Madam, - On last Monday night's Questions and Answers programme on RTÉ television Dr Mitchell Lerner, visiting professor of modern American history at UCD, said that last year Louisiana state requested $27 million from the federal government for levee construction and improvement projects along the Mississippi. The Bush administration granted $3.9 million, which was later raised to $5 million by the Senate.
In your edition of September 15th, Hugh O'Shaughnessy reports that Washington has been providing the Venezuelan opposition with at least $5.8 million a year through three organisations.
I would like to ask which of these projects was more likely to protect the people that the government was elected to protect - interfering in the internal affairs of a country thousands of miles to the south, or taking some simple preventive measures to safeguard its own southern citizens? - Yours, etc,
JAMES GAFFNEY,
Bracken Gardens,
Limerick.