Sir, William Rees-Mogg (Comment, February 14) seems to persist with the fiction that those of us who opposed the war in Iraq did not offer an alternative to leaving Saddam to continue with his murderous oppressions.

We did. We said Saddam should never have been helped to power in the first place, should not have been encouraged to attack Iran or supplied with the weapons to do so. We also said that the West should not have turned a blind eye when Saddam used chemical weapons before Halabja.

After Saddam was ejected from Kuwait we said that his position should not have been bolstered by the imposition of harsh sanctions, which hurt ordinary Iraquis, instead of an arms embargo.

We said there should be no intervention without the support of the UN and Iraq’s Arab neighbours, whom Bush and Blair said they were trying to protect. We said that the UN weapons inspector Hans Blix should have been allowed to finish his job. We said that if intervention was the only option, the West should minimise the inevitable terrorist backlash by dealing first with the glaring injustices in Chechnya and Palestine.

We all hope for democracy in Iraq, but what good is democracy without peace, security and prosperity? We have to ask whether it would have been possible to end Saddam’s tyranny without killing thousands of innocent civilians, and exacerbating the threat from Islamist militants. If we do not keep asking this, it is probable that we will make the same mistakes over and over again.

Yours faithfully,
PETE WINSTANLEY,
Farm Cottage, Kimblesworth Grange,
Potterhouse Lane, Durham DH1 5SL.
February 15.

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