Madam, - Colm Stephens (Opinion, March 19th) claims that the Madrid and New York atrocities would not have taken place if the "legitimate political demands" of the perpetrators had already been met, if they enjoyed "political freedom" and came from countries that were allowed to "prosper and rule themselves".
This is a blatant apologia for the actions of al-Qaeda by someone who either supports their aims or hasn't bothered to find out what they are.
Al-Qaeda has no legitimate political demands. Its objective is the extermination of Western civilisation. It openly loathes political freedom and its sole experience of government was a mercifully brief period in Afghanistan during which the country went from being impoverished to utterly impoverished.
Mr Stephens also fails to spread blame for the "non-existent WMDs" appropriately. This November George Bush will have to explain to his electorate why he led the US into an avoidable war which has done great harm to the credibility and reputation of his country. But Saddam Hussein is just as guilty if not far more so: had he allowed the UN inspectors free reign to finish their job and go wherever they wanted the sanctions regime would have become untenable. Instead he allowed his country to sink into wretched poverty while he pretended to the world that he still had the weapons which were thankfully detected, documented and destroyed by the UN.
We live in a time when legitimate and hard questions need to be asked about the wisdom of Mr Bush, the conduct of his advisers, whether the "three-mile-limit" definition of sovereignty is still meaningful and how nation states are supposed to fight wars against non-state actors such as al-Qaeda.
By playing fast and loose with the facts, accusing anyone who questions its rigid position of being a warmonger and adopting a hysterical and near-racist bias against the United States, the so-called "anti-war" movement has rendered itself utterly irrelevant and made a rational public debate on these subjects almost impossible. - Yours, etc.,
DAVID ROLFE, Leinster Road, Dublin 6.