Madam, - Tony Allwright (June 14th) is right to be critical of my use of the now discredited misquotation of Paul Wolfowitz in my letter of June 13th.
Nevertheless, I stand over the main thrust of my letter, which concerned the role of the UN in maintaining international peace and security and Ireland's adherence to this principle. Mr Wolfowitz may not have condemned himself and the US administration out of his own mouth but, with the continued glaring absence of the alleged casus belli - the weapons of mass destruction - the onus is still on the US to justify this illegal war.
While we join the Iraqi people in celebrating the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime, we continue to work alongside them, as we have been doing for the past 12 years, as they struggle to rebuild their lives amid the destruction of war and the daily descent into political anarchy.
As an organisation with a humanitarian mandate, Trócaire will continue to challenge those who, through their political and military actions, break international law and condemn millions of people to misery, be it in Iraq or elsewhere. - Yours, etc.,
JUSTIN KILCULLEN, Director, Trócaire, Maynooth, Co Kildare.
Madam, - France has exploited the international turmoil generated by the war in Iraq to position itself as the political and moral leader of the European Union. This is bad for the EU because France is morally unfit for such a role.
We should remember that for decades in the Pacific France carried out an aggressive policy of nuclear testing which showed complete disdain for the welfare and rights of the people of the area.
France, too, alone among European nations in our time, sent a number of its agents on a warlike mission in peacetime to mine and blow up a civilian ship in a civilian harbour of a friendly nation, killing a civilian. Such an act would be unthinkable from any politically moral society. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL MEADE, Shantalla Road, Galway.
Madam, - Lest I deepen the depression of Eileen Boyle (June 10th), who has been "saddened and dismayed at the. . .anti-Americanism expressed as a result of the Iraq war", I should stress that such xenophobic sentiments are none of my intention, nor do I think they were displayed by most of the correspondents to your pages.
But surely to suggest that we should refrain from critical comment on an exercise in which we participated as a nation, would in itself be a betrayal of the great American democratic cornerstone of freedom of expression.
Or is Ms Boyle suggesting that, should America again find itself caught up in a McCarthyite bout of counter-totalitarianism, we should bite our lip rather than "the hand that feeds"?
Such, Madam, are the qualities one seeks in a dog, rather than in a free and democratic ally. - Yours, etc.,
DAMIEN FLINTER, Tullyvoheen, Clifden, Co Galway.