Madam, - I suspect that your edition of April 8th will not in fact be the last straw but it has been enough to agitate me to put pen to paper.
On the Letters page, Jason Fitzharris ("throw neutrality into the dustbin of history") and Gerard McCarthy ("the full horrors of Saddam's despotic regime will become apparent") are welcome lights at the end of a dark tunnel.
That tunnel includes your own breathtakingly grandiose suggestion that Mr Bush will benefit from the political kudos of being associated with historic developments in the Northern Ireland peace process; Fintan O'Toole's whining suggestion that the conjunction of the Iraqi war and the Irish peace process is grotesque; and a number of letters disclosing anything from dismay to anger that Messrs Bush and Blair should have the temerity to meet at Hillsborough.
I have long held the view that the foreign policy of the Irish Republic in regard to neutrality is wrong. But that is a matter for citizens of the Republic and, in any event, you have plenty of correspondents to point out some of the inconsistencies that can arise. What agitates me is the suggestion that the Irish peace process is so pure, so moral, so clean that nasty people like Messrs Bush and Blair should not be allowed near it.
The Irish peace process is about regime change in Northern Ireland. I have been in favour of that for 35 years. I am also in favour of regime change in Iraq. Why should regime change in Belfast be acceptable to you and so many of your readers but not in Baghdad? - Yours, etc.,
DAVID S. COOK,
Main Street,
Loughbrickland,
Co Down.
Madam, - There were, according to the US, three reasons for the invasion of Iraq. Well, now that the war is nearly over I would like to ask three questions. Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Where are the links with al-Qaeda? Where is the threat to the US or any other Western state? - Yours, etc.,
JOHN F. DOYLE,
Mill Road,
Midleton,
Co Cork.
Madam, - The brutalised people of Iraq are discovering the sweet taste of freedom - something that we in Ireland have been lucky to have enjoyed all of our lives - for the first time in many decades, thanks to the liberating invasion by the US, the UK and their allies.
I hope those who have protested against this wonderful gift to the Iraqi people will examine their consciences and consider the amoral and indifferent attitude they have displayed toward the plight of these desperate people. The men, women and children who will now have an opportunity to enjoy this freedom will have reason to be thankful that the anti-war protesters' efforts to appease and prolong Saddam's regime have failed.
Their willingness to accept the Saddam's sick propaganda, with its cynical efforts to focus their attention solely on the few civilian lives lost at the hands of the allies rather than the tens of thousands lost every year by execution and torture at the hands of this brutal and evil regime, is a sad episode in the history of Irish and European society. Their eagerness to abuse and smear the United States of America, our longest and greatest international friend, at every turn is equally sad.
Ireland's own freedom and present affluence was paid for with the lives of brave and selfless young Irish people not so many years ago. Iraqi freedom must be purchased with the same innocent lives that freedom is attained anywhere in the face of such barbaric tyranny.
The cataclysmic predictions of the cynics and the cosily affluent will be exposed as empty echoes of a savage regime, and the Iraqi people will decide in the fullness of time whether the price they paid for their freedom was worth it.
No one knows if their freedom and this opportunity for a democratic future will bear fruit. But at least they will have been given a chance - a chance they would have been denied if the French, the Germans and the other anti-war protesters had had their way. - Yours, etc.,
HOWARD BRITTAIN,
Killiney,
Co Dublin.
Madam, - With today's high-tech weapons, how is it possible for the "coalition forces" to make such calamitous mistakes? I refer to British and US helicopters having mid-air collisions, British and US tanks being destroyed "friendly" missiles (which incidentally are supposed to recognise friendly troops), British and American fighter jets being shot down by the Patriot surface-to-air missile "protection" system. And on Tuesday a US tank sent a shell into the most hotel in the world housing international media personnel.
How many innocent Iraqis have perished as a result of mistakes, oversights and military faux-pas? Just think about it. - Yours, etc.,
JOE KEENAN,
Stepaside Park,
Co Dublin.
Madam, - As the Stars and Stripes were raised above Baghdad and effigies of Saddam Hussein toppled to the delight of hysterical crowds, one might well have wondered why there was ever any objection to this "liberation".
