241 Pizza

If the Iraqi regime had to be changed there had to be another way.

Yours faithfully,
MURIEL SYED,
Oaklands, 332 Burnley Road,
Holme-in-Cliviger, Burnley BB10 4ST.
April 10.

From the Reverend Brian G. Cooper

Sir, Associated Press correspondent Ellen Knickmeyer’s meticulously observed report (April 8) of US Marines’ casual slaughter of Baghdad civilians made sickening reading. How are terrified and bewildered citizens suddenly confronted by US tanks supposed to identify “warning shots”? The Marines’ callous killing of people like the disorientated old man with a stick, then laughing about it, is reminiscent of earlier US atrocities in Vietnam. Clearly the Bush regime opposes the International Criminal Court because it knows full well its own trigger-happy troops could be indicted for war crimes.

Yours sincerely,
BRIAN G. COOPER
(Churches’ Secretary, World Disarmament Campaign),
Ground Floor Flat,
13 Spottiswoode Road,
Edinburgh EH9 1BH.

From Mr John Stott

Sir, I read with mounting incredulity Simon Jenkins’s sour, ungracious piece (Comment, “Keep the UN well away from Iraq”, April 9) with its confident forecast of the chaos to come.

Then I reread his piece of April 2, headed ironically “I predict the pundits will carry on getting it wrong”. Baghdad would be like Stalingrad. “To kill Saddam they will have to fight their way to his bunker across the bombed streets of a sullen city . . . every Arab mother will tell her son ‘Avenge Baghdad’.”

This particular pundit got it completely wrong.

Yours,
JOHN STOTT,
3 Lansdowne Terrace,
Devizes, Wiltshire SN10 1NX.
April 10.

From Major-General Ken Perkins

Sir, Simon Jenkins is wrong when he writes “soldiering is straightforward”. If he had served in some of the counter-insurgency campaigns during the last half-century or walked the streets of Belfast in the 1970s he would realise that pulling politicians’ chestnuts from the fire is never straightforward.

Yours faithfully,
KEN PERKINS,
4 Bedwyn Common,
Marlborough SN8 3HZ.
April 9.

From Mr Neil Cooper

Sir, How do we know that the giant statue of Saddam destroyed on Wednesday wasn’t of one of his doubles?

Yours faithfully,
NEIL COOPER,
6 Chantry Road,
Birmingham B13 8DW.
April 9.

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