Madam, - "From injustice - never justice. From justice - never injustice." Dag Hammarskjöld, arguably the UN's only effective Secretary General, was both a philosopher and a just international leader, who chose his words with great care. The above quotation from his published diary, Markings, sums up his life's work, and is in marked contrast to the self-justifying mutterings of our present world leaders and Irish State leaders.
US national security interests are cited as justification for Guantánamo prison, and Irish national economic interests cited in justification for allowing the use of Shannon airport for the facilitation of the Iraq war and the "rendition" of prisoners.
Brendan McMahon (February 18th) in effect uses Saddam Hussein's crimes as attempted justification for US crimes and breaches of international law. This is like using a brutal murder to justify an unrelated but less brutal murder. Most of the prisoners in Guantánamo came from Afghanistan; and Iraq had no connection with the attacks on the United States, and none with al-Qaeda, until after Saddam Hussein was overthrown.
Mr McMahon attempts to minimise US breaches of international and humanitarian laws - "no such horrors are inflicted on [ US-held] captives." But the US has been implicated in the extra-judicial killing of many prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has sent prisoners for torture to prisons in Egypt and elsewhere that are every bit as brutal as Saddam Hussein's prisons. Craig Murray, a former British ambassador, has reported two cases in which prisoners were boiled to death in Uzbekistan, a state that is a loyal member, along with Ireland, of the US coalition of the willing. - Yours, etc,
EDWARD HORGAN, Castletroy, Limerick.