Madam, - Charles Krauthammer writes (Opinion, July 3rd): "We had two political objectives in going to Iraq: deposing Saddam and replacing his regime with a democratic government unthreatening to the region and strategically friendly to the United States."
This is very misleading. These were not the publicly announced reasons for attacking Iraq without a United Nations mandate. There were indeed two reasons given, but they were both lies. The first was that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat because of his stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction. The United States and its allies in fact deliberately subverted the work of the weapons inspectors in case the truth should be known.
The second reason was even more blatantly dishonest. This was the impression, carefully fostered by the Bush administration that the Iraqi regime was in some way responsible for the attack on the Twin Towers and had an involvement with al-Qaeda. These propositions were also demonstrably lies.
Mr Krauthammer's views represent nothing more than a completely inappropriate and incorrect post facto rationalisation of the disastrous situation into which Bush and Blair have led the world. - Yours, etc,
Senator DAVID NORRIS, Seanad Éireann, Dublin 2.