Madam, – In the days when IRA regularly apologised for the civilian deaths resulting from their activities, such apologies were treated with the contempt they deserved. Similar contempt should be reserved for Hillary Clinton’s apology for the US air force’s latest slaughter of the innocents in Afghanistan (World News, May 7th). If the West’s various brutal campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia and elsewhere are meant to impose its much-vaunted “values”, then it is time it kept those values to itself. – Yours, etc,