Madam, - Linda O'Reilly (January 20th) reprimands you for publishing images of prisoner abuse in Iraq. As a parent, grandparent and occasional teacher, I can sympathise, but not agree, with her reaction. The problem is that her summation - "We can all picture it in our minds" - is not correct. We cannot - and we do not.
In the same edition you have a leading article entitled "Cherishing all the children equally" - and with brutal, unwitting irony, images of an "accident" in Iraq. I had thought I was beyond being disturbed by images of children in terror and covered in blood.
Of course there are several sides to the story. Accidents do happen. As Pearse put it on a famous occasion, "We may kill the wrong people". I have great sympathy for the members of that US patrol. Some of them will be able to rationalise what happened. Some will never forget it when we have long forgotten.
But this is not a just or even a legal war. It is not even a competent war. We have all been walked - deliberately - into a terrible mess. It is wrong, wrong, wrong - and you must continue to tell it as it is. - Yours etc.,
MAURICE O'CONNELL, Oakpark, Tralee, Co Kerry.
Madam, - I disagree entirely with Linda O'Reilly. There is no truer saying than that "a picture paints a thousand words". Does Ms O'Reilly believe there would have been anything like the response we saw to the recent tsunami had it not been for the pictures and live footage we witnessed for ourselves? It is important that atrocities are reported and photographed and I applaud the journalists and photographers who bring them to us, sometimes at great personal risk to themselves. - Yours, etc.,
MAEVE WRIGHT, Daletree Avenue, Dublin 24.
Madam, - I have never been so affected as I was by the photograph of the Iraqi child on the front page of your edition of January 20th.
I cannot begin to describe what that child was feeling after seeing her parents obliterated, their blood drenching her. As a father, that image will haunt me for the rest of my life.
However, I do believe that The Irish Times did a service to its readers by publishing this photograph so that people can see the brutality of war in all its forms. Words, no matter how eloquent or descriptive, could never convey the look on that child's face.
As a father of two daughters, I hope George W. Bush would look at this photograph and feel the way I do. - Yours, etc.,
KILLIAN FITZPATRICK, Holywell, Stillorgan, Dublin 14.
Madam, - Why did you have to publish the disgusting photographs of abuse in Iraq? To protect our children, aged 10 and 12, from such images, I removed the page from the paper. I encourage our children to glance through the paper and read anything that interests them. These photos were too graphic. Do I need to act as censor before the children pick up The Irish Times? - Yours, etc.,
PATRICIA KEYES, Meadowlawn, Raheen, Limerick.
Madam, - Reading the daily news from Iraq becomes a grimmer experience by the day. Your front-page photograph of January 20th has me shattered. The face of that little girl will haunt me forever.
I am aware of the threat of car bombs and suicide bombers to the US military, but the question that keeps running through my mind is why Iraqis see the need to attack their "liberators". Had the US put a fraction of the resources which it pours into their army into civil reconstruction, education and medical care Iraq would surely be a different country today.
US soldiers shooting an unarmed father and mother in front of their children while their Commander in Chief celebrates the begining of his second term in office at a Washington ball with a live longhorn steer in attendance: the depth of depravity? Not quite. After the ball, it was apparently too cold for the steer to be stabled outside, so it was allowed to sleep in the Washington Marriott instead.
May I ask where the six Iraqi children got to sleep? - Yours, etc.,
BARBARA DELAHOYDE, Marlton Stud, Wicklow.