority are fooled by neo-cons such as Krauthammer and Allwright.
- Yours, etc,
ALAN BARWISE, Dalkey, Co Dublin.