Sir, - Michael McGuire's letter (June 24th), implies that those who will be protesting in Dun Laoghaire on July 2nd, against the visit of USS JFK to this country are begrudgers and moaners and if only the JFK were providing jobs here then there would be no issue to protest about.
Let's be clear about these protests and the reasons for them. The JFK is a warship. Computer chips produced by Intel may have been used in the construction of the JFK, as Mr McGuire points out, but they are be also used positively in research, medicine and education. This ship's function is to protect and further the interests of the USA as a major power in the world.
What that has meant in the recent past is best illustrated in a statement issued by the US embassy in Dublin on May 20th"... USS JFK launched 114 strikes on Baghdad. War planes carried out 2,895 bombing raids on Iraqi towns and cities from the USS JFK. Three and a half million pounds of ordnance were used by the USS JFK on Iraq during January and February of 1991."
Thousands of ordinary Iraqi men, women and children perished. Anybody in Dun Laoghaire to welcome this ship should remember the scenes of blood, death and destruction from the bomb shelter in Baghdad and after the "turkey shoot" on the road to Basra where thousands of Iraqi men, women and children perished. - Yours, etc.,
Socialist Workers Party,
P.O. Box 1648,
Dublin 8.