MICHAEL MEADE,
Madam, - I read in in your edition of January 23rd the comment by US Secretary of State Colin Powell that if there is war in Iraq the country's oil fields may be "held in trust for the Iraqi people". The report says the oil fields might be forcibly privatised and placed in the hands of companies such as Chevron-Texaco.
I was reminded of a scene in the great old Western movie Cimarron, shown on on TG4 last week. Glenn Ford plays the part of a newspaper editor who is a thorn in the side of some Oklahoma oil barons. The oil barons eventually invite him to Washington in an attempt to buy his silence through an offer of the governorship of Oklahoma. Ford's character is a man of stern principle and he turns them down. However, in the scene where the barons attempt to buy him off, one of them says: "What's good for oil is good for Oklahoma, what's good for Oklahoma is good for the country and what's good for the country is good for the entire world . Yessiree!"
Powell's comment brought that scene vividly to my mind. I could not help thinking: is this what it is all about? Oil? Control of oil - together with the Bush family's unresolved angst from the Gulf War? Is it really for this that thousands of lives may be lost and God knows what consequences ensue? I hope not. I wish I were confident it is not so. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL MEADE, Shantalla Road, Galway.
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Madam, - Tony Allwright (January 21st) claims war against Iraq is being justifiably pursued to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. He goes on to make the preposterous suggestion that the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament opposes this war on the grounds that "CND may have to disband if there is too much nuclear disarmament".
Is he aware that the US has a big enough nuclear arsenal to destroy the planet hundreds of times over, yet still continues to develop even more weapons of mass destruction? That the US, under President George W. Bush, has made it clear it is withdrawing from key international arms control and disarmament treaties, including the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), described by many arms control experts as the cornerstone of global security as well as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)?
President Bush's new nuclear strategy - and particularly his endorsement of the "Star Wars" programme - envisages an indefinite and ever-expanding role for nuclear weapons of war, even though this is contrary to the spirit and letter of all the major existing treaties.
And what of Mr Allwright's other champion of nuclear disarmament? In defiance of the World Court finding of July 1996 that the use or the threat to use nuclear weapons was contrary to international law in almost all circumstances, Britain has recently developed its Trident submarine fleet, every vessel of which now carries 48 independently targeted nuclear warheads.
Each of these warheads has seven times the explosive power of the first atomic bomb that killed 140,000 civilians in the city of Hiroshima. Alas, with friends like these there is no danger of any of the world's anti-nuclear movements going out of business. - Yours, etc.,
BILLY FITZPATRICK, Chairperson, Irish CND, Dublin 6.
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Madam, - John Carroll (January 22nd) quite rightly says that "for too long the West has supported tyrants for our own selfish gain". I would like to remind readers that the US itself supported Iraq with financial and military aid during the 1980s when Saddam Hussein "committed mass murder against his citizenry", as Mr Carroll points out. I don't recall anyone screaming foul play then.
He also suggests that Iraq is somehow unique in causing suffering among his people in order to "develop nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction". The United States is currently slashing both federal and state budgets to fund the military, at the expense of programmes in health, education and social welfare. So US citizens are also being made to suffer so that Bush can develop more sophisticated weapons.
It is a shame we don't have the courage to simply say "No" to the Americans request to use Shannon. Are we afraid of being labelled a "rogue nation"?
Please let the inspectors do their job and diplomacy play its role. - Yours, etc.,
DARRAGH SMYTH, Ridgefield Road, Oxford, England.
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Madam, - The world is on a knife-edge. The oil barons have taken over the White House and J.R. Ewing has become US President. The thought of nuclear weapons in the hands of a bunch of Texas oil barons is frightening. Nothing is sacred to people like this; greed is good. You couldn't have written fiction like this because no one would have believed it,not even in the soap opera Dallas.
Britain has no independent foreign policy. The Prime Minister of a once-great country is behaving like George Bush's caddy. Irish neutrality is a joke. American planes are using Shannon like their own aircraft carrier. Bertie Ahern and his odious little Government are not going to stand up to the Americans. Can anyone imagine our Taoiseach - Mr Consensus - standing up to anyone? - Yours, etc.,
HARRY ROBERTS, Stameen, Drogheda, Co Louth.