Sir, - These last weeks, many polemics in praise of the accuracy of Cruise missiles have been written. They had me wondering if these were the same generation of "smart" Cruise missiles whose handywork I witnessed in Baghdad shortly after the June 1994 bombing by the U.S.
The lobby of the Rashid Hotel was in ruins, and a vivacious 23 year old receptionist had been killed, as had a number of people in a residential district nearby, including an 18 month old baby and his father. In another area largely populated by writers and artists was a vast crater, where three homes and the families who lived in them had been erased from the face of the earth.
I met a five year old who had become severely ill. In the searing heat of the Baghdad summer, she was unable to drink; her best friend, from whom she was inseparable, had been killed. At school, at breaks and lunch she had always offered her water from her special water container, before she drank herself. Now she could not bring herself to drink at all.
A small boy in the district had a pair of blue jeans sent by an uncle in America of which he was inordinately proud. He now became violently ill if he saw blue jeans anywhere. He had been wearing them on the day of the bombing. Many children in the area still no longer play games they remind them of the dead friends they used to play them with.
As the missiles fell last week I also thought of Ali, who was three at the time of the Gulf War. Every night for four years alter, he compulsively packed his little bag in case he had to go to the shelter. Every night he had to be persuaded not to go to bed with his shoes on, in case he had to run. And every night when his mother went to check on him before she went to bed, he was asleep with his shoes back on. Twice in the last two years, he has been proved right.
"Half of the 47 Cruise missiles dropped on Iraq came within 12 metres of their target", stated a Pentagon spokesman. A miss is as good as a mile and what happened to the other half? Yours, etc.,
Homerton High Street,
London €96AJ.