Military victory has been swiftly won. The carnage visited upon Iraq and the damage done to its people may never be repaired. Iraqi hospitals flow red with blood. Children lie bleeding, moaning, scalded, orphaned and dead. Young men and women throughout the Middle East watch with an insatiable rage, burning for vengeance.
The Bush regime has taught children throughout the world who have watched or been party to this war that all power comes from the barrel of a gun; violence gets results. Amid the apparent jubilation we may well wonder what terrible consequences this lesson will wreak.
The words of George Bush's hero, Winston Churchill, may in time prove very apt: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is the end of the beginning." - Yours, etc.,
AIDAN HEHIR,
Clancy Strand,
Limerick.
Madam, - Now that the evil regime of Saddam Hussein and the Baath party has fallen, will the troika of Russia, France and Germany take the lead in stating that the enormous debts owed to these respective Governments by the former Iraqi dictatorship are now null and void?
Debt relief by all countries owed monies by the former despotic regime will enable Iraq to rebuild and recover much more quickly. Surely natural justice must demand that the new Government in Iraq cannot be hamstrung by foreign debts run up by Saddam's evil regime. - Yours, etc.,
JAMES McCUMISKEY,
North Road,
Drogheda,
Co Louth.
Madam, - Yesterday you ran pages of coverage of the US/British occupation of Iraq and their victory over the cruel and corrupt regime of Saddam Hussein. You also ran an excellent piece on Burma by Rosita Boland.
Burma rarely gets a mention in an Irish newspaper. I spent time there as an independent traveller last year. It is a beautiful country with an ancient culture and graceful, dignified people. But it is run by a regime that will match any in the world for corruption and cruelty. It also one of the main sources of a particularly nasty weapon of mass destruction, heroin, which is still produced on a large scale in the north-east of the country and exported over the Chinese and Thai borders, often with the active collusion of the regime.
During the past 50 years heroin has killed far more British and Americans than any other chemical weapon but there is no talk of an operation to liberate Burma. Clearly, countries with opium poppy fields do not qualify for "liberation"; countries with oilfields do. - Yours, etc.,
NEIL HOLMAN,
Pembroke Road,
Dublin 4.
Madam, - What is most astonishing about Conor McCarthy's letter (April 10th) is that he, like others in the Irish-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, is not so much pro-Palestinian as anti-Israeli.
Does Mr McCarthy not want a better existence for his friends through peace, self-determination and prosperity? If his compassion can extend to some groups of the human family only, excluding others, and if this limitation prevents him from understanding why Israel exists, surely he must see that, nonetheless, Israel does exist.
He rails against Israel with jaded, recycled, long-refuted points. The logic of his argument sets his friends an impossible task, as to make peace with Israel would be to dishonour themselves.
What, then, exercises Mr McCarthy more? His love of Palestine, or his hatred of Israel? - Yours, etc.
MONIQUE WALSH,
Irish Friends of Israel,
Charlotte Quay Dock,
Dublin 4.
Madam, - Like everyone else, I laugh and laugh at the attempts of foreigners to speak English. My, they are funny. But some people are never satisfied.
I live in hopes that a Middle East newspaper - the "Baghdad Bugle", perhaps - will provide us with a column in which the inimitable Kevin Myers (An Irishman's Diary, April 8th) will go one better and give us his imitation of an Irish journalist man trying to speak Iraqi. Now that would be funny. - Yours, etc.,
HUGH LEONARD,
Pilot View,
Dalkey.
Madam, - As is the case with so many issues facing our nation, it is left to Kevin Myers to show your readers the light. The Irish people have become too cosy on their middle-class cushions.
It used to be the issue of 32 counties that kept Ireland from supporting the allies.
Now it is politicians' fear of sanctimonious fools who have forgotten the price we paid for freedom.
Freedom is the most precious right we all have. God bless America for its fight for Iraqi freedom. It reminds us all how tenuous freedom is. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN KENNY,
Sandford Road,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.
Madam, - In the light of the unfolding events in Iraq, might this be the appropriate juncture to change the headline over letters about this necessary conflict from "US-led invasion of Iraq" to "Coalition liberation of Iraq"? - Yours, etc.,
BART O'BRIEN,
Strand Road,
Sutton,
Dublin 13.