Madam, - Like your correspondent Khalid Ibrahim (January 22nd), I read Lara Marlowe's article on the current situation in Iraq but, unlike Mr Ibrahim, I saw it as giving a down-to-earth, objective view of what is happening there.
The writer is correct when he says the people generally are happy and free for the first time in many years. However, a resistance war against the occupying forces is going on and, as a result, far too many innocent people, including women and children, are being indiscriminately slaughtered daily by both sides, but by the Americans in particular. I cannot bring myself to blame the ordinary US soldier for this as he doesn't want to be there, nor does he want to die for a country about which he cares and knows very little.
In the same circumstances I too would be tempted to shoot indiscriminately. I refuse to believe that the ordinary Iraqi man/woman in the street is happy with this situation, and I have heard such persons when interviewed declare that at least under Saddam they could walk down the street in safety. Things weren't all bad under Saddam.
I am pleased to read that the writer believes the new Iraq is going to be a country that stands for peace, democracy and prosperity for all its people rather than what pertains in other areas of the Middle East. I cannot help wondering if that belief includes giving full rights of citizenship to Iraqi women. Under Saddam, bad and all as he was, women had the same rights as men, in education, employment, association and fraternisation. They could dress as they wished, appear in public unaccompanied with no obligation to wear the headscarf, etc.
In addition, all religions were allowed to flourish and, incredibly, Iraq had a Catholic patriarch. The deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, was a Christian.
I would like to think the new Iraq as visualised by Mr Ibrahim would encompass all such freedoms. We will have to wait and see. - Yours, etc.,
W.G.A.SCOTT, Friars Hill, Wicklow.
Madam, - Having led an international alliance to war on Iraq, President George W. Bush now tells us that he too wants to know the truth about his stated reason for going to war. Have I missed something? - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL MEADE, Shantalla Road, Galway.