The Iraq war should not be used as some type of excuse. The UK terrorist from North London, Dhiren Barot, was radicalised in the mid-1990s.

This is a global terror war that we are involved in. It is different from anything we have experienced before but perhaps more deadly than conventional warfare.

If the terrorists can force us to quit Iraq and Afghanistan in a disorderly manner, this will embolden their expansion enormously.

JACK HARRIS
Swansea

Sir, The sobering revelations of terrorist activity by Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller raise the question of what we, the public, can do to assist the work of MI5.

It surprises me that there are not frequent appeals in the press, and on TV and radio, urging us to phone in if we see any activity that seems suspicious. The repeated publication of a contact telephone number, accompanied by the assurance of anonymity, might produce useful results. We have been given information about the enormous case load of MI5. They cannot be everywhere all the time. We, the public, are everywhere, all the time. Can we not all be given a chance to lend a hand?

CANON DAVID BARTLE
Paignton, Devon

Sir, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller’s concern about the terrorist threat should be regarded as an urgent call for more police to tackle it, rather than a need for further growth in the power and strength of MI5.

The police are answerable to the public, and MI5 is not. We need to know what value for money would result from more resources for MI5. But we cannot know because MI5 will not tell us. The quality of police investigation in recent months has been obvious, along with the enormous effort needed to go through sources of evidence. The police seek to be transparent, as their press briefings show.

There were no speeches, however, by Eliza Manningham-Buller apologising publicly for intelligence failures by MI5 before the London bombings and the Forest Gate fiasco in East London. If MI5 tried effectively to get at Islamist hate merchants in the 1990s and some of them later, it has not been very obvious. The Government has protected MI5 from an inquiry into the London bombings, although urgently requested by many.

In January this year you ran a report that stated: “MI5 will soon employ twice as many counter-terrorist officers as the police, after an injection of extra money from the Treasury last month.”

The Government should get more value for money for our better protection.

This means spending it on the police.

PETER EVANS
St Albans

Sir, Recent official warnings about the threat from terrorism occur in a context of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that were never found, ricin plots with no ricin beyond that occurring naturally, plots involving liquid explosives that would never work in practice, and, last but not least, lists of “terrorists” obtained from the torture chambers of Uzbekistan, whose victims would implicate anyone their tormentors told them to. As individuals we have about as much chance of being killed by a terrorist as being struck by lightning, and I include the London bombings.

Joining in America’s military adventures in Muslim countries is an important contributory cause of the situation, and it is quite plain even to this non-Muslim that this must stop.

MILAND JOSHI
Birmingham

Sir, I believe that, apart from the Prime Minister, few in the UK doubt that the increased terrorist threat is directly interrelated to our continuing, unthinking support of US policies in the Middle East and Israel.

If, instead, the UK was independently to adopt a fairer, more balanced policy of providing the maximum possible financial and political support (short of endorsing terrorism) for the establishment of the Palestinian state, the Muslim world’s view of the UK would surely change, which would be very much to both parties’ advantage.

PETER HEARNE
Wateringbury, Kent

